The Star (1952 film)

The Star is a 1952 American drama film, directed by Stuart Heisler and starring Bette Davis, Sterling Hayden, and Natalie Wood. The plot tells the story of an aging, washed-up actress who is desperate to restart her career. Even though the film was a critical and commercial failure, Bette Davis received an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress.

Oscar-winning star Margaret "Maggie" Elliot (Bette Davis) is a broke actress struggling to accept her new, non-wealthy reality. She is in denial and confident she somehow can relaunch her career to its earlier brilliance. After suffering another big disappointment while vainly striving to get one good role, she gets drunk, is arrested for DUI, and spends a night in jail. She is bailed out by Jim Johannsen (Sterling Hayden), a younger former actor whom she had helped in the past. Jim, now comfortably settled as the owner of a boatyard, admits that he has loved her ever since those days and, with assistance from Margaret's daughter Gretchen (Natalie Wood), tries to help Margaret see that her days as a famous actress are already over. She reluctantly tries to work as a saleswoman in an upscale department store, but gossip from two customers wounds her pride and she runs out. Her old agent manages to get her a screen test for a role in a film she'd always wanted to play. She accepts the screen test for a supporting role, believing that playing the character as a sexy younger woman rather than the middle-aged frump she is regarded by the studio, she might be able to win the more coveted lead role. Her effort does not succeed.

At a Hollywood party thrown by her agent, she is offered a role in a new film about a fallen star who can't face the fact that it's all over. This new script is dedicated to washed-up actors and actresses who are obsessed by their former glory and beauty, unable to accept that their moment is over and the world has passed them by, showing what kind of impressions they make to stay on top and how they behave—demanding, bribing, power-hungry. Hearing the pitch delivered right to her face and that she'd be the perfect actress to play the role finally makes Margaret confront the cold truth about her future. She realizes that her film career is over, and she flees the party to the open arms of Jim and the love and acceptance of her daughter, from whom Margaret desperately tried to shield her fading career.

Katherine Albert and her husband Dale Eunson reportedly based the Margaret Elliot character on Joan Crawford, whose long friendship with the couple was ending as production began. Although it is sometimes said that Crawford turned down the role, it never was offered to her. Bette Davis publicly disdained Crawford and thus eagerly took it.^[2]

Joan Crawford was the namesake and godmother of the Eunsons' daughter, starlet Joan Evans. When the couple sent their daughter to the actress in the hope that Crawford would talk her out of marrying at age 17, Crawford took this opportunity to retaliate instead. She arranged the wedding, held it in her house, and called the Eunsons afterward to tell them about it. "She set the whole thing up behind our backs", Albert complained. "She called the judge and the press. She didn't invite us to our own daughter's wedding."^[2]

• 1952 in film
• List of American films of 1952

• The Star at IMDb
• The Star at AllMovie
• The Star at the TCM Movie Database (archived version)
• The Star at the AFI Catalog of Feature Films