The story of a rising star coupled with one on the decline evidently held no little intrigue for producer David O. Selznick, who employed it again in 1937 with A Star Is Born (with Janet Gaynor and Fredric March, directed by William Wellman); nor for director George Cukor, who also directed the wonderful 1954 A Star Is Born with Judy Garland and James Mason; nor for a public whose already avid interest in “the star” was increased manyfold when that star played a star on the screen. But although the stories are remarkably similar, What Price Hollywood? is far more than a rough draft of A Star Is Born. With Constance Bennett as the Brown Derby waitress who is discovered by a famous movie director (played by Lowell Sherman, himself a respected director as well as actor), his alcoholic decline proceeding apace with her ascent, it was What Price Hollywood? which inspired critic Joseph McBride to call George Cukor “the cinema's greatest realist.... (N)o other director, not even Renoir or Bergman, can bring out so many nuances in an actor and capture an emotional state with such precision.” What Price Hollywood? was the first of a number of films in which Cukor shows an unpitying sensitivity to the problems of alcoholism. (JB)