Julie Andrews: An Intimate Biography

Julie Andrews: An Intimate Biography

<DIV><DIV><P>Julie Andrews is the last of the great Hollywood musical stars, unequaled by any in her time.</P><P>In <I>My Fair Lady,</I> Julie Andrews had the biggest hit on Broadway. As the title character in <I>Mary Poppins,</I> she won an Academy Award. And, in 1965, <I>The Sound of Music</I> made her the most famous woman in the world and rescued Twentieth Century Fox from bankruptcy. Three years later, the disastrous <I>Star!</I> almost put the studio back under, and the leading lady of both films fell as spectacularly as she had risen.</P><P>Her film career seemed over.</P><P>Yet Julie Andrews survived, with what Moss Hart, director of <I>My Fair Lady,</I> called “that terrible British strength that makes you wonder why they lost India.”  <I>Victor/Victoria,</I> 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.</P><P>Against all odds, she has fought back again, with leading roles in <I>The Princess Diaries</I> and <I>Shrek 2</I>. The <I>real</I> 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.</P><P>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.  </P><P>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 <I>was</I> Dame Julie, and who is she now?</P><P>This is her story.</P></DIV></DIV>