Sunset Boulevard & The Substance: The Aging of Hollywood’s Women

By Elazar Abrahams

In composer Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Sunset Boulevard, aging movie star Norma Desmond sings wistfully about the career comeback she so desperately craves. “With one look, I’ll ignite a blaze, I’ll return to my glory days … I’m staying for good, I’ll be back, where I was born to be.” But her dreams are nothing but delusion — the entertainment industry has long moved on from the silent pictures that Norma used to dazzle in, and as such, they have forgotten her too. The masterful musical (itself of course an adaptation of the 1950 noir film by the same name) is now back on Broadway in a revival for the ages, with Nicole Scherzinger taking on the role of Norma. Jamie Lloyd’s flashy yet minimalist direction of the current production lays bare Hollywood’s obsession with youth and beauty, mixed with the relentless pursuit of relevance.

The new Sunset, which transfers to New York after a critically acclaimed run on London’s West End, is not the only prominent work this year to focus on such themes. September’s The Substance had Demi Moore’s character Elisabeth Sparkle face the same brutal industry in the horror flick that is quickly becoming a modern cult classic. Norma clings to the memory of fame and beauty and isolates herself to the point of madness in her mansion in the hills. Elisabeth literally tears herself apart to regain it.

The play is set in the early 1950s, when its source material was written, while The Substance takes place in contemporary Los Angeles. Despite the gap of decades between them, both pieces highlight the same enduring truth: that in Hollywood, beauty is a fleeting currency… and a curse. On stage, Norma is haunted by apparitions of her former self, barely twenty years old. Director Coralie Fargeat amps up that to the max in The Substance through the visceral horror of body modification when Elisabeth takes an experimental drug that literally births a younger clone of herself. Both women have been swallowed up and then spit out by a town that could care less about their well-being. When their offers dry up and their audiences dissipate, we see Moore fret over each wrinkle in the mirror, and Scherzinger lust for the good old days. All in pursuit of an unattainable ideal.

A shared tragic fate awaits these characters, a damning condemnation of celebrity culture and a system that consumes its stars until they are unrecognizable. Sunset Boulevard concludes with Norma covered in blood at curtain call; after the make-believe world she has concocted in her head has been shattered, she is driven to murder. The climax of The Substance sees Elisabeth transform into a gruesome monster, a hulking ogre body with teeth protruding from different limbs, and a mix of ornamental deformed flesh in a much more literal manifestation of the story’s message. Both dames have sacrificed sanity and self-worth in attempts to recaptured ingénue beauty. And in each of their cases, they feel as though the world surrounding them has left no other option open.

This is not a trope exclusive to women, but it is certainly amplified for the female sex. In 2022’s Babylon, Jack Conrad (a meditative Brad Pitt) experiences a more subdued version of the same trap. Like Ms. Desmond, he is a relic of the silent film era, and lacks the talent to transition to the world of “talkies.” Again, we see the tale of stars outliving their prime and cast aside, feeling obsolete in a city they once ruled. In the basement of Norma’s mansion, she replays her old films in a darkened theater. Jack too, watches his old reels longingly. His end is just as depressing, succumbing to the hopelessness and choosing to take his own life. Set amongst the opulence of glitzy Hollywood, Babylon makes viewers confront the same darkness that lurks over so many of these stories.

It would be remiss to talk about media centering on faded stars without mentioning Singin’ in the Rain, the 1952 classic that explores the same anxiety as Sunset Boulevard and The Substance albeit through a comedic lens. In Singing’, the character of Lina Lamont is a punchline, with her inability to make the jump from silent acting to sound played for laughs. In truth it speaks to the same fear haunting Norma, Elisabeth, and countless others — that of being left behind the moment you lose the perfect youthful glow you once had. Hollywood, but perhaps really the world as a whole, is unforgiving.

One of the tenants of Singin’ in the Rain is that all of show business is based on illusion. The biographies of the stars are invented, their voices modified, and ultimately everything on screen is mere light and shadow. In Lloyd’s presentation of Sunset Boulevard, a lot of the action is projected on screens with live camera work that follows the cast in close-up range, often contrasting the illusion shown within the frame of the camera to what is transpiring when looking at the stage in full view. Moviemaking is inherently superficial, and thus it is the only logical outcome that women can be tossed at the wayside if they are not the supermodel promised.

Even more sick is stopping to consider the fact that Scherzinger is 46 and Moore 61. The two actresses have plenty of years left in them if they’d like to keep working, and in the case of them specifically, by no stretch of the imagination have they become unattractive in middle age. In one sense, it’s a ridiculous conceit. Both acts of Sunset night after night have Scherzinger literally doing the splits and rolling around in choreographed dances. Her iteration of Norma could easily continue to be an A-lister, and the fact that she is still dismissed by directors as a washed-up hag makes the premise even more chilling and unjust.

“Aren’t you Norma Desmond? You used to be in pictures. You used to be big.”
“I am big. It’s the pictures that got small.”