Like the cinematic, L.A.-oriented songs of Lana Del Rey alluding to portents of some cataclysmic fall (“Nobody warns you before the fall”), all of 1952’s The Star is one giant buildup to some grand embarrassment for our heroine and once great glamorous titan of Hollywood, Margaret Elliot (Bette Davis). Released just two years after Sunset Boulevard, the script, written by husband and wife team Dale Eunson and Katherine Albert, cut close to home for one star in particular: Joan Crawford. That the screenwriters were coming to the end of a long-standing friendship with the actress made Bette Davis all the more eager to take on a role that would serve to do a send-up of her arch nemesis. Of course, it couldn’t be helped that elements of Norma Desmond (played by ex-silent film star Gloria Swanson) were incorporated into the character. After all, Margaret is staunchly in denial about her stature in Hollywood, and would be able to keep up that state of liberally applied repudiation of reality were it not for her unignorable financial state.
That the film opens on an auction of her personal effects is immediately telling of just how dire the situation is. As her agent, Harry Stone (Warner Anderson), walks out with a ridiculous crystal tchotchke that his wife always admired, she chastises him for his disloyalty and gleefully taking ten percent from her all these years without bothering to help her get a part of late that might keep her career afloat. Feeling genuine pity for her–something of the Erich von Stroheim as Max von Mayerling figure in the movie, minus the creepy aura and thick accent–he takes her out for a cup of coffee where she confides she still wants to play the lead in The Fatal Winter. A project now being produced by Joe Morrison’s (Minor Watson) studio even though, long ago, Margaret had the option rights for the book. Harry, of course, makes no promises to her about the role, for it’s likely going to the more “dewy” Hollywood ingenue, Barbara Lawrence (played by herself).
The news only gets worse as the evening progresses, returning to her modest apartment after trying to prostrate herself before her now more famous ex-husband, John Morgan, whose success as a Western star makes Margaret feel a little entitled to some of the money she invested in him back before he made it big. Greeted by her daughter, Gretchen (Natalie Wood), Margaret’s plans are soon stymied by the new wife, who tells her that John is on location shooting a movie. As the two engage in a not-so-friendly repartee, Margaret tries to flee the scene undetected once more by Gretchen, who of course catches her and insists on being tucked in. Fearing too much time alone with her as a result of not wanting to be probed about her current “status” as a star, Gretchen does just that, explaining that she beat up another girl at camp whose screenwriter father told the girl’s mother that Margaret was “washed up.” In this regard, Margaret is also forced to face cold hard facts more unavoidably than Norma Desmond, who never bothered with having any children other than the movies she gave birth to. For one supposes those most devoted to their careers are the real stars. Which is why Crawford and Davis were both anomalies–Crawford with her brood of four adopted children (one of which, Christina, would famously write the tell-all Mommie Dearest) and Davis with her one legitimate one and two adopted ones.
Desmond’s greater commitment to the negation of reality in Sunset Boulevard stems from a lack of children and a non-lack of money (maybe she was able to keep some precisely because she never popped out a money-eating machine). That, and the veneer of glitz and glamor that Max is able to sustain for her by telling her what she wants to hear and writing her letters as her “many” fans. That Desmond has also been in seclusion for longer than Margaret, who is still only freshly dealing with her unwanted station in life, is also a testament to a keen ability to deny the truth. For if there’s no one around to tell you how it is, then you only have to listen to the sweet little lies your own inner voice is telling you.
But Margaret has so many people in her life that she can no longer save face in front of thanks to her financial woes, including her brother and sister-in-law, both who expect to collect a monthly amount of money from her like the worthless leeches they are. Finally, Margaret has to snap, “Can’t you get it through your thick skull that I’m broke? Dead, flat, stony broke! See? I’ve got $3.85 in my purse. Do you want that, Roy? I have given you over $50,000. You must have some of it stashed away.” Desmond could never so cavalierly lose her cool, nor admit such a bleak truth.
As for the Joe Gillis (William Holden) foil in the movie, we have Jim Johannsen (Sterling Hayden), the owner of a boatyard that Margaret helped long ago get a part as her co-star in a movie. Albeit a very poorly received movie. His acting days were fairly numbered after that but he never forgot her–which is why he appears to bail her out of jail when news breaks that she’s been arrested for a DUI (also something that would never happen to Norma because she has Max to drive her around, or she simply doesn’t leave the house, sealing time into it so as to preserve the illusion of her heyday). Trying to run from the car when the police finally catch her–in a very Lindsay Lohan moment–Margaret is faced with the sobering realization too late that now her daughter is going to hear about this.
The time with Jim, who reciprocates Margaret’s emotions in a way that Joe never possibly could for the also older Norma, does her some good. And she even briefly reconciles that it’s over for her by taking a job in a department store. Quickly cut short when two “old bags” recognize her and start clucking away like hens about how she shouldn’t be employed there after her drunken scandal. Realizing who she fucking is–Margaret goddamn Elliot–she demands a part in The Fatal Winter. Morrison is amenable…provided Margaret gives a screen test, something she hasn’t had to do for years. But at least her screen test is real, unlike Desmond’s, forced to make her own test scene by the end of Sunset Boulevard when she’s gone completely over to the dark side of madness and given in entirely to a departure from any objectivity. Be that as it may, it is a screen test with results that, once more, underscore something Margaret has been trying to avoid: she’s aged.
Because Margaret eventually comes to terms with all of the harshness of what it means to be a middle-aged actress in Hollywood, it’s possible The Star couldn’t transcend Sunset Boulevard to become as iconic as a result of how much more tragic Norma was in comparison to Margaret, willing to surrender to reality in the end–become content with the prospect of civilianship and being someone’s little wife–in a way that Joan Crawford certainly never did. Though she was most assuredly as delusional as Desmond in her Pepsi-pushing years.
