A Star Is Born

- by Tom Guisto


My sister Camille & me ~ before our betting days

My Sister Camille & Me

Before Our Betting Days


I went downstairs to sneak a midmorning snack. I had been working on an engineering design project up in my room for hours. It was a Saturday morning and the project was due Monday. Like high school, I still waited for the last minute to complete homework assignments.

The house was quiet except for the TV, which was in our “spare room” (my mom’s name for it). It was 1959 and we just got a “large” 17 inch, black and white television. As I past the spare room I stuck my head in and saw my sister Camille.

“Where is everybody?” I asked for no particular reason.

“Mom went shopping with Aunt Liz, Angela is with them,” Camille said without looking up from the TV. I was twenty years old and going to Hofstra College. Camille was seventeen and still in high school. Angela was our kid sister and just started first grade. My mom didn’t know how to drive at the time and Aunt Liz was her personal designated driver. Dad was at work and there was no need to tell me where he was.

I peeked at the TV to see what held my sister’s attention so intently. On the screen Judy Garland was dancing and James Mason was acting drunk. In a flash I knew that it was the classic “A Star Is Born,” a movie that I first saw when it came out in theaters several years before.

“Haven’t you seen this before?” I asked my sister. Like most teenage girls, Camille loved “mushy” love stories. And seen through my eyes (eyes of a teenage boy when I first saw the movie) there is no movie mushier than “A Star Is Born.”

“No, I never have. But I’ve heard that it’s good,” she replied still looking at the movie.

In our family Camille had the reputation of tearing-up watching any tearjerker put in front of her. “Well, you’re really going to cry your eyes out at the end,” I challenged my sister, the lover of heart retching soap operas.

“No I wouldn’t!” she said boldly, falling perfectly into my trap.

“Want’a bet?” I challenged.

“Okay,” she said slowly, maybe realizing she’d been snagged into another one of her big brother’s traps.

“Normal wages?”

“Okay,” she said looking at Judy, still dancing while a drunken James was misbehaving.

At the time I had my first car, a ’51 two-door Chevy hardtop. Camille would wash it for five dollars. Our normal wage was that Camille would wash my car if I won, and I would give her five bucks if she won. But she never won! I would only bet on sure things. Years later my sister confessed that she use to take my car to the dollar car wash. Not only were she making four bucks on each wash, she was also driving a car, which was a big deal for any teenager back in the ’50s.

“See you later,” I said adding the appropriate big brother chuckle. I checked the scene on TV before I left to grab my snack and continue working on my project up in my room. The movie just started. It would require at least two hours, including commercials, for the story of the rising Hollywood star Esther Blodgett and falling star Norman Maine to come to its tear jerking end.

Through out the morning I would go downstairs to check on the progress of the movie. I was sure that my sister had been crying a few times already. “A Star Is Born” is the type of movie that Kleenex makes its jumbo boxes for.

Finally I went down and just stood at the door watching my sister watch the closing climactic ending of the movie. During the movie Esther and Norman had married, Esther’s star rose and she adopted the stage name of Vicki Lester, while Norman’s star fell and none of the studios would allow him to make a movie. Norman reaches rock bottom when a delivery boy calls him “Mr. Lester.” Unable to live in the shadow of his wife’s star, Norman commits suicide by swimming into the Pacific and drowning.

The closing scene takes place in the same theater where Esther and Norman met at the beginning of the movie. Esther is attending a benefit concert she promised to do before her husband died. As she walks through backstage area she sees the heart that Norman draw with her lipstick so many years before. As a teenager I always thought, “Didn’t they ever cleanup or paint backstage?”

Camille looked up at me; there were tears trickling from her eyes. “I’m not crying,” she said defiantly looking back at the TV.

“Yeah, sure!” I said to myself, fully confident that there was no need to reply. But the big brother in me couldn’t help letting out a little vocal snicker.

Back on the screen the concert master of ceremonies announces dramatically, “Vicki Lester will appear tonight! Here she is, ladies and gentlemen. A star that shines bright and high!”

Tears start poring from my sister’s eyes. But confidently I still waited for the full flood that I knew would come.

“Hello everybody. This is... Mrs. Norman Maine” proclaims Esther using her married name.

The background music reaches a climax, the camera tracks out as the audience stands and applauds. “The End” flashes on the screen.

Camille is now crying, tears flowing as I predicted. She looks at me and laughs. Then stops and cries again. She continues this cry-laugh routine several times. I stand silently at the doorway enjoying the coup.

“Okay, okay! You win,” she said in between a laugh and a cry.

Ah, another victory and a free car wash for big brother!



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