But that didn't stop it from becoming popular with audiences: it was a huge box-office hit. While all other iterations of the movie achieved critical success, the 1976 A Star Is Born received negative-to-mixed reviews. In the 1976 version, she calls herself 'Esther Hoffman Howard,' taking only the last name from her late husband John Norman Howard. For instance, in the first two movies the grieving wife declares that she will go by 'Mrs. There are also a few more subtle departures, informed by changing politics and gender norms. It also features big-name musician Barbra Streisand as its ingenue. It shifts the story's setting from Hollywood to the music industry, and has an aging rock star as its male lead. The third movie has the most in common with this past year's remake. Below, all four A Star Is Born movies, and how they stack up. As it’s critiquing itself, it’s also shoring up the audience’s fascination with how it works.'īut with this year's remake up for a stunning eight Academy Awards-including Best Picture, and Lady Gaga for Best Actress-there's a value in examining each version, and how the story has evolved from 1937 to today. As though the point of view of the movie is with the audience, being like, ‘Look at this horrible place, and what it does to humanity.’ But really that movie is obviously also a product of Hollywood. Hollywood makes these movies, like A Star Is Born, that are supposedly self-critical, as though they’re being made by somebody outside of Hollywood. 'It’s Hollywood’s favorite structured myth about itself. Why keep reprising the same narrative? 'Hollywood people buy into this mythology that there’s only so much space in the universe of stars, and for one to ascend, one has to fall,' Karina Longworth, author of the forthcoming Seduction: Sex, Lies, and Stardom in Howard Hughes’s Hollywood, told Vanity Fair.

A successful man discovers and uplifts a young ingenue, only to be eclipsed by her success and fall prey to his own demons: that is the central, immutable story of all four iterations of A Star Is Born, though details shift, adapting to each distinct era.

A star is born soundtrack covert art