Star!
Star! is a lavishly filmed, almost three-hour long US film biography in the form of a musical by Robert Wise . Julie Andrews plays the lead role of the acclaimed Anglo-American stage actress Gertrude Lawrence (1898–1952). The film cost a good $ 14 million and grossed only about $ 4 million in the US.
action
New York, 1941. The acclaimed British stage actress Gertrude Lawrence, who is currently triumphing with Lady in the Dark on Broadway, watches a newsreel-cut documentary about herself and begins to remember the beginnings of her heady career. which began a good quarter of a century ago. In 1915, 17-year-old Gertrude left her mother's home in Bermondsey and went to Brixton to join her father. Arthur Lawrence and his stage partner Rose were performing in a seedy music hall at the time. Nevertheless, this theatrical world exerts a magical attraction on the young girl from the beginning, and Gertrude decides to take to the stage as well. Her first engagement takes her as a choir singer in an André Charlot revue in London's West End. The young mime and author Noël Coward, who is a year younger than her, a proven bon vivant and mocker and at the same time a close friend of Gertrude since her early youth, becomes her most loyal companion and ironic commentator of her entire career. Lawrence's excessive commitment and the absolute will to conquer the limelight lead to the fact that Gertrude would like to be thrown out at the beginning of her still young career. But in the stage manager Jack Roper, who recognizes her talent, Gertrude finds an advocate. They both fall in love and eventually get married.
However, despite the birth of their two daughters Pamela, this connection is not a lucky one. While pregnant, Gertrude wants to appear in “Burlington Bertie” and is a great success with the audience. Gertrude and Jack, it quickly turns out, are striving too much in different directions. While Jack is hoping for a domestic wife who will now take care of their child, Gertrude strives back on stage. During this time she met the British nobleman Sir Anthony Spencer, who first taught her good manners and then gave her the final social polish so that she could succeed as a lady of the chic London society. Gertrude becomes the darling of the London upper class, but as if one day pretending to be ill and thereby skipping a Charlot Revue performance, she is fired: someone has spotted her cheerfully at Sir Antony's side in a dinner club. And again friend Noël is there. He persuades André Charlot to try Gertrude again and make her a star. The new Charlot revue was also a huge success on Broadway, and Gertrude Lawrence quickly became a darling of fine New York society. One admirer follows the next, including his American colleague Charles Fraser and the New York stockbroker Ben Mitchell. Gertrude enjoys being so sought after, and her popularity achieved thanks to the upbeat musical Oh, Kay! A new high point in 1926. But she also loves her freedom, because she still doesn't want to be tied. And so she makes all three men, Sir Anhony, Fraser and Mitchell, fidget.
Soon Gertrude Lawrence was plagued by serious worries because she was spending the money she earned with full hands and was soon on the verge of bankruptcy. Her fleeting, flighty and, above all, expensive lifestyle is one thing, the other is the little time Gertrude has left to take care of Pamela sufficiently. This behavior quickly leads to alienation between Gertrude and her rapidly maturing daughter who lives far away from her. Gertrude's physical breakdown occurs due to complete overwork. After all, Lawrence was able to prevent personal bankruptcy and rose to new artistic heights, fame and success with new roles such as Coward's “Tonight at 8:30”. With the piece “Susan and God”, Gertrude dares to take a new step: for the first time she is not attempting a lightweight piece, but rather a dramatic subject. The stage success of the star continues to be offset by the great failure in her relationship with Pamela: her daughter cancels a planned vacation together without further ado, whereupon Gertrude begins to drink excessively and appears in a very drunk state at a surprise birthday party given by Coward in her honor, along with all those present offended.
Richard Aldrich, an established and socially recognized and wealthy gentleman from New England who runs his own theater company, is among the attacked. Aldrich accompanies Gertrude, who is no longer in control of her five senses, home from the birthday party. Unlike all the “courtiers” around her, who have always smeared honey around Gertrude's mouth, he gives her his honest opinion, which initially hurts Gertrude very much. From now on she will look for quite a few arguments with the decent Richard, but he always knows how to react correctly and intelligently. Gertrude accepts his offer to play the lead role in the play "Skylark" at Aldrich's Cape Cod Playhouse. The follow-up production Lady in the Dark , where Lawrence appeared alongside the still largely unknown Danny Kaye, became a personal triumph for the artist in 1941. Gertrude Lawrence, who, after Coward described Aldrich as a "very clever man", now finally knows that she has found in Richard the man she has always been looking for. Now she finally agrees to marry him. Her later success in The King and I (1951) and her death (a year later) as a result of incurable liver cancer are no longer discussed in the three-hour film.
Production notes
prehistory
The idea for this film arose immediately after the shooting of the Robert Wise musical My Songs - My Dreams , in which Julie Andrews had also played the leading female role. In view of the pleasant cooperation with the film team, she is said to have immediately agreed, with Wise also the next major musical biography Star! to turn. Her fee was a million dollars.
production
Star! was filmed from April 12 to December 15, 1967 at different locations on two continents: London, Dennis and Cape Cod (Massachusetts), New York City, Los Angeles, Yorkers (New York), Mill Neck (New York) and in Antibes (France). The film had its world premiere in London as part of a royal premiere on July 18, 1968. Star! on October 11, 1968. The US premiere took place eleven days later, at the Rivoli Theater on Broadway in New York.
Director Robert Wise was also responsible as production manager. Saul Wurtzel took over the production management. The film structures were designed by Boris Leven , supported by Walter M. Scott and Howard Bristol (equipment). Donald Brooks designed the costumes . Composer Lennie Hayton also took over the musical direction. LB Abbott , Art Cruickshank and Emil Kosa junior were responsible for the numerous optical special effects .
music
The following twenty musical numbers are played, mostly sung by Julie Andrews and / or Daniel Massey:
- 1. Overture (Medley: Star! / Someone to Watch Over Me / Jenny / Dear Little Boy / Limehouse Blues)
- 2. Star!
- 3. Piccadilly
- 4. Oh, it's a lovely war
- 5. In My Garden of Joy
- 6. Forbidden Fruit
- 7. N 'Everything
- 8. Burlington Bertie from Bow
- 9. Parisian Pierrot
- 10. Limehouse Blues
- 11. Someone to Watch Over Me
- 12. Dear Little Boy (Dear Little Girl)
- 13. Entr'acte - Star!
- 14. Someday I'll Find You
- 15. The Physician
- 16. Thu, Thu, Thu
- 17. Has Anybody Seen our Ship?
- 18. My Ship
- 19. The Saga of Jenny
- 20. Main track "Star!" (Instrumental version)
In addition, compositions by Kurt Weill , Cole Porter and Ira Gershwin were used for this film .
Award nominations and awards
Star! received a plethora of nominations, but hardly received any awards. Especially at the Oscars in 1969, Star was considered ! than the big loser. The nominees were:
- Daniel Massey in the Best Supporting Actor category
- Ernest Laszlo in the Best Cinematography category
- Boris Leven , Walter M. Scott and Howard Bristol in the category Best Film Architecture.
- Donald Brooks for the best costumes
- Jimmy Van Heusen and Sammy Cahn for the best movie song star!
- Lennie Hayton for Best Score.
The film was a little more successful at the Golden Globe Awards ceremony that same year. Here was
- Daniel Massey named Best Supporting Actor. He also received a nomination in the Best Young Artist category, but had to admit defeat to Leonard Whiting (Romeo in " Romeo and Juliet "). Also
- Julie Andrews didn't get beyond a nomination for Best Actress.
Received an award for Best Screenplay at the WGA Awards
- William Fairchild a nomination.
synchronization
| role | actor | Voice actor |
|---|---|---|
| Gertrude Lawrence | Julie Andrews | Maria Koerber |
| Richard Aldrich | Richard Crenna | Claus Biederstaedt |
| Sir Anthony Spencer | Michael Craig | Gert Günther Hoffmann |
| Noël Coward | Daniel Massey | Harry Wüstenhagen |
| Charles Fraser | Robert Reed | Michael Chevalier |
| Arthur Lawrence | Bruce Forsyth | Dietrich Frauboes |
| rose | Beryl Reid | Tina Eilers |
| Jack Roper | John Collin | Norbert Langer |
| André Charlot | Alan Oppenheimer | Siegfried Dornbusch |
| Jack Buchanan | Garrett Lewis | Joachim Pukass |
| Ben Mitchell | Anthony Eisley | Lutz Moik |
| Dan | J. Pat O'Malley | Erich Fiedler |
| hostess | Anna Lee | Alice Treff |
| Jerry Paul | Damian London | Peter Schiff |
| Jeannie Banks | Elizabeth St. Clair | Almut Eggert |
| Lord Chamberlain | Lester Matthews | Kurt Mühlhardt |
| Divorce judge | Seymour Green | Paul Wagner |
| Chamberlain's secretary | Bernard Fox | Klaus Sunshine |
| Party guest | Haskell Coffin | Wolfgang Völz |
| diplomat | Roger Delgado | Erich Poremski |
In the German version, Friedrich Schoenfelder leads through the action as an off-speaker.
Reception and consequences
The film turned out to be a box office flop, as it was released at a time when New Hollywood cinema, with its most important representatives Peter Bogdanovich , Francis Ford Coppola , Martin Scorsese and Dennis Hopper, was already breaking new ground in filmmaking. Star! was considered hopelessly antiquated and as if out of date. The reviews (see below) were accordingly mixed, and reviews were not uncommon. In order to save what can be saved, the film was withdrawn from distribution shortly after its US premiere and then massively re-edited. In October 1969 Star came! again in US cinemas, this time under the title Those Were the Days . The length of this shortened version was now only about two hours.
Star! At a time when television had long since stolen the audience from the cinemas, it was an unheard-of, no longer up-to-date effort that could not be amortized. The American Film Institute found there were 24 musical numbers, 105 different film sets, and 114 costumes were made for Julie Andrews alone. The trade journal Variety recalled that Star! was the eighth most expensive film in US history at the time. In addition, experts like the star critic Pauline Kael from The New Yorker assumed that the makers of the film were fundamentally hostile to the historical Lawrence and that in addition to their “incompetence, there was also inconvenience”. Newsweek compared Star! finally with an overly long funeral ceremony, which was also not entirely impossible to endure and found that most of the songs were “mediocre or worse”.
Reviews
As mentioned above, the film hardly met with critical acclaim. Here are a few examples:
In the New York Times you could read from Renata Adler: “Miss Andrews, who plays Gertrude Lawrence, is not at her best here. There is a kind of conflict between their particular kindness and innocence on the one hand and the attitude that the film, directed by Robert Wise (of 'The Sound of Music'), towards the star of 'Private Lives' and' The King and i 'has. Miss Lawrence is portrayed as some sort of monster with none of the freshness or glamor and wit that would add style to her ambition. (...) Many of the sets are beautiful, Daniel Massey acts beautifully as a kind of warmed-up Nöel Coward. (...) People who like musicals in the old style should get their money's worth. They should be people who like Julie Andrews, too. "Adler concluded," But people who liked Gertrude Lawrence had better stick with their record collections and memories. "
According to Variety , “Julie Andrews' portrayal sometimes sags between musical numbers, but the cast and team of dreaded technical staff have helped create a delightful homage to one of the theater's most admired stars. There is a fascinating retelling of Lawrence's spectacular rise to showbiz fame and also a neatly observed background of an era that has since disappeared. "
The Movie & Video Guide located on the one hand a "mess" or "showmanship" in this film, on the other hand some dance and music numbers of this "mammoth production" are worth watching. Conclusion: "Julie tries, but never really comes across" and "Daniel Massey is amusing but also affected as Noël Coward", who was actually Massey's godfather.
The lexicon of international films says: “Portrait of an English singer from a poor background who works her way up to become the star of the music halls. However, international success is putting a strain on her private life. Elaborate, extra-long entertainment film with many variety shows that does not itself take the problems it raises seriously. "
Halliwell's Film Guide located at Star! Elephantiasis that "ruins" their patient. Conclusion: "In the old Hollywood style, the whole thing would have been even better with a smaller budget, but unfortunately the star of the film would still feel uncomfortable with the drunken argument."
Time Out reads: “Julie Andrews has been compared to everything from an artificial, charming flight attendant to a knitted cover for a toilet roll, but she has been spared a comparison - especially since Star! - the one with Gertrude Lawrence. Still, Wise's biography hardly deserves the harsh treatment it received from most of the critics and audiences who were seduced by the studio's advertising into expecting another Sound of Music. This was a much more ambitious project; it backfired, but it backfired with a certain honor. "
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b Background report in the AFI Catalog
- ↑ Star! in the German dubbing index
- ↑ ibid.
- ^ Review in The New York Times, October 23, 1968
- ↑ Critique in Variety (1968)
- ^ Leonard Maltin : Movie & Video Guide, 1996 edition, p. 1237
- ↑ Star! In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed December 24, 2019 .
- ^ Leslie Halliwell : Halliwell's Film Guide, Seventh Edition, New York 1989, p. 956
- ↑ criticism on timeout.com
Web links
- Star! in the AFI Catalog
- Star! in Turner Classic Movies
- Star! in the Internet Movie Database (English)