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Bradley Cooper's remake of A Star is Born just hit theatres, so I thought it would be a good time to share how I'd rank the many different versions of this story. The story is rooted in a somewhat cynical idea that for every star that is born, one has to die. But perhaps why Hollywood likes it enough to remake it three times is that the older star helps the newer star's career, and that in the end, the newer star pays tribute to the older star by taking his name. It's a story about Hollywood whose darkness is masked as romantic melodrama. With that in my mind, here's my ranking: NOTE: I did not include What Price Hollywood?,  a 1932 film starring Constance Bennett with a very similar premise because it is not credited as official source material on any version. It's pretty good though and definitely worth checking out - it's currently available to stream on FimStruck, as are the '37, '54, and '76 A Star is Born s. 4. A Star is Born (1976)

Film Review: A Star is Born This is what Hollywood does best. A timeless story told with big emotions and big drama. Bradley Cooper's new version of A Star is Born  is everything I hoped it would be. It is, without question, one of the very best movies of the year. The original 1937 version starred Janet Gaynor and Fredric March, and was previously remade in 1954 starring Judy Garland and James Mason, and again in 1976 with Barbra Streisand and Kris Kristofferson. The 2018 version has Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper, who also directs. The story is that a star battling alcoholism meets a young ingenue and their romance develops as her star rises and his star fades. The version this one shares the most DNA with is '76 (though this one is much better), as it retains that movie's innovation of switching the setting to the music industry rather than the movie industry. It also directly lifts the scene from '76 where the female character puts makeup on the male character wh