Star! Summary
Director: Robert Wise
Genres: Drama
Rating:
Touted by 20th Century-Fox as a follow-up to their enormously successful The Sound of Music, Star! reteams that earlier film's leading lady Julie_Andrews and director Robert_Wise. Andrews plays legendary musical comedy star Gertrude_Lawrence, while Daniel_Massey appears as Lawrence's friend, co-worker and severest critic Noel_Coward (Massey's real-life godfather). The film jumps back and forth in continuity at times, its transitions bridged by fabricated newsreel footage; essentially, however, William_Fairchild's script traces Lawrence's progress from ambitious bit actress to the toast of London and Broadway. Her success is offset by a stormy private life, which is given some ballast when she falls in love with an American financier (Richard_Crenna). The film is way too long for its own good, though the musical set pieces -- especially the Andrews-Massey duets -- are superb. Julie_Andrews welcomed the chance of playing a character as far removed from her goody-two-shoes heroine in Sound of Music as possible; Gertrude_Lawrence was temperamental, sarcastic, profane and at times self-destructive, and Andrews makes a meal of the role. Unfortunately, Andrews' fans, conditioned by the Fox publicity machine to expect a continuation of Sound of Music, rejected her outright in this "new" characterization. Star! was a huge box-office bomb, so much so that Fox desperately attempted a shortened re-release under a misleading new title, Those Were The Happy Times. They weren't: it remained a financial disaster, though it has developed a loyal cult following in recent years. Hal Erickson, Rovi
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