It is common knowledge that Star! –– the spectacular 1968 Julie Andrews musical currently celebrating its 50th anniversary –– underwent substantial editing in the wake of its ill-fated US release. Dismayed by the film’s poor box-office and panicked by the rapid downturn in the domestic movie market, Fox executives ordered a series of increasingly drastic cuts to Star!, culminating in the film’s ignominious withdrawal from distribution in June 1969 and subsequent re-release four months later in a radically shortened, re-titled version as Those Were The Happy Times (formerly known as Star!) (Edwards 1993; Holston: 220-21). This sorry tale of post-release hatcheting is part of the historical legend of Star! and also part of its unjust reputation as “the H-bomb of musicals” (Kanfer: 78).
What is possibly less well-known is that Star! underwent select trimming before its release, as well. At the end of the film’s post-production in April 1968, director Robert Wise had assembled a working rough cut that was shown to studio personnel and test-screened with two preview audiences in Cleveland and Denver in early-May. The response was overwhelmingly positive. Of the 814 preview cards received, 633 rated the film “excellent”, 146 “good” and only 3 marked it “bad” (Edwards). Nevertheless, Wise and editor, William Reynolds, went back to make a number of further adjustments to the film ahead of its global premiere in London in July 1968. Much of this late-stage editing work was relatively minor –– pruning a shot here and there in order to tighten pacing –– but several short narrative scenes were also cut in their entirety.
None of this material was particularly significant and, given that the final roadshow release of Star! ended up with a marathon running time of 176 minutes –– enough to “test the patience of even those of us enamored with Andrews, musicals, and showbiz dramas” (Betancourt, 2014) –– the cuts were possibly all-to-the-good. Still, it is not difficult to see what these excised scenes were designed to achieve and, in some respects, their loss exacerbated problematic aspects of the film’s narrative complexion.
What follows is a brief catalogue of the major scenes dropped from Star! They are presented in order of where they originally occurred in narrative sequence. For the most part, details are taken from the final shooting version of the screenplay by William Fairchild, dated 25 January 1967, and augmented where possible with archival material.
A further sense of where and how these “lost scenes” functioned narratively is provided by the paperback novelization of Star! by Bob Thomas (1968). As discussed in a previous post, novelizations were a popular feature of film culture in the 1960s and 70s. Because they had to be written well in advance of a film’s release, novelizations were typically adapted from shooting scripts and rough cuts and, as with Bob Thomas’s adaptation of Star!, they frequently include narrative material that didn’t always make the final cut.
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Lost Scene 1: Gertie and the Singing Doughboys
Screenplay Scenes 35-36, 38
(filmed 19 September 1967, Stage 22, 20th Century-Fox Studios)
This short sequence occurred immediately after Gertie makes her stagedoor flight from the disastrous Daffodil Girls music-hall performance in Swansea (“In My Garden of Joy”). In it, Gertie is shown hitching a ride with a military supplies lorry back to London in search of better opportunities. An establishing external shot (35) shows the lorry rumbling down a country road past a “London 34 miles” signpost, followed by an internal shot (36) of the driver’s cabin with Gertie sandwiched between two young soldiers in uniform, all singing a lively chorus of “Oh, It’s a Lovely War” (Fairchild: 25; Thomas: 26).
In earlier versions of the screenplay, this short sequence was preceded by a number of additional scenes (33-34) showing Gertie working odd jobs and sleeping in a train station but these were dropped prior to production and never filmed. A further shot (38) that was filmed but subsequently cut during postproduction occurred in the ensuing scene where Gertie arrives in London and sneaks her way into the Lumley Court Theatre in the hope of auditioning for André Charlot. As she stops in the theatre alleyway, Gertie looks up at the poster advertising the new Charlot revue and whispers to herself “quietly but with complete confidence, ’…With Gertrude Lawrence!’” (Fairchild: 28).
While minor, this cut material clearly worked to underscore Gertie’s driving ambition and her determination to do whatever it takes to realise her dreams of stardom.
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Lost Scene 2: Gertie and Billie Carleton
Screenplay Scene 53
(filmed 29 April 1967, Stage 14, 20th Century-Fox Studios)
This scene followed Gertie’s triumphant ‘understudy’ performance of “Burlington Bertie”. After the narrational newsreel footage detailing Armistice Day celebrations and the return of star Billie Carleton to the theatre, Billie is seen backstage surrounded by well-wishers from the troupe. Gertie appears from one of the dressing rooms and comes up to greet Billie with ‘star’ and ‘understudy’ indulging in affectionately bitchy repartee. Played with camp theatricality and lashings of “dahhhlings” and air kisses, the scene highlighted Gertie’s growing sense of hauteur and theatrical confidence, while emphasising her thwarted ambitions. It thus helped preface the later confrontation scene (55) between Gertie and first husband, Jack Roper where he complains, “ever since you’ve been put back in the chorus, it’s been nothing but belly-aching!” (Fairchild: 52).
Interestingly, this sequence between Gertie and Billie was the only sustained dialogue scene to feature Lynley Laurence, the actress who plays Billie Carleton in Star!. With its excision, Laurence’s role was reduced to a handful of mostly non-speaking scenes, though she would still receive a special featured screen credit in the final film.
As another interesting aside, the dialogue for the cut scene has Billie Carleton joke that Gertie likely wishes “I’d broken my neck”. The real-life Carleton did in fact die not long after the events depicted here. Following a gala ball at the Albert Hall to celebrate Armistice on 27 November 1918, Carleton returned to her suite at the Savoy Hotel where she was found dead the next day from a cocaine overdose. It was a huge scandal at the time that subsequently formed the basis for Noël Coward’s first hit play, The Vortex (1924) about drug abuse and sexual impropriety in English high society (Hoare: 37-39).
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Lost Scene 3: Gertie and Sir Anthony Go Boating
Screenplay Scene 61
(filmed 29 June, Regent’s Park, London; and 23-24 August 1967, Stage 21, and 8 September, Stage 22, 20th Century-Fox Studios)
This was the first of several cut scenes detailing Gertie’s blossoming romance with Sir Anthony ‘Tony’ Spencer (Michael Craig) and, with it, her rise in social status. Immediately following their first dinner date where Gertie alternately titillates and shocks the assembled society guests with ribald theatre stories, Gertie and Tony go on a ‘date’ to the boating lake at Regent’s Park (Fairchild: 60-61). As the pair sit in the rowboat, Tony explains the history of the Park in florid detail as Gertie looks glum and distracted. “Words!”, she says dejectedly, “I look at things and all I can say is –– they’re nice!…You’ve got to teach me more words”, thus highlighting her recognition of the need for increased social sophistication. After a further exchange, Gertie moves in to give Tony a kiss when the rocking of the boat throws her into his arms.
The allusion in this scene to linguistic training sets up a marked Pygamalion / My Fair Lady dynamic with Tony cast as a Professor Higgins-type figure –– albeit, more “patient and kind and wonderful” –– who helps mentor Gertie in the ways of aristocratic high society. There is even a pointed reference in the dialogue to Gertie’s background as a Cockney. Traces of this dynamic remain in the final film, notably in the scene where Gertie arrives at Cesare’s in her new gown and, responding to a compliment about the dress, starts to say “It is rather nice…” when she catches Tony’s eye and quickly corrects herself, “…er…divine, isn’t it?” (Fairchild: 64).
This scene on the lake involved considerable strategic planning during filming. At the end of a one week period of location shooting in the south of France in June 1967, the production crew proceeded to London for the next stage of filming. Julie, however, flew back to Hollywood, ostensibly to start rehearsals for the big musical numbers, though there is some suggestion she needed to avoid entering the UK for tax purposes (Craig: 151; Land: 296). As a result, location shots on the lake at Regent’s Park had to be filmed using a double to stand in for Julie who sat in the boat with actor Michael Craig. London’s notoriously capricious weather added to the woes with the crew having to wait hours on the day of shooting till 5:00pm when “the sun burst forth long enough to permit the photographing of a brilliant scene”. All the while, “property master, Dennis Parrish, had to toss bread to ducks…to keep them within camera range ready when the time came” (Land: 334-35; also Heffernan: 30). This location footage was then intercut with later process shots of Julie and Michael Craig filmed in front of a blue-screen at Fox studios. Production accounts detail that studio filming for the scene occupied two full days on August 23 and 24 on Stage 21 (Edwards). Despite the work and effort, the dialogue component of the sequence was cut in its entirety and all that remained in the final release print is a few brief insert shots of Gertie and Tony in the rowboat.
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Lost Scene 4: Gertie Gets a Make-Over
Screenplay Scene 63
(filmed 11-13 and 18 September 1967, Stage 16, 20th Century-Fox Studios)
Continuing the Pygmalion theme from the previous cut scene, this sequence detailed Gertie’s ongoing social metamorphosis as Tony takes her to the salon of couturier, Julian Brooke-Taylor (Fairchild: 63-64). Of all the cut scenes, this one was possibly the longest with an estimated running time of several minutes.
Here Gertie is introduced to the grand world of haute couture and the even grander character of Julian Brooke-Taylor. Described in the screenplay as “[t]hin, fortyish…not a homosexual, but rather asexual, always appearing elegantly weary but in fact full of creative energy” (Fairchild: 63), Brooke-Taylor was played by Scottish-born character actor, Monty (Monte) Landis. Today, Landis is best remembered for his cavalcade of cameo villains in the cult TV series The Monkees (1968) but he had a long career as a comic actor in theatre and film in both the UK and the US. Prior to Star!, Landis had a string of minor but memorable character cameos in films such as The Mouse That Roared (1959), Charade (1963) and Double Trouble (1967), as well as several popular TV series of the era including The Girl from U.N.C.L.E. (1966), Get Smart (1967) and Batman (1967). The latter series was filmed at 20th Century Fox studios at more or less the same time as Star! which is possibly how Landis secured his brief role in the film.
As detailed in the Fairchild screenplay (63-64) and Thomas novelization (50-51), the lengthy sequence starts with a mid-shot of Brooke-Taylor sitting on a Louis Quinze settee, “an expression of well-bred resignation on his face” (Fairchild: 63). As he spouts a humorously imperious monologue about being “the best couturier in London..many would say the whole of Europe”, the film cuts to a long shot of Gertie and Tony combing through hundreds of glamorous gowns in the gilt and marble salon, “dresses are everywhere –– in a large open wardrobe, draped on chairs and settees” (Fairchild: 63). Gertie picks up dress after dress, “considering it and then, as Tony shakes his head, rejecting it and adding it to the growing discard pile beside Julian” (ibid). All the while, Brooke-Taylor continues his waspish spiel:
“So who am I to complain, my dear Tony, when you invade my salon two hours after it is officially closed in order not to buy but merely to borrow. Please, please, do not for a moment imagine that you are imposing –– just feel completely free to treat me as you would any small, overworked dressmaker around the corner who runs up clever little numbers in her spare time after high tea…” (Fairchild: 63-64).
Finally, Tony finds the perfect dress –– the brilliant black and ruby beaded décolleté gown that Gertie wears to Cesare’s in the next scene. As he holds it up to Gertie, Brooke-Taylor stops mid-breath, “[h]is face lightens, [t]he artist in him beams whole-hearted approval and admiration,” “Ah!,” he purrs, “Yes!” (Fairchild: 64; Thomas: 51).
Other than highlighting Gertie’s continued social transformation, this scene also served to establish the context for Gertie’s subsequent employment as a salon model for Brooke-Taylor in the later fashion show sequence. Its omission from the final print of the film doesn’t cause a major logical inconsistency but it does weaken some of the backstory. From the way it is written, and given Landis’s theatrical comic style, one imagines that the scene would likely have had a ‘comic relief’ tenor not unlike that of the later fashion show where Cathleen Cordell provides such wonderfully humorous flourish as the affected salon vendeuse.
It’s unclear why the Brooke-Taylor sequence was dropped in its entirety. Production accounts show that more than two full days were spent shooting material for it from 11-13 September 1967 on Stage 16 at Fox Studios, with the fashion show filmed immediately after on the same set from 13-14 September (Edwards). Further retakes were ordered for 18 September which possibly suggests that Wise was unhappy with aspects of the scene as originally filmed/played. Maybe he remained unhappy, maybe the sequence felt out of keeping with surrounding material, or maybe Wise just wanted to reduce an already overlong first half? Either way, the visit to Julian Brooke-Taylor was consigned to the cutting room floor.
Monte Landis, the actor playing Brooke-Taylor, had a bit of an unfortunate run in 1967. At about the same time he filmed his dropped cameo for Star!, Landis also appeared as part of the original line-up for the TV pilot of Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In, but when the series was subsequently picked up by NBC for what would prove to be a six season run, Landis was let go and replaced by another British comedian (Erickson:108). There was some compensation for the actor when he secured his semi-recurring role as the resident villain in the second season of The Monkees (1968), which as suggested earlier remains his most famous work to this day. As detailed in his iMDB profile, Landis continued to secure intermittent TV work throughout the 70s with cameos in shows such as Hawaii Five-O (1971), Columbo (1971) and Police Woman (1973), as well as the odd big screen film like Myra Breckinridge (1970) and Young Frankenstein (1974). As late as the 80s and early 90s, Landis could still be seen popping up in the occasional episode of The Golden Girls (1987) or comedy film like Pee-wee’s Big Adventure (1985) and Heart Condition (1990).
In between these screen assignments, Landis seems to have done a good deal of live theatre. In an interesting “six degrees” moment, just a few months prior to his work on Star!, Landis appeared in a revival of Lady in the Dark at the Pasadena Playhouse –––– opposite Marni Nixon in the Gertrude Lawrence role, what’s more –– where he reportedly stopped the show with the comic “Tchaikovsky” number (“Monty Landis Draws”: 35). Landis also found something of a second career as a spiritualist in the 1970s hosting a weekly programme on a Southern California radio station devoted to the occult (Martin: S8). This interest in all things spiritual must have continued as the last press mention we’ve been able to find about Landis reports that, in 2007, he had retired to Palm Springs where he was teaching Kabbalah (Salkin: E1).
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Lost Scene 5: Gertie at St James Palace
Screenplay Scene 69
(filmed 29 May 1967, Lotos Club, New York City; and 1 July 1967, Westminster School, London )
This brief scene was the third of the excised episodes depicting Gertie’s social metamorphosis courtesy of Sir Anthony Spencer. Immediately following the newsreel insert profiling Gertie’s embrace of “the fads and the fashions of crazy postwar England of the early 20′s” –– doing the Charleston, hot air ballooning, awarding the prize at an auto car race –– and her ascent to royal social circles, this scene showed Gertie and Tony arriving at St James Palace. Resplendent in a fur-trimmed gold brocade cape, Gertie enters the Palace on the arm of Sir Tony looking every inch the princess when, falling back into mock Cockney, she whispers: “D’you think his Royal Highness would mind if I loosened me stays? They’re killing me” (Fairchild: 71).
The scene was clearly designed to highlight Gertie’s triumph in her new “role” as “the glittering darling of society” while remaining true to her irreverent working-class spirit. This theme –– along with the whole Pygmalion-esque subtext –– is explicit in Bob Thomas’s novelization:
“Under Tony’s tutelage, the girl from Clapham was becoming a lady. The metamorphosis was not always easy. Sometimes in the middle of a formal dinner Gertie uttered a cockneyism that sent the table into a roar of laughter. But she always laughed with the other guests –– Gertie never pretended to be anything she wasn’t. And she always listened carefully to Tony’s coaching afterward. He would point out where she said the wrong thing or used the wrong fork. As in the theatre, she learned her cues quickly and never repeated an error” (Thomas: 56).
Like the earlier rowboat scene, this one required a strategic blend of location and studio shooting. The bulk of the interior was filmed with Julie and Michael Craig on 29 May 1967 at the Lotos Club in New York City. Craig was still appearing on Broadway at the time in Pinter’s The Homecoming and this shoot was his very first piece of work for Star!. Additional footage of Gertie and Tony arriving at St James was filmed a few weeks later on 1 July at the Westminster School in London with Craig and a double to stand in for Julie (Edwards).
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Lost Scene 6: Cavalry to the Rescue
Screenplay Scene 86-88
(filmed 3 July 1967, Guards’ Parade, Whitehall, London)
This bridging sequence occurred when Sir Anthony Spencer arrives to visit Gertie with his surprise proposal of marriage. Following a series of establishing shots of Tony riding with the Guards on ceremonial parade –– shots which remain in the final release print of the film –– the original sequence continued to show Tony arriving at Gertie’s London mews house. He dismounts from his horse and passes the bridle to his personal equerry, Corporal of Horse Cooper (Max Faulkner). As he walks towards the rear of the house, still in full regalia “his accoutrements clanking”, Tony passes Gertie’s maid Mary (Barbara Ogilvie) who is carrying a tray of tea and sugar to the guardsmen. The camera stays on Mary as she goes to the guardsmen and chats amicably with Cooper, telling him to feed sugar to the horses “[t]hen you can have your tea” (Fairchild: 82).
Other than the opportunity to further showcase the colourful pomp of the Royal Life Guards –– which, as detailed in an earlier post, had been strategically selected by Wise for the visual impact of their uniforms –– this scene also helped underscore the established intimacy of Gertie and Tony’s relationship. That Gertie’s maid should greet Sir Tony and his Corporal by name and come out prepared with a tray of tea for the brigade indicates that this not-so clandestine morning visit to Gertie via her back door was a routine arrangement for the two lovers.
The actor who appears as Corporal Cooper, Max Faulkner had a long career as a character player and stuntman in British film and TV, possibly best remembered for his work on the cult TV show, Doctor Who. The cutting of the sequence meant that Faulkner lost what little dialogue he had in the film, though he can still be seen riding alongside Michael Craig in the opening shot and reacting to Tony’s sneeze. He can also be seen later in the film in reprise footage of the Life Guards on parade, immediately prior to Gertie and Tony’s visit to the Lord Chamberlain. In this scene, which was filmed on location at the same time as the earlier sequence, Faulkner’s character is front and centre on screen bellowing a series of commands to the mounted Guardsmen. In the original screenplay this establishing shot is followed by an additional brief dialogue scene where Gertie passes the Guards on her way into the Lord Chamberlain’s office and greets Cooper by name (Scene 118). “Good morning Miss Lawrence. Nice to see you back,” the corporal says (Fairchild: 123). When Noel shoots Gertie a questioning look, she explains, “Well, I have been to St James Palace before.” “For heaven’s sake,” gasps Noel, “don’t mention that!” (Fairchild: 123).
While Max Faulkner at least made it into the final release print of Star!, Barbara Ogilvie in the part of Mary was less fortunate. With the excision of the dialogue portion of Sir Tony’s arrival at Gertie’s house, her role disappeared completely. A native Londoner, Ogilvie carved out a solid career playing character parts on UK TV, including a regular stint in the mid-70s on the long-running soap opera, Emmerdale. Possibly due to production logistics or possibly to help denote the passage of time, Gertie is given a different maid later in the film, Dorothy who is played by Matilda Canan.
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As stated at the outset, it is not difficult to understand why these various scenes were cut from Star! Their excision reduced an already over-long running time and arguably helped tighten pacing. Nevertheless, one can equally appreciate the intent behind these scenes and their role in furthering character and plot.
One of the most common criticisms made of Star! is that its episodic revue format works against optimal narrative development and, with it, audience identification. Squeezed into brief segments between the film’s mammoth musical performances, Gertie’s life is rendered via a series of epigrammatic highlights with a surfeit of information and dazzle, but not a lot of emotional depth. As Richard Schickel (1968) writes in a characteristic example of this critical complaint:
“William Fairchild’s Star! script, ranging over a [long] period of Gertrude Lawrence’s career, deals in types rather than people, romances rather than loves. It is always at a documentary distance from its subject and her world. Maybe she was unknowable, in the full biographical sense, but we must have the illusion of knowledge, a sense of motives more subtle and complex than we receive” (10).
Moreover, the fact that Star! is a theatrical revue style musical where the numbers are staged as semi-realist replications of Gertie’s theatrical performances, and not as organic expressions of character and narrative as is the case in an integrated ‘book’ musical, means that whatever sense we get of Gertie and her story can only really come from the bridging moments in-between. As director Robert Wise reflected in later years:
“People often ask me why [Star!] didn’t work…It’s hard to find answers. Maybe [audiences] just weren’t prepared to like Julie in the kind of character Gertie Lawrence was. Maybe we spent too much time on musical numbers and didn’t spend enough time digging into her character, getting the kind of contact of the audience with what made her tick. With The Sound of Music, we certainly made contact with the audience in terms of the relationship between Maria and the children and the Captain. The audience knew where everybody was coming from basically” (Leeman, 195).
It’s doubtful that the excised material profiled here would have made much of an appreciable difference in this regard. Like applying a band-aid to a gaping wound, the film’s narrative deficiencies required more substantial revisions than the inclusion of a couple of minor book scenes. Still, these scenes do at least gesture towards expanded character development and suggest several lines that might have been profitably mined in a more carefully structured narrative treatment.
Finally, it is not known if any of this edited material from Star! still exists. If it does, the chance of it seeing light of day is sadly remote. Cut footage from the Fox-Wise-Andrews megahit, The Sound of Music has never surfaced, suggesting a studio history of either outright junking or public embargo. Moreover, if the material were available, it would surely have been included as part of the comprehensively packaged laserdisc release that accompanied the film’s 25th anniversary in 1993. Still, hope springs eternal and maybe the ‘lost scenes of Star!’ will finally appear as part of that deluxe 50th Anniversary Blu-Ray release that we know just has to be round the corner!
Betancourt, Manuel. “Robert Wise Centenary: Star! (1968).” The Film Experience. <http://thefilmexperience.net/blog/2014/9/9/robert-wise-centenary-star-1968.html>. 2014.
Craig, Michael. The Smallest Giant: An Actor’s Life. Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 2005.
Edwards, T.J. “The Saga of ‘Star!’”. Star! Special Edition LaserDisc. Beverley Hills, CA: Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment, 1993.
Erickson, Hal. ‘From Beautiful Downtown Burbank’: A Critical History of Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In. Jefferson, NC: McFarland and Co, 2000.
Fairchild, William. Star! Screenplay. Final version. 25 January, 1967.
Heffernan, Harold. “Squeaky Sound Stage Troubles ‘Star’.” Philadelphia Daily News. 18 August 1967: 30.
Hoare, Philip. Oscar Wilde’s Last Stand: Decadence, Conspiracy, and the Most Outrageous Trial of the Century. New York: Arcade Publishing, 1997.
Holston, Kim R. Movie Roadshows: A History and Filmography of Reserved-Seat Limited Showing, 1911-1973. Jefferson, NC: McFarland and Co, 2013.
Kanfer, Stefan. “Cinema: Quarter Chance.” Time. 96: 4. 27 July 1970: 78.
Land, Kevin. “Recreating Four Decades of Modern History for Star!”. American Cinematographer. 50: 3, March 1969: 294-266, 332-336.
Leeman, Sergio. Robert Wise on His Films: From Editing Room to Director’s Chair. Los Angeles: Silman-James Press, 1995.
Martin, Bob. “TeleVues: They Have the Spirit, It Says.” Independent Press-Telegram. 5 August 1973: S8.
“Monty Landis Draws Many Laughs in ‘Lady’”. Independent Star News. 15 January 1967: 35.
Salkin, Judith. “Building One’s Character.” The Desert Sun. 18 November 2007: E1.
Schickel, Richard. “Two Stars: One Glowing One Dim.” Life. 65: 19. 8 November 1968: 19.
Thomas, Bob. Star! New York: Bantam, 1968.
“70 mm cinema film strip” by Zigmej, CC BY-SA 3.0 [Adapted].
STAR!, 1968 [Laserdisc], R. Wise, Fox Video, 1993.
St Hilaire, Al. Photographic Contact Sheets for STAR! [Unpublished], 1967.
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Copyright © Brett Farmer 2018
