The Star [VHS]

The Star [VHS]
by Stuart Heisler

The Star [VHS]

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Product details

Actor: Bette Davis, Minor Watson, Natalie Wood, Sterling Hayden, Warner Anderson
Director: Stuart Heisler
Cinematographer: Ernest Laszlo
Producer: Bert E. Friedlob
Writer: Dale Eunson
Writer: Katherine Albert
Edition: VHS Tape
Audio: English (Original Language), Analog
Format: Black & White, NTSC
Running Time: 89 minutes
Release Date: 1998-09-01
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Publisher: Warner Home Video
Studio: Warner Home Video

VHS Movie Reviews of The Star [VHS]

Movie Review: Davis is the true star of this one
Summary: 3 Stars

In "The Star", Bette Davis plays a washed up movie star who's been labelled "box office poison" and can't find work. She can't pay her bills yet her sister and brother-in-law expect her to pay theirs. Her daughter lives with her ex-husband and his new wife. After being caught drunk driving she gets bailed out by Jim Johannson (Sterling Hayden), a former co-star who now runs a shipyard. He talks her into trying something new so she gets a job at a department store but walks out on her first day and begs her agent to find her work. He manages to get her a screen test for a supporting part in a movie based on a novel she always wanted to film. She does the screen test but won't take direction and what she really wants is to play the 18-year-old lead character.

"The Star" is a good title for this movie. It's a true star vehicle for Davis and it wouldn't have been very interesting without her. The rest of the cast do a good job as well but they can't steal any scenes from Davis. The plot is simple and quite predictable (although by no means bad) Davis gives a great performance and there are some very good scenes. Recommended to Bette Davis fans.

Movie Review: Bette amazes me--and what a look we get at Hollywood behind the scenes !!!
Summary: 5 Stars

The Star packs a great deal of action, drama and suspense into an extremely good film. The acting is impeccable; with stars like Betty Davis, Natalie Wood and Barbara Lawrence it's tough to miss the target! Of course, Bette Davis gives her usual tour de force performance; and it's great to see her act so convincingly. The cinematography works well throughout the movie; and the choreography shines especially in the scenes at the harbor and the scenes on the movie set where we get a brief movie being filmed within a movie. The plot moves along at a very good pace and I was never once bored.

When the action starts, we quickly meet washed-up Hollywood star Margaret Elliott (Bette Davis) who looks absolutely nauseated as she secretly watches an auction of her prized belongings to pay off her creditors. Even one of her closest "allies" in the business, Harry Stone (Warner Anderson), walks out with her crystal chandelier and he doesn't give it back to Margaret even when he see that she's devastated by it all. Margaret pushes Harry to talk to studio boss Joe Morrison (Minor Watson) to get her a part in "The Fatal Winter;" but Harry isn't about to go out on a limb to help Margaret just yet, either.

To make matters even worse for poor Margaret, the management company where she rents a modest apartment is now practically banging on the door for back rent long overdue and her daughter Gretchen (Natalie Wood) must live with her ex-husband and his new wife because Margaret can't afford the expenses of having her own child live with her. Margaret's sister (Fay Baker) and her brother-in-law Roy (Herb Vigran) want yet another monthly support check from Margaret who finally blows her top and throws them out!

Margaret can't take all this; she gets drunk and drives recklessly with her Oscar all over Hollywood. She gets arrested for drunk driving but after a night in jail she gets bailed out by a man for whom she once got a juicy movie role, Jim Johannson (Sterling Hayden). Jim feels sympathy and genuine affection for Margaret and he likes her daughter Gretchen as well. Jim coaches Margaret into taking a job at a department store as a saleslady but this doesn't last long; Margaret is too proud for this letdown after being a huge Hollywood star. Margaret does get a chance through Harry to play a small role in a picture but she flubs the rehearsal by playing the role as if she were much younger than they wanted her character to be; and Margaret again sinks into despair.

What will happen to Margaret? Will she ever return to pictures--there's a guy with a screenplay and he says it's just right for Margaret--is it right for her? What about Margaret and Gretchen--will they ever be able to live together again? And what happens to Jim, who cares so much about Margaret's life--will he be able to eventually get her back on track in life? No plot spoilers here folks--watch the movie and find out!

The DVD comes with one extra besides scene selection; we get a bonus entitled "How Real Is The Star?" There is the theatrical trailer as well.

The Star is one of Bette Davis' great movies, even though some will say that her career was going downhill when she made it. Her acting absolutely mesmerized me; I couldn't take my eyes off her. What a performer! I highly recommend this film for her fans and people who enjoy classic movies will want to get this DVD, too.

Movie Review: Sterling Hayden could rescue me ANYTIME...
Summary: 4 Stars

Yes, of course, this movie is a Bette Davis vehicle, and a worthy one, definitely worth seeing. As AllAboutEve, the iconic and great behind-the-scenes "at the Theatre" movie, TheStar is a lesser work, though still very much a behind-the-scenes look at an actress whose glory days seem to be well behind her. I have always thought that AllAboutEve and TheStar should be seen back-to-back. The first, so very glossy and glamorous and the latter very much its antithesis... definitely the darker side of a career... but perhaps great book-ends, one to the other.
What moves me to write, here, is the presence of Sterling Hayden, and I write in response to the negative comments made concerning his casting in and his performance in this movie.

Sterling Hayden was a fascinating man; he hated the Hollywood game, and hated being an actor... and longed to be sailing his boat(s); he was a serious sailor, and successfully authored non-fiction and fictional, critically much-acclaimed accounts of life on the high-seas. He was the quintessential Nordic-god: very tall, very blond and was "discovered" on a California beach when a very young man. Throughout his Hollywood career, as soon as they yelled "cut", he raced off the soundstage and down to his boat. I think it extremely interesting that, in TheStar he protrays a disillusioned onetime actor, who "gave it all up" and goes on to purchase a shipyard/dry-dock... and at the spur-of-the-moment, is always delighted to take the boat out onto the water for an afternoon of sailing. Is this art mimic-ing life? I wonder what his career might have been like had he really "taken-to" the Hollywood experience.

Besides being a wonderful physical foil to the physically diminutive Bette Davis in TheStar, his performance, which is very natural (not easy to achieve... acting while appearing NOT to be acting), is the rock to which Bette Davis clings as she gradually accepts the transition taking-place in her life... thus his natural performance is (also) the low-key foil to that of the over-the-top tumultuous Davis; it's all about contrasting... just like those two luminous and contrasting performances in AllAboutEve: that of Margo Channing and that of Karen Richards. And... the gentleman's voice!!! Tall. blond and commanding... yet calming and steady: 'certainly works for me!

Getting-back to AllAboutEve, who can forget that wonderful monologue in the stalled car, in which Margo Channing laments: 'the things a woman lets-go-of "on the way up", to move faster, she'll find later-on that she needs when resuming the one career that all women have in-common: being a woman'.

TheStar depicts the outcome of that pivotal monologue in AllAboutEve... being "just a woman" ... and not a star with a "French Provincial office". And, if being "just a woman"... when it's all said-and-done and all over with, means falling into the arms of a Sterling Hayden... again, all I can say is:
That would work just fine for me!

Movie Review: Bette for real!
Summary: 5 Stars

Great film - not as glamorous as some - but well done and a good story. Bette Davis is at her best. Well worth the time and money.

Movie Review: The STAR: Manners put on Madame Davis
Summary: 5 Stars

In "THE STAR" STERLING HAYDEN MANAGES TO PORTRAY AN ORDINARY PERSON WHO DOES WONDERS IN TEACHING BETTE DAVIS (HERE MISS SPOILED MOVIE STAR) TO BEHAVE LIKE A NORMAL HUMAN BEING. THE PERFORMANCES ARE SO GOOD THAT WE WISH HE WAS AROUND MORE IN REAL LIFE TO PUT MANNERS ON HER. CONSIDERING JOAN CRAWFORD HATED HAYDEN ONE CAN ONLY WONDER WHAT BETTE THOGHT OF HIM

Write your own review

Summary of The Star [VHS]

An Oscar-winning actress with a fading career is given one last chance at the spotlight.

"Come on, Oscar--let's you and me get drunk." This caustic Bette Davis line is not aimed at a co-star but at the Academy Award itself, which down-on-her-luck actress Margaret Elliot cradles bitterly at the beginning of an inebriated evening. As you can guess, Davis is at full-throttle in his ripe melodrama, which came a couple of years after All About Eve and serves as a kind of less-classy companion piece to that classic. As the movie begins, Margaret has lost her career and family because of her own demanding nature. Rescued by a roughhewn boatbuilder (Sterling Hayden) she once befriended, she confronts what's most important--being a star, or being a (ahem) woman.

The rickety script and cut-rate production values betray The Star as a product of Davis's post-Warners wanderings. It does have some sunny location shots of San Pedro, plus a young Natalie Wood before she broke out of child-star roles. But the biggest draw, other than Davis, is the Hollywood behind-the-scenes juice, and the guessing game of how close the material was to Davis's own career (rumor has it the character, who wants to glamorize herself for a supporting part as a slatternly housemaid, was based more on Joan Crawford). It ain't art, but it's an artifact of a different era, skipping between backstage expose and camp. --Robert Horton

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