When it comes to remakes, only King Kong rivals A Star Is Born in the category of narratives born at the movies. Among love stories, Romeo and Juliet came from the theater over 400 years ago; among horror classics, Dracula and Frankenstein began as nineteenth-century novels. But A Star Is Born remains, by far, Hollywood’s favorite homegrown source material. It’s a tragic, toxic mix of public glamour and domestic terror based on the real-life marriages of the famous couples who inspired Hollywood’s most filmed story of love found and man destroyed.

A Star Is Reborn : The Most Filmed Hollywood Story of Love Found and Lost by film historian Robert Hofler offers a riveting behind-the-scenes journey through the movie’s history and its subsequent remakes, starting with 1932’s What Price Hollywood?, based on the rocky real-life Hollywood marriage of silent movie star Colleen Moore and producer John McCormick. That storyline was reworked by producer David O. Selznick into 1937’s A Star is Born, starring Janet Gaynor and Fredric March in the first of four versions of love, self-destruction and fame rolled into a delicious package, followed in 1954 with Judy Garland and James Mason, 1976 with Barbra Streisand and Kris Kristofferson and 2018 with Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper.

Captivating and superbly researched, A Star Is Reborn combines shrewd insights, little-known details, and Hofler’s storytelling flair in this must-read for every fan of modern cinema. The show must go on!

**After the talk, celebrate the 50th anniversary of the 1976 release with a screening of the film.

Robert Hofler is the lead theater critic at TheWrap and author of bestselling, critically acclaimed biographies, including Money, Murder, and Dominick Dunne: A Life in Several Acts; The Man Who Invented Rock Hudson; Party Animals; and the Lambda Literary Award nominated Sexplosion: From Andy Warhol to A Clockwork Orange, How a Generation of Pop Rebels Broke All the Taboos. The recipient of the 2020 Los Angeles Press Club Award for Best Theater Reviews, he previously has been an editor and writer for Life, Us Weekly, and Variety. He lives in New York City and can be found online at RobertHofler.com.

The Film:

The fire of Barbra Streisand. The magnetism of Kris Kristofferson. The reckless world of big-time rock ’n’ roll. All three bring a new passion and timeliness to A Star Is Born, one of the screen’s classic love stories (previously filmed in 1937 and 1954) and winner of five Golden Globe Awards, including Best Picture, Actress and Actor (Musical/Comedy). Paul Williams, Kenny Loggins, Leon Russell and others worked with Streisand on one of the most popular song scores ever, topped by the Streisand/Williams “Evergreen” winning the Academy Award and Golden Globe Award as 1976’s Best Original Song. Their teamwork resulted in a box-office triumph as well as “a considerable achievement” (Clive Hirschhorn, The Hollywood Musical).