The squeaky-clean story of Hollywood's ultimate nanny.Stirling
charts the life and career of Julie Andrews (born 1935) with a
wealth of detail and an agreeably light tone that suits the
family-entertainment doyenne. There are no sexual indiscretions
here, no sordid drug interludes or bouts with the bottle. The
reader is left with the details of a career marked by spectacular
early success followed by a long fallow period, an amicable divorce
and happy second marriage, a botched throat operation and Andrews's
attempts to escape her goody-goody image - none of it exactly
gripping material. The actress is depicted as a quintessentially
English trouper: reserved, stoic and determined to get on with the
show. She could not escape her image, ultimately, because she
embodied it so completely. The author refers to her at points as an
"automaton," perhaps venting frustration over so unjuicy a subject.
Stirling quotes playwright Christopher Durang, who remarked, "I
almost don't have any good Julie Andrews stories because she's just
so nice and easy to be around." ("Tell me about it," one imagines
the biographer muttering to himself.) Early chapters on Andrews's
childhood career as a music-hall performer are of some period
interest, and Stirling adroitly conveys the excitement engendered
by her explosive entry into the American consciousness with the
show-business hat trick of My Fair Lady on Broadway and Mary
Poppins and The Sound of Music on film. She would never equal these
early triumphs, appearing in some unsuitable roles in a series of
flops conceived by her second husband, film writer and director
Blake Edwards. At this point, the book becomes a slog through the
career setbacks of a talented but fundamentally uninteresting
personality who perseveres with grace and good humor.Solid, decent,
likable and a bit dull - rather like its subject. (Kirkus Reviews)
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. Julie Andrews is the last of
the great Hollywood musical stars - her extraordinary career spans
more than forty years. Her first film, Mary Poppins, was Disney's
most successful film, and in 1965 The Sound of Music rescued
Twentieth Century Fox from bankruptcy. Three years later, Star!
almost put the studio back under, and the leading lady of both
films fell as spectacularly as she had risen.But Julie Andrews is
nothing if not a survivor; and despite many setbacks - including
the tragedy of losing her singing voice in 1997 after a botched
operation - she's still a performer, recently starring in Shrek and
The Princess Diaries. Richard Stirling's deeply researched
biography - based on many years of contact with Julie - is a frank
but affectionate portrait of an enduring icon of stage and screen.
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