A Star Is Born World Premiere

In 1954, Hollywood was abuzz that Judy Garland’s performance in A Star Is Born would crown her triumphant comeback, one that had begun several years earlier with a string of highly successful live concert engagements in London and New York. Just a few years before that, when she was released from her MGM contract, she was considered down and out, a has-been at just twenty-eight.

To generate excitement for the film, Warner Bros. would mount one of the biggest movie premieres in Hollywood history. And studio head Jack Warner wanted everyone who was anyone to be there to witness one of the greatest comebacks in Hollywood history. But in a masterstroke of publicity, they would take it a step further. NBC would air A Star Is Born World Premiere, a television special that included footage of the galaxy of stars—including Elizabeth Taylor and Michael Wilding—arriving for the premiere at the RKO Pantages Theatre. It would mark the very first time a film premiere had been nationally televised.

George Jessel and actor Jack Carson (who appeared in A Star Is Born) were on hand to greet the who’s who of Hollywood before they entered the RKO Pantages Theatre. “It’s terribly exciting,” Elizabeth told Carson, who would be her co-star just a few years later in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958).

She attended the star-studded affair in a gown that Helen Rose had designed for her to wear in The Last Time I Saw Paris (1954).