Star! (film)
| Star! | |
|---|---|
_poster.jpg)
Poster by Howard Terpning
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| Directed by | Robert Wise |
| Produced by | Saul Chaplin |
| Written by | William Fairchild |
| Starring |
Julie Andrews Richard Crenna Daniel Massey |
| Music by | Lennie Hayton |
| Cinematography | Ernest Laszlo |
| Edited by | William H. Reynolds |
| Distributed by | 20th Century Fox |
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Release date
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July 18, 1968 (United Kingdom) October 22, 1968 (United States) |
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Running time
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175 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $14,320,000 |
| Box office | $4,000,000 (USA) $10,000,000 (worldwide) $4,200,000 (rentals) |
Star! (re-release title Those Were the Happy Times) is a 1968 American biographical musical film starring Julie Andrews and directed by Robert Wise. The screenplay by William Fairchild is based upon the life and career of British performer Gertrude Lawrence.
The film opens in 1940, with Lawrence in a screening room watching a documentary film chronicling her life, then flashes back to Clapham in 1915, when she leaves home to join her vaudevillian father in a dilapidated Brixton music hall. Eventually she joins the chorus in André Charlot's West End revue. She reunites with close childhood friend Noël Coward who provides witty commentary on Gertie's actions.
Charlot becomes annoyed with Gertie's efforts to stand out, literally, from the chorus. He threatens to fire her, but stage manager Jack Roper intercedes and gets her hired as a general understudy to the leads. She marries Jack, but it becomes clear she is more inclined to perform onstage than stay home and play wife. While pregnant, she insists on going on for an absent star, and captivates the audience with her own star-making performance of "Burlington Bertie". Charlot and Roper witness the audience's warm approval, and both realize, Charlot grudgingly and Roper wistfully, that Gertie belongs on the stage.
After their daughter Pamela is born, Gertrude is angered when Roper takes the baby on a pub-crawl, and leaves him. A subsequent courtship with Sir Anthony Spencer, an English nobleman, polishes Gertie's rough edges and transforms her into a lady. Caught at a chic supper club when she is supposed to be on a sick day, she is fired from the Charlot Revue. Squired by Spencer, she becomes a 'society darling'. Coward then convinces Charlot to feature her in his new production, and she is finally recognized as a star. When the revue opens in New York City, she dallies with an actor and a banker, bringing the number of her suitors to three.
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