The $5 Million Tragedy: Why Warner Bros. Destroyed A Star Is Born

This is one of the wildest stories about the making of a Hollywood film EVER and many of you have probably never heard it before.

In 1984, film librarian Merle Ray Harlin was charged with stealing 419 films. One scrap found in his vast collection was a missing scene from the 1954 film A Star Is Born starring Judy Garland. So many films that could have been lost to history… and so many more that we don’t even know are lost! Unfortunately, that loss still includes 7 minutes of A Star Is Born.

If you try to watch the entire originally screened cut of A Star Is Born now, it’s a pretty odd experience. About 41 minutes into the film, it briefly ceases to be a “motion” picture, instead suddenly consisting of still images like some avant-garde thing your Brooklyn boyfriend would drag you to see. It’s odd.

Only 4 missing minutes from A Star Is Born were recovered from Merle Harlin…there are still 7 minutes of the full cut of the movie that are presumably lost to time forever, resulting in a somewhat incomplete film. So, who stole those last seven minutes? And why does it matter?

A Star is Born (1954) is now streaming.