Julie Andrews is the last of the great Hollywood musical stars, unequaled by any in her time.
In My Fair Lady, Julie Andrews had the biggest hit on Broadway. As the title character in Mary Poppins, she won an Academy Award. And, in 1965, The Sound of Music made her the most famous woman in the world and rescued Twentieth Century Fox from bankruptcy. Three years later, the disastrous Star! almost put the studio back under, and the leading lady of both films fell as spectacularly as she had risen.
Her film career seemed over.
Yet Julie Andrews survived, with what Moss Hart, director of My Fair Lady, called “that terrible British strength that makes you wonder why they lost India.” Victor/Victoria, directed by her second husband, Blake Edwards, reinvented her screen image---but its stage version in 1997 led to the devastating loss of her defining talent, her singing voice.
Against all odds, she has fought back again, with leading roles in The Princess Diaries and Shrek 2. The real story of bandy-legged little Julia Wells from Walton-on-Thames is even more extraordinary; fresh details of her family background have only recently come to light.
This is the first completely new biography of Julie Andrews as artist, wife, and mother in over thirty-five years---combining the author’s interviews with the star and his wide-ranging and riveting research. It is a frank but affectionate portrait of an enduring icon of stage and screen, who was made a Dame in the Millenium Honours List.
Once dubbed “the last of the really great broads” by Paul Newman, she was the only actress in the 2002 BBC poll The 100 Greatest Britons. But who was Dame Julie, and who is she now?
This is her story.
From Publishers Weekly
London-based stage/TV/film actor Stirling brings up the house lights to detail the entire life of the performer he has known since 1986. Having previously written about Andrews for the Evening Standard and other publications, he highlights recollections of her associates, in addition to his extensive archival research, plowing through some six decades of reportage and interviews in magazines, newspapers and books. Stirling grabs the reader's attention on the opening pages with a description of Andrews's 1997 Mount Sinai Hospital throat surgery, a normal operation that went tragically wrong: "Her principal trademark, the voice of mountain spring purity, was gone, as astonishingly as it had first appeared." Beginning with her childhood in London during the Blitz and youthful voice lessons, Stirling traces her career from post-WWII performances on BBC Radio and the London stage to her 1954 arrival in America with The Boy Friend. After acclaim for My Fair Lady and Camelot came the caravan of TV and movie roles that continue until the present day with voice work in the Shrek series and last year's Enchanted. The book successfully documents and details the professional and personal peaks of her life. With Andrews's memoir, Home , to be published in April, devoted fans are sure to turn to both. 8-page b&w photo insert not seen by PW. (Apr.)
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Review
“Julie Andrews is, quite simply, a phenomenon. She has probably brought more joy to more people than any other star of her generation.” —Richard Attenborough __
“A very well written, meticulously researched, gripping account of Andrews’ extraordinary life and career. . . . Stirling does a superb job of detailing his subject’s rise to major stardom. . . . Full of information that may not be known even to some of Andrews’ staunchest fans . . . very frank in assessing Andrews’ flops and disappointments as well as her hits. . . . This excellent work is probably as ‘intimate’ as any biography of Julie Andrews we can ever hope to read.” —Michael Portantiere, TheaterMania.com __
“Impressively thorough . . . Stirling compiles an absorbingly extensive study, with glossy photographs and lively quotes bringing the pages alive with the sound of a much-loved musical star.” — Evening Standard(London)
“Intelligent and engrossing.” —Roger Lewis,The Mail on Sunday
“The book successfully documents and details the professional and personal peaks of her life.” — Publishers Weekly