"The Star" (1952) Starring Bette Davis

Yes, "The Danny Pintauro Story" - from child star on top-rated 80s sitcom to manager of a P.F. Chang's in Vegas.

And in between, he beats Annabelle Chong's record.

The May Company scene is an inspiration to every retail worker who has ever been treated like shit by a customer

That was one of Bette's actual Oscars on the dashboard, as well.

Was it really? lol.

I love that scene, especially the way Bette says "$39.95. Isn't it lovely?" in that rote way one develops in such jobs (even though it's only her first HOUR on the job!)

Sterling Hayden is very hot in this movie. Fine ass!

I wonder who he liked better, Bette or Joan?

Also want to add that the two old bags in that scene probably have doppelgangers on the DL!

R7 Well I do need to lose 10 pounds. Let's do it together. Misery loves company.

[quote] I love that scene, especially the way Bette says "$39.95. Isn't it lovely?"

According to the CPI calculator, $39.95 in 1952 = $359.27 today. I didn't realize that May's Crenshaw was so tony.

I wonder if Margaret Elliott worked for minimum wage, which in 1952, was 75 cents an hour

[quote]I wonder who he liked better, Bette or Joan?

He loathed Bette, and I don't think she was very fond of him, either. I sadly can't remember his thoughts on Joan but my guess is that he didn't like her, either.

The couple who wrote the screenplay to "The Star" were friends of Joan Crawford. They based the character on Joan and everyone in Hollywood knew it. Joan seethed and quietly plotted her revenge.

A short time later the couple's eighteen-year-old daughter fell in love with a somewhat older man and they did not approve of the relationship. Joan kindly offered to talk some sense into the girl and told the couple to send her over to Joan's house. Instead of talking her out of it, Joan also invited the unwanted boyfriend and a wedding officiant.

Once the newlyweds were off on their honeymoon, Joan phoned her soon-to-be former friends and broke the "happy news" that their daughter and her boyfriend had been married at her house. Payback is a bitch, and so was Joan Crawford.

R11, the version of the story that I read is that the screen writer couple (Dale and Katherine Eunson) wrote "The Star" as payback for Joan having facilitated their daughter's marriage to the unwanted boyfriend.

When I said, "don't fuck with me, fellas," I meant it! My "friends" the Eunsons had to learn that the hard way. Pally takes no shit!

Help us...please??? Someone...anyone???

R3 thanks for that scene

R12, the movie The Star was in production in mid-July of 1952 which is when Joan invited the writers' daughter (also named Joan, after Crawford, her god-mother) to be married in secret at her house. Young Joan turned eighteen days later. The film came out in December of that year.

Actually, Sterling Hayden and Bette Davis got along very well. I read an interview with Hayden's wife at the time, who said that she, Hayden, and Davis used to go out to dinner after work. They enjoyed one another's company and would get pleasantly snockered together. Of course, on the set of that movie Davis famously stood up for a teenage Natalie Wood, who was terrified of jumping in the water, as the director, Stuart Heisler, demanded. Davis heard Natalie screaming and told Heisler that if he had wanted a swimmer for the role he should have hired Johnny Weissmuller. Needless to say, Natalie didn't have to jump. Grateful for the rest of her life, she told the story often, most prominently at the AFI Davis tribute. Contrary to her reputation as a harridan, well-earned in later years, Davis through mid-career was extremely protective of her colleagues, cast and crew, and well-liked by most of them, though not by most of her directors, whom she constantly challenged, often to the detriment of her performance. I think she ruined her career by rejecting or alienating talented directors (Huston, Goulding, Curtiz, Sherman, Vidor, Capra, even Wyler) who stood up to her and agreeing to work only with milksops (Rapper, Bernhardt, Shumlin, Windust, Heisler) who acquiesced to her every whim. If you think about the directors Katharine Hepburn sought out, it's easy to see why the second half of her career was so much more successful than Davis's.

I agree with OP. The Star is a terrible, terrible movie, and Davis looks about a decade older than she did two years earlier in All About Eve. Her marriage to Gary Merrill really took its toll -- turned her into a bitter alcoholic. A friend of mine spent his childhood summers at his family's place near the Merrills' house in Maine. He has great stories about Davis. I discovered this about ten years ago, when I saw on a side table in his den a photo of Davis and a young boy at the beach and his wife said, "Oh, that's Chris." "Yeah, but why's he with Bette Davis?" "They knew each other when Chris was a kid. You'll have to ask him about her."

Sterling Hayden hated Joan Crawford. He once said he'd rather stop acting than work with her again. Everyone hated Crawford on the set of Johnny Guitar, but especially Hayden and Mercedes McCambridge.

Thanks, R16.

[quote]I wonder who he liked better, Bette or Joan?

Hayden HATED Joan after "Johnny Guitar", and was famously quoted as saying “There’s is not enough money in Hollywood to lure me into making another picture with Joan Crawford. And I like money.”

Bette is said to be doing her take on Joan during the screen test scene in THE STAR.

R20, she even says "Bless you." to someone in that scene, if I recall correctly.

[quote]She actually received an Oscar nom for this? This is a B-picture if I've ever seen one.

She was nominated for her performance. The movie didn't receive any other worthy nominations. Remember, Streep winning for THE IRON LADY, and that movie was shit!

"Come on, Oscar! Let's you and me get drunk!"

The Star was her 9th of 10 Oscar nominations, all for Best Actress by the way, never supporting.

Actually, it's quite a brave performance by Bette to play a washed-up movie star, which is what she was at the tim (1952). Or maybe she was more delusional than brave. Years later, after Crawford died, Bette said she was playing Joan in the movie, making the distinction that while Joan was a movie star, she was an ACTRESS. But Joan was having a career revival at the time The Star came out. It was more of Bette's life on the screen.

She said the movie was ruined by the sappy ending that the studio forced on them, and I agree. It would've been better had it ended at the party with the pitifully defeated Margaret Eliot thinking she could be a star again.

R24 wasn't Davis also having a career revival in the early '50s, resurrected by the smash ALL ABOUT EVE for which she almost won her 3rd Oscar?

R25 The success of All About Eve didn't last. Her next movie, Payment on Demand, was actually made before Eve and was only released because of its success. It was poorly received. She then had to go to England to make the low-budget Another Man's Poison, which bombed. Then came a small role in her husband Gary Merrill's film Phone Called From A Stranger, in which she looked 10 years old than she was. It did nothing for her career.

Next came the low-budget The Star, which brought her a surprise Oscar nod. But afterward she couldn't find a movie role until The Virgin Queen 3 years later (1955). It bombed too. Then came A Catered Affair (1956), again looking 10 years older than she was. Most critics said she was badly miscast but the movie's reputation has improved over the years. After that came Storm Center (also 1956), a role that was originally set for Mary Pickford! It bombed big time.

She didn't have another starring movie role until Baby Jane, 6 years later (1962).

It was a hard decade for Bette.

R26 Oops, The title was Phone Call from a Stranger (1952).

R27 Bette did make Pocketful of Miracles (1961) before Baby Jane. But her part was whittled down to supporting level. Despite being directed by Frank Capra, neither she nor the movie is very good.

The poor dear! But then not everyone has the star power to play QUEEN BEE or HARRIET CRAIG. Or the beauty.

[quote]The couple who wrote the screenplay to "The Star" were friends of Joan Crawford. They based the character on Joan and everyone in Hollywood knew it. Joan seethed and quietly plotted her revenge.

That year Joan was in SUDDEN FEAR. I'd say she got her revenge.

[quote]I read an interview with Hayden's wife at the time, who said that she, Hayden, and Davis used to go out to dinner after work.

I'd love to read that if you have a link or reference. I would have sworn Sterling hated Bette like crazy, but maybe I'm remembering him hating another actress. He was a terrific actor but, much like Bar Bush, really knew how to hate.

Maybe you were thinking of actors who hated Sterling. He (falsely) used to accuse fellow actors, directors, etc.. of being communists so he could get ahead in Hollywood.

r17 please share some of the Bette stories!

R15 my pleasure.

The store where that scene was filmed was the May Company on Crenshaw Blvd in Los Angeles. It opened in 1947 and, along with The Broadway across the street, was one of the first suburban stores built after the war. Margaret Elliott was aghast at the thought of being seen working such a menial job by her fellow movie stars, so she rejected the suggestion that she take a job at I. Magnin or Saks in Beverly Hills, and opted for the relative anonymity of the middle-class Crenshaw district.

The neighborhood, once solidly working-class, went downhill in subsequent decades, which was lucky for us, as the May Company never invested much money in remodeling the store, and it retains much of its 1940's feel, even today as Macy's (or it did at least the last time I was there, a few years ago).

You can still stomp down the same escalator as Bette Davis

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That matronly dress in R35 didn't help. She looks like a stuffed sausage. Did she use her employee discount at May Co to pick up something in the Lady Crenshaw department to pick up someone before she quit?

[quote]It was a hard decade for Bette

Indeed, while I was still sexy

Mrs. Steele was on the matronly plane as well by 1958 or so..

True but her face looks flawless in "Female on the Beach".

Watched "The Star" today on TCM...very bad movie (in the best way possible). Bette Davis doing Joan Crawford. So enjoyable. Those dames never disappoint. Most of their movies are awful but they're both so watchable, it doesn't matter.

Joan didn't really age much better than Bette, she just kept her figure. But all that smoking and drinking, the severe hairdos and those damned caterpillar eyebrows made Joan terrifying to look at in the 1950's. I'd say the last film where she still could pass for "young" was 1947's Possessed. Same with Bette in AAE. Her visual career can be divided up into pre and post All About Eve.

Bette aged but didn't look grotesque except when made up for roles, Joan was scary looking in real life by the end of the 1950's.