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Julie Andrews: A Life on Stage and Screen
Provides a comprehensive look at the life of the actress and singer through a detailed journey into her fifty years in show business
- GenresBiographyNonfiction
262 pages, Paperback
First published March 1, 1983
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
October 15, 2012
This is a pleasant, bland biography of Julie Andrews that never digs below the surface. Most of the quotes are from public interviews with people like Mike Wallace and Charlie Rose that are obviously fifteen or twenty years out of date. And the book only goes up to 1997 so you don't get to read anything about the PRINCESS DIARIES movies or Julie's relationship with Anne Hathaway. Which was kind of why I picked up the boook in the first place.
While I didn't really expect any sensational dirt about Julie, I would have liked some analysis on the spectacular ups and downs of her career. The author points out that THE SOUND OF MUSIC was the most sensationally successful film musical of all time. Then he points out that just a few years later Julie made DARLING LILI and STAR! which were both among the most colossal failures in movie history. Any thoughts on what went wrong? Nope. The author just echoes Julie's reaction, which was pretty much classic "deer in the headlights."
Not to be too sociological, but it would have been easy to tie this in to the "big picture," with a dying Hollywood trapped in the middle of the chaos and change of the Sixties, reacting to Civil Rights, drugs, and Vietnam with ever more artificial and out-of-it movies, featuring weirdly surrealistic and meaningless story lines, like, (for example) a sexy English spy crooning soppy ballads to a gang of German flying aces for no reason at all while flying around in a biplane with Rock Hudson.
Julie Andrews was the first casualty of the Age of Aquarius.
While I didn't really expect any sensational dirt about Julie, I would have liked some analysis on the spectacular ups and downs of her career. The author points out that THE SOUND OF MUSIC was the most sensationally successful film musical of all time. Then he points out that just a few years later Julie made DARLING LILI and STAR! which were both among the most colossal failures in movie history. Any thoughts on what went wrong? Nope. The author just echoes Julie's reaction, which was pretty much classic "deer in the headlights."
Not to be too sociological, but it would have been easy to tie this in to the "big picture," with a dying Hollywood trapped in the middle of the chaos and change of the Sixties, reacting to Civil Rights, drugs, and Vietnam with ever more artificial and out-of-it movies, featuring weirdly surrealistic and meaningless story lines, like, (for example) a sexy English spy crooning soppy ballads to a gang of German flying aces for no reason at all while flying around in a biplane with Rock Hudson.
Julie Andrews was the first casualty of the Age of Aquarius.
March 13, 2012
I just finished reading Julie Andrews: A Life on Stage and Screen by Robert Windeler.
It was an interesting read and provided a lot of background information about her that I didn't know.
Something I applauded was that although the author is fan, he didn't sugar coat a lot of stuff when it came to negative publicity that she'd received at various times in her career.
A pretty quick read, but definitely insightful.
It was an interesting read and provided a lot of background information about her that I didn't know.
Something I applauded was that although the author is fan, he didn't sugar coat a lot of stuff when it came to negative publicity that she'd received at various times in her career.
A pretty quick read, but definitely insightful.
August 16, 2007
A good summary of Andrews' life and times on stage and screen, with minimal editorialising. Invaluable for a fan since there are hardly any biographies on this classic star (why?), but that doesn't mean the book itself is classic. Readable, though.
February 22, 2013
YAAWWWN! Good information but extremely boring!
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews