Judy Garland

In Hollywood, California, many film celebrities attend a gala show at the Shrine Auditorium. Oliver Niles (Charles Bickford), who runs his own film studio, tells publicist Matt Libby (Jack Carson) to keep the alcoholic star actor Norman Maine (James Mason) off the stage, who is clearly drunk at this point. But Norman knocks Libby down and wanders onto the stage while the Glenn Williams Orchestra performs. Vocalist Esther Blodgett (Judy Garland), a young newcomer from the Midwest, incorporates him into the act so the audience doesn't realize that he is drunk. Later, the grateful and intrigues Norman tracks Esther to a small club where she is jamming. When he hears her sing "The Man Who Got Away", he realizes that she has great talent. He convinces her to quit the band she is performing with and take a chance a living her dream to be a big star. Norman promises to get Esther a studio audition. Esther's friend Danny McGuire (Tom Noonan) who works as the pianist, tells her that Norman is just giving her a line. Niles whisks Norman to a faraway location, so he looses contact with Esther before he can help her. Esther is forced to take odd jobs to survive. When Norman hears her voice on a silly TV commercial, he tracks her down to the boarding house where she lives. He gets her a studio contract. Her name is changed to Vicki Lester, but no one pays any attention to her until Norman shrewdly figures a way for Niles to hear Esther/Vicki sing. Niles casts her as the lead in a new musical which is a box office hit and to Esther/Vicki, a star is born. Esther agrees to marry Norman, hoping he will stop drinking and focus on his acting career once again. When they elope, this infuriates Libby, who despises Norman. Niles informs Norman that the studio is dropping him because his alcoholism has made him too great a risk. When Norman cannot find any work elsewhere in any major or independent studio, his fame begins to slip away. Norman starts drinking even more heavily. Esther tries to persuade him to stop drinking or at least "tone it down" but Norman angrily tells her to stay out of his personal business. After Esther is nominated and wins an Oscar for her performance in her first feature musical, Norman crashes the Academy Awards completely drunk and pushes his way on the stage where he embarrasses Esther and himself with his drunken rambling and when she tries to calm him down, he accidentally hits her in the face in full view of the televised audience forcing security men to remove him from the stage. Eventually Norman ends up in a sanatorium where he hopes to stay sober. When Niles sees how depressed that Esther is now that her career is stalled for her association with Norman, he visits Norman at the sanatorium where he offers him a small part in a picture. But this makes Norman even more upset. Due to being so used to having lead roles, Norman is too full of stubborn and foolish pride to accept the offer and pretends that he has other offers when he gets out the sanatorium. A few weeks later when Norman finally gets out of the sanatorium, he hopes to stay sober. But at the Hollywood Park racetrack where he goes to place a few bets, Libby confronts and insults him for living off his wife's salary and new fame, and assumes that Norman is and always will be a drunk. When Norman takes a swing at Libby, he knocks Norman down. A gathering crowd assumes that Norman is drunk. He gets up after Libby walks away and immediately falls of the wagon by ordering a drink at the racetrack bar. After being missing for four days, Esther and Niles learn that Norman has been arrested for drunk driving, getting into a car accident and resisting arrest. When the judge threatens to sentence him, Esther turns up in court and promises to take care of her husband so there will be no more incidents. He is released into her custody. At their beachfront house, while Esther and Niles think that Norman is asleep, he overhears them. Esther confides in Niles that she loves Norman so much despite his alcoholism that she has decides to give up her acting career and go to Europe with him so he can recover. Esther feels she owes her success to him for she believes that he is responsible for the success that she's had. She hopes they both can resume their acting careers abroad in England or Italy, or France. But Niles tells her that Norman's talent disappeared years before when he started drinking. Norman is clearly agonized by what he hears. After Niles leaves, Norman tells Esther that things will be better for her. Then while they go to sleep for the night, he wakes up early the next morning, walks into the ocean from the beach and deliberately drowns himself. Esther goes into seclusion, intending to mourn forever. After several weeks, Danny visits and insists that she appear at a benefit at the Shrine Auditorium. He says that Esther is Norman's monument that her love and success were the only good things in Norman's life. If she kicks it all away, it will be as if Norman never existed. Esther makes a surprise appearance at the shrine. She introduces herself to a worldwide audience: "This is Mrs. Norman Maine."

In St. Louis, Missouri in the summer of 1903, seventeen-year-old Esther Smith fantasizes about meeting John Truett, the shy boy-next-door, while her older sister Rose frets about her beau, Warren Sheffield, who is off at Yale. Sure that Warren, who is calling Rose at 6:30 p.m. that evening, is finally going to propose to her sister, Esther arranges with Katie, the Smiths' housekeeper, for the family to eat dinner early, so that Rose will have some privacy while talking on the telephone. Esther's cantankerous father Alonzo, who has not been told about the expected call, ruins her plan, however, when he insists on eating at the usual time. During dinner, everyone, including Esther's five-year old sister "Tootie," tries to hurry Lon along, but the phone rings just as the main course is being served. As her family eavesdrops on the entire conversation, Rose attempts to prod Warren into a proposal, but he gets mired in small talk and hangs up without uttering a single romantic word. Later, at Esther's urging, Rose invites John to a farewell party for her older brother Lon, Jr., who is going to Princeton. At the party, Esther at first feigns indifference to John, but hides his hat to keep him at the house and then asks him to help her turn off all the lights. Although John is clearly attracted to the flirtatious Esther, he is too shy to kiss her, and instead gives her a hearty handshake. Before he leaves, Esther invites him to join her family that Sunday for a tour of the St. Louis Exposition fairgrounds, and he tentatively accepts. On Sunday, Esther waits eagerly for John at the trolley stop, but he has not arrived by the time the trolley is scheduled to leave. As the trolley is pulling away, however, John appears and, to Esther's joy, hops on next to her. Several months later, Tootie and her slightly older sister Agnes dress up as goblins and go out to celebrate Halloween with the neighborhood children. Anxious to prove herself, Tootie, who is preoccupied with death, insists on calling feared neighbor Mr. Braukoff to his door and, following the local custom, blows flour in his face. After Tootie is declared the "most horrible," she throws her family into a panic when she returns home, crying, bruised and cut. Tootie claims that John hit her by the trolley tracks, and although Esther at first refuses to believe her, she changes her mind when a clump of hair is discovered in Tootie's hand. Enraged, Esther storms over to John's house, accuses him of being a bully and then beats and bites him. Later, however, Tootie and Agnes confess that John actually saved them from being arrested after they almost caused an accident on the trolley tracks. Esther rushes back to John's house to apologize, and John not only forgives her, but flirts with her as well. Later that evening, Lon, a lawyer, returns home to announce that his firm is transferring him to New York. Although Lon is enthusiastic about the transfer, which involves a promotion, Anna and the children react with shock and worry. Eventually, however, Anna agrees to the move, and the Smiths plan to leave St. Louis after Christmas. Several weeks later on Christmas Eve, Rose is upset because the visiting Warren has invited Lucille Ballard, an Easterner, to the local Christmas dance instead of her. Back from Princeton, Lon, Jr., also is frustrated because he wanted to ask Lucille to the dance. After Katie convinces Lon, Jr., to escort Rose to the dance, Esther's plans are disrupted when John is forced to break his date with her because he did not get to the tailor's soon enough to pick up his tuxedo. Although Esther assures John she is not upset, she later breaks down in tears and refuses to be escorted by Lon, Jr. When Esther's grandfather, however, offers to take her, she gratefully accepts. At the dance, Esther and Rose scheme against Lucille, whom they have never met, by filling out her dance card with the names of clods. Their plan backfires when Lucille turns out to be nice and insists that Rose be with Warren, while she goes with Lon, Jr. Embarrassed, Esther gives Lucille her dance card, then braves the clods. To her delight, John eventually shows up and, under a wintery moon, kisses her and proposes. As soon as Esther starts to think about being separated from her family, however, she has second thoughts about marrying. Later, at home, Tootie cries to Esther about the impending move and, as her bewildered father watches from a window, runs outside and angrily begins smashing the snow people she helped build. After calling the family together, Lon then announces that that they are staying in St. Louis. Months later in the spring of 1904, the Smiths and John head for the just-opened Exposition and are thrilled by the thought that such incredible sights are in their very own town.

Two vaudeville performers fall in love, but find their relationship tested by the arrival of WWI. Set during WW I, Palmer and Hayden team up as vaudeville artists. Harry Palmer deliberately injures his hand to avoid being drafted to the army. Later, he makes up for this. WW I patriotism for a WW II audience, very sentimental, great musical episodes and songs. —Gerhard Gonter <g.gonter@ieee.org>

Penny Morris and Tommy Williams are both starstruck young teens but nobody seems to give them any chance to perform. Instead, they decide to put up their own show to collect money for a summer camp for the kids. Tommy Williams desperately wants to get to Broadway, but as he is only singing in a spaghetti house for tips he is a long way off. He meets Penny Morris, herself no mean singer, and through her gets the idea to promote a show to send orphaned children on a country holiday. But he is only using the kids to get on himself, which Penny soon realises. With his romance off, an engagement in Philadelphia he can't get to, and, indeed, war in Europe, life can be difficult. —Jeremy Perkins {J-26} After four months of floundering attempts to get into a Broadway show, Tommy Williams grasps the opportunity to produce a charity show to take city orphans on a trip to the country. With his new girlfriend, Penny, he and his young friends produce a musical. But Tommy lets potential success go to his head, ready to pitch his friends and his ideals. —Ray Hamel <hamel@primate.wisc.edu>