Unlike his subject, Richard Stirling doesn’t go beyond his professional talents and requirements. He writes a good biography where his subject never stopped at simply giving us a good song perfectly delivered.

He keeps his well judged and full bodied biography within the realms of good taste View More

Unlike his subject, Richard Stirling doesn’t go beyond his professional talents and requirements. He writes a good biography where his subject never stopped at simply giving us a good song perfectly delivered.

He keeps his well judged and full bodied biography within the realms of good taste and gives us, without camp or intrusion, a clear picture of the complicated life of one of the Last Great Hollywood Icons. He also gives all the information we need to decide what it was that caused that Icon to rust and fall and then eventually rise again. He takes us with insight and humour beyond the often cited unfashionable image and untimely films that caused Miss Andrews to flounder on the rocks just off the shore of superstardom.
In spite of being perceived as Englishness personified and even being the only actress listed in the results of a recent poll which looked to name the Great Britains, very early on in life she became an American; not a great but a mediocre American.
She is quoted as saying that it was America that made her a star and that the English would have left her to kick in a chorus line. This is improbable given the way her career was going in the UK before being exported to star in the Broadway transfer of The Boyfriend, but it sounds good as a piece of self justification. She went from applying her limited, specialist talent and her strong lovable stage and screen presence in the best situations possible to decades of roles and films that needed a talent entirely different to her’s. In other words she stopped doing what she did best very early on in her career. The whys and wherefores of this disastrous mistake are among the core interests in this long needed biography.

Odd though it is that being a first rate live performer should be second choice to appearing in third rate films, Stirling clears up this conundrum as he uncovers the gradual Americanisation (and worse) Hollywoodisation of Julie. Star studded self-named television specials alongside theatre concerts featuring the worlds best orchestras and conductors seemingly underscored decades in a life filled by personal and professional doubt, therapy and unconvincing cinema projects that showed her up as a mediocre acting talent, constantly cost far too many millions and then flopped miserably as the studios, who eventually took their ball home, looked on in horror.

Richard Stirling takes us through this extraordinary life starting with the making of the child variety star with the freak adult vocal chords housed in the tiny sound box making waves that might have drowned a less determined spirit. The now extinct world of music hall is brought vividly to life before moving on to The Hit Broadway Operetta, world recognition, diva sized misjudgements of choice and behaviour, years of confused image and misuse of talent, arriving finally at a return to the musical stage in Sondheim’s Putting it Together in which she showed the world exactly the thing it had been waiting for all those years, i.e. a first rate mature singing actress at the peak of her ability. This fringe success crowning takes her onwards and upwards to royal status a second time thanks to another major misjudgement, this time in a disastrous Broadway ‘succès de scandale’ and then on, ironically, to film stardom a second time around thanks to yet another dose of bad Hollywood which this time became a surprise mega hit franchise.

This is Stirling’s first major biography. It follows on from years of cinematic study including conceiving and curating seasons at the National Film Theatre as well as more years of journalistic activity for major publications on both sides of the Atlantic. Between the pages of this biography there is magazine sensation found only in the chapter headings and in the melodrama of the hospital soap-opera operating theatre prologue. His writing is otherwise free flowing, fresh and finely detailed without being pedantic. Every aspect and facet of her professional and personal life including the brick wall of privacy surrounding his subject, whom he met and interviewed many times, is thoroughly researched. You’d think that the staroftheworld period in her early years is required knowledge for anyone remotely interested in musical theatre history but there are surprises for all no matter how well informed. That said, where this book scores it’s biggest success is in the little known story of her life before stardom and the so easily dismissed but fascinating wilderness years of middle age.

Julie Andrews – An Intimate Biography, is out in paperback in early November of 2007. View Less