Star! (1968) A Review

STAR!

This review is part of the Summer Under the Stars Blogathon. Today's star is Julie Andrews.

When people hear the name "Gertrude Lawrence", they think...nothing. Unless you are deeply versed in Broadway history, I think the name "Gertrude Lawrence" will elicit puzzled looks. Star! wants to make the case that Gertrude Lawrence was this legendary figure that will be remembered long after her death in 1952 at the relatively young age of 54. Star! fails spectacularly in that effort, succeeding only in being long, boring and at times thoroughly jumbled.  

Using the framing device of a faux-documentary film to tell our story, Star! follows the rise and rise of Gertrude Lawrence (Julie Andrews). Starting out as a Clapham urchin, daughter of a vaudevillian who has little interest in her, Gertrude stumbles, tumbles and schemes her way from the chorus line in second-rate shows to being the biggest star of the West End. With her frenemy Noel Coward (David Massey) by her side issuing a mix of quips, comforts and stage work for our chanteuse, Gertrude is wined and dined by a variety of men. There's Sir Anthony Spencer (Michael Craig), a military officer. Once Lawrence hits America, there is the romance with infatuated fanboy Charles Fraser (Robert Reed). Later on, American banker and later stage producer Richard Aldrich (Richard Crenna) woos our living legend. 

Somewhere along all this and the sixteen (give or take) musical numbers, Lawrence goes through a marriage with fellow trouper Jack Roper (John Collins) and has a daughter, Pamela, whom she really does not know or spend much time with. The demands of our Queen of High Society, toast of the West End, Grande Dame of Broadway, simply are too much to give attention to a little girl. Will Lawrence overcome financial ruin and doubts about her latest show, Lady in the Dark and its complex The Saga of Jenny number and find true happiness?    

Lawrence had been dead for sixteen years by the time her big-budget nearly three-hour musical biopic Star! premiered. Curiously, another big-budget nearly three-hour musical biopic of another Broadway star who had been dead seventeen years premiered the same year as Star! That other film? Funny Girl. 

Unlike Funny Girl or its subject, Fanny Brice, few remember either Star! or Gertrude Lawrence. Star! bombed at the box office while Funny Girl was the second biggest hit of that year. Star! was a notorious fiasco that signaled the end of big-budget musicals and dented Andrews' box office prominence; after seeing Star! I think there are reasons why it flopped commercially and critically. 

The star in Star! is at times pretty unlikeable. Early on, Lawrence seems dead set on upstaging everyone around her. For example, in the Oh It's a Lovely War! number it is clear that she is essentially mugging and doing all she can to draw attention to herself at the expense of the rest of the dancers. It never comes across as Lawrence being a klutz trying to keep up with the routine. It comes across as her overtly making everyone look at her. 

I think in these early numbers she is meant to come across as plunky, naive and/or inexperienced. Instead, she comes across as calculating, obnoxious and manipulative. 

There is probably one musical number that does not appear to be on a stage. That is Dear Little Boy, Dear Little Girl, which Lawrence sings at a literal toga party where she flaunts convention by dressing as Marie Antoinette. As she sings her song, we see three of her suitors and Coward, the trio looking a bit cross to embarrassed and the fourth looking on in slight bemusement accompanying her on piano.

Sometimes, Star! is much too much with its nearly endless staged numbers. Certainly, Julie Andrews does well in these various numbers. The unfortunate thing is that we are not meant to see Andrews. We are meant to see Lawrence. Star! comes across as being a Julie Andrews variety special, and not a particularly good one. If you want to see Julie Andrews doing a series of staged musical numbers, it would have been better to cut out the alleged drama in Star! and just show Andrews doing her musical numbers.

To be fair, not all of Andrews' Star! musical numbers are bad. Burlington Bertie from Bow is charming and well-played. The Parisian Pierrot number is a bit avant-garde for my tastes, but I appreciate the effort put into it. It certainly is better than Limehouse Blues, which seemed a strange effort to do a variation of Singin' in the Rain's Gotta Dance number. Probably the low point was Andrews as Lawrence singing Someone to Watch Over Me. It was not the song itself or Andrews' rendition that made it bad. Far from it: both are among the greats. What made it bad was that Star! never bothered to put it in any kind of context.

How did Lawrence join forces with the Gershwin Brothers? How is Someone to Watch Over Me part of Oh, Kay!? Why devote seemingly endless minutes to Limehouse Blues but essentially give us a snippet of Someone to Watch Over Me? 

Why are all the musical numbers shot so unimaginably dull to lifeless?

There is no justification for Star! being close to three hours long. It would have been better to sparse out the various staged musical numbers to focus more on her rise, fall and restoration. Star! is so jumbled that director Robert Wise and screenwriter William Fairchild could have cut Getrude's daughter Pamela completely out of the film and it would not have impacted it. 

Somehow, Star! managed something remarkable. It simultaneously managed to rush through things while spending endless amounts of time saying nothing. Fairchild's structuring of this faux-Citizen Kane type narrative complete with narrator (Andrew Toff) and cutting back to this faux-documentary lengthens the film. It also cuts into the flow, almost jolting you out of things. The Roper relationship goes from initial meeting to marriage to drunken fight to divorce in probably ten minutes, and I think I am being generous in the runtime. 

The film constantly tells you but never shows you. We are told that Lawrence is the Queen of High Society, but it never has any scenes where such a statement is validated. Worse, it never bothers to explain anything. Take for example Robert Reed's Charles Fraser character. He, I think, was an actor who immediately was enamored of Lawrence. We do not learn why or how or what he found in Lawrence that drove him wild with desire. For reasons I cannot fathom, we get that faux-documentary part showing part of their romance.

That, to be fair, is not as inexplicable as starting the Saga of Jenny number the same way only to burst through in a sequence that was weirdly reminiscent of the Polly Wolly Doodle number in S.O.B. I think S.O.B.  might have been parodying or throwing shade at past Andrews numbers like The Saga of Jenny. 

In terms of performances, Star! did not give many much material to work with. Daniel Massey received an Oscar nomination for the film, and he was fine as the sometimes snippy but loyal Noel Coward. He and Andrews have the rare duet stage number, Has Anyone Seen My Ship? which they perform well. Massey, looking eerily like John Malkovich to where he could play Massey in a Massey biopic, did not overshadow Andrews but at least made for more interesting watching. Andrews does well in the musical numbers. Whenever she is meant to be "Gertrude Lawrence", however, there is little for her to work with. 

I think it is true: the star in Star! (complete with the ridiculous exclamation point) is not Gertrude Lawrence. It is Julie Andrews. Star! may be the first biopic where the actress playing the character hijacked the subject of the biopic to turn it into a de facto vanity project. You do not start a film about an obscure figure by intoning that in some Clapham slum "a legend was born". You must make a case as to why you should spend three hours seeing this almost unknown figure rise from rags to riches. Star! does not do that, which a disservice to Lawrence's memory. 

Early in Star! we hear Lawrence tell the man crafting her biographical documentary her thoughts on the project so far. "I'll say your film's lousy, and you'll die broke". Famous last words...

1898-1952

DECISION: F