Major spoilers ahead! You've been warned!
At its core, A Star Is Born, despite being made four different times, holds the same story throughout each iteration. It's about a man who struggles with a drinking problem who falls in love with a woman whose career ends up eclipsing his. Details change with each time the movie is made — like how the original in 1937 was completely about actors and involved no singing — but the heart of the movie stays the same.
The 2018 edition, starring Bradley Cooper [1] — who also directed it and cast his own dog in the film [2] — and Lady Gaga [3], has definite modern takes, like the fact that the two meet in a drag bar. But the characters find the same ending in each of the movies, and if you haven't seen the 1937, 1954, 1976, or this year's film yet, then I suggest you close this page right now, because we're about to break down the storyline — including the endings — of each of the films. This is a good time to stock up on your tissues.
1937
In the original A Star Is Born [5], Esther Blodgett (Janet Gaynor) dreams of being a Hollywood actress. After catching the eye of star Norman Maine (Frederic March), she lands her first small acting role with his help. Norman helps her get the starring role in his next film and Esther, now renamed Vicki Lester, becomes an overnight sensation.
They fall in love and marry, after Vicki makes Norman promise he'll get help with his drinking problem. He struggles with his alcoholism until it all comes to a head when he ruins Vicki's Academy Awards acceptance speech while completely drunk. He does a stint in a sanitarium to try to straighten himself out and is eventually sent back home to Vicki. It's then that Vicki's agent, Matt Libby (Lionel Stander), lays into him and tells him how much he hates him and what he's doing to Vicki. And when Norman hears Vicki say she'll give up her career to help him get better, he drowns himself in the Pacific Ocean.
Truly devastated, Vicki decides to leave acting behind, but her grandma convinces her otherwise when she tells her of a letter Norman sent her back when they got married. The letter told of how proud Norman was of her, and with that and her grandma's insistence, Vicki chose to keep acting. At the end of the film, Vicki goes to her latest movie's premiere, and when she's asked to speak, she says, "Hello everybody. This is Mrs. Norman Maine."
1954
The 1954 version of the movie is very similar to the original [6]. This this iteration, Norman Maine (James Mason) meets Esther Blodgett (Judy Garland) when he drunkenly barges on stage while she's performing with her band. He tells her she should consider a screen test because she could make it big in movies. They lose touch until Norman hears Esther singing in a TV commercial and tracks her down again.
Her name, like in the original, is changed to Vicki Lester and the two fall in love and marry. She stars in a musical, and it's in her Academy Awards speech for that role that Norman drunkenly stumbles in and interrupts. Again. He tries a sanitarium, but like in the first film, it doesn't really work, and Matt Libby accuses him of living off Vicki's paychecks. When Vicki inevitably tells Matt she'll give up everything to help Norman recover, Norman overhears and drowns himself in the Pacific.
In the end, Vicki goes to a charity function at the same place she met Norman in the beginning and she introduces herself the same way as in the first film. "Hello everybody. This is Mrs. Norman Maine."
1976
The 1976 version [7] is where the story went fully into the music world [8]. After one of his concerts, singer John Norman Howard (Kris Kristofferson), goes to a bar where he first sees Esther Hoffman (Barbra Streisand) performing. They leave together and quickly fall in love.
John starts bringing Esther on stage with him and it doesn't take long for her career to flourish. As John's career hits a downslide, he decides he wants to turn things around to stay relevant but his band has already left him behind.
It's at the Grammy Awards, where Esther is accepting her award for best female performance, that John drunkenly makes a scene. John ends up cheating on Esther with a journalist, but he and Esther work it out. However, John runs his car off the road while driving to the airport at the end, killing himself.
Esther, in a tribute to John, introduces herself as Esther Hoffman Howard and performs a song of his that she found on a cassette after he died [9].
2018
That brings us to the current version of A Star Is Born, starring Cooper and Lady Gaga [10] as Jackson Maine and Ally. Jack, an alcoholic singer who is on the opposite side of his arc to fame [11], meets Ally in a drag bar. They spend the whole night together before Jack takes her back home to her dad. But unable to forget about her, he sends his driver to bring her to his show, and it's there that he brings her on stage for the first time.
The two fall madly in love and Ally's career takes off, though the two still deeply struggle with Jack's drinking problem. When Jack ruins Ally's acceptance speech for her Grammy Award for best new artist, they realise that he truly needs help.
He goes to rehab for months, and during that time, Ally finds a love song he'd started to write for her. When Jack returns home from rehab, Ally tells her manager, Rez (Rafi Gavron), that she needs to either bring Jack on her European tour with her or she wasn't going to go at all. And it's while Ally isn't home that Rez shows up at their front door and tells Jack how much he's ruining Ally's life and career.
Ally tells Jack she's canceling her European tour so she can stay home with him and work on her second album, but he knows otherwise and can't move past what Rez told him about holding her back. After she leaves the house for her show, he hangs himself in their garage.
In the end, at a memorial service for Jack, she performs the song he wrote for her [12] that she found while he was in rehab, and she introduces herself to the audience as Ally Maine for the first time.