#star50

[paralleljulieverse]

This Week in Julie-history: STAR! opens in Japan, 17 August 1968 

After the gala world premiere of Star! in London, the next port-of-call in the film’s global roadshow rollout was Japan where Star! bowed at Tokyo’s Marunouchi Piccadilly Theatre on 17 August, 1968*, followed by a nationwide release to other major cities including Osaka, Fukuoka, Nagoya and Sapporo. That Japan was chosen as only the second country in the world to premiere Star! is indicative both of the enormous significance of Japan as a market for Hollywood film in this era and of the popularity of Julie Andrews among Japanese audiences. 

With the resumption of international trade following World War II, US film studios eyed the previously regulated Japanese market as a prime target for export growth. Aided by the Allied occupation and the interim administration’s agenda of actively spreading “Western” values, Hollywood flooded the postwar Japanese market with movies, thereby cultivating a growing taste among local audiences for American product and “turning the formerly protectionist state into a lucrative and dependable film market” (Kitamura, ix-xi). The success of the campaign was neither instant nor absolute, of course, and American cultural imports faced considerable resistance among sectors of the Japanese national community, both then as now. By the 1950s, however, US share of the Japanese box office had grown to 40%, double its pre-war figures, and Japan emerged as the largest single foreign consumer of Hollywood films outside the Anglosphere (Kitamura, 178). 

Unlike many other foreign markets, Japan was receptive to a wide range of American film genres, including importantly musicals (Gerow, 157-59; Seagrave, 77-78). Possibly because Japan already had well-developed cultures of musical theatrical entertainment and had long incorporated song and dance as an element of its own homegrown film genres, local audiences responded positively to Hollywood tuners. Many of the big roadshow musicals of the 50s and 60s such as The King and I (1956), South Pacific (1958) and West Side Story (1961) posted some of their best foreign returns in Japan (Wade, 149; Wells, 236). 

It was a context primed for success by the time Julie Andrews hit Japanese screens in the mid-sixties. All three of Julie’s big screen musicals of the era –– Mary Poppins (1964), The Sound of Music (1965) and Thoroughly Modern Millie (1967) –– were smash hits in Japan, with The Sound of Music becoming the single biggest grossing film in Japanese history (Mullen, 14). Even Julie’s non-musical films –– Hawaii (1966) and Torn Curtain (1966) –– fared extremely well in Japan, cementing a position of preeminent fame and popularity for the star that endures to this day (Mitani 1975; Screen 2006).

It was, thus, not surprising that Fox should have prioritised Japan as a key market in the global distribution of Star! As with the UK release, Star! came in to Japan on a massive wave of pre-release publicity. Newspapers and magazines carried stories and photos, and the distinctively vibrant commercial and entertainment centres of Japan’s bustling cities were peppered with posters, hand-painted billboards and flyers. Japan’s largest department store, Takashimaya partnered with Fox for a major two-and-a-half month PR campaign, featuring a different item of Star! merchandise every day for 10 weeks and distributing to their customers 50,000 heavy-duty colour bags illustrated with Star! advertising art (“Tokyo Shoppers”: 3). Even the soundtrack LP was given a special high-profile release in the Japanese market with Victor Nippon and 20th Century Fox records combining for an unprecedented large-scale promotional push at theatres and retail outlets across Japan (Erwin, 58).

In keeping with local film marketing practices, the Japanese campaign for Star! developed much of its own visual material, styled to accord with local tastes and aesthetic traditions. Unlike the illustrated pictorialist forms that dominated mid-century film advertising elsewhere, Japan pioneered an arresting photomontage style rooted in conventional modes of Japanese visual composition but updated for modern sensibilities. Featuring photographic cut-outs blended into a non-perspectival collage enhanced with handpainted touch-up techniques and juxtaposed with brightly coloured kanji logograms, the “glorious visual confections” of Japanese film art possess an energetic style all their own (Masuda and Black, 4). In the case of Star!, the result is some of the most visually dynamic –– and, given the characteristic Japanese attention to quality, sumptuously produced –– marketing material for the film anywhere in the world. 

Much like the film’s UK reception, Star! met with widespread critical acclaim in Japan. Eiga hyōron, the Japanese magazine of film review, called it: “A genuine terrific musical. It captivates the heart. STAR! can’t be missed” The Yomiuri Shinbun newspaper similarly enthused:

“Gem-sudded STAR! is the epitome of musicals. Julie Andrews proves herself with a charming new image…robust, darling, glamorous and radiant. Exceptionally fabulous giant creation by Robert Wise. Highly entertaining. Suited for all ages” (”Unprecedented Raves”, 111).

However, again like the UK experience, Star! didn’t quite take off at the Japanese box office as hoped. After an initial period of very brisk business –– it broke box office records in its first week at the Maranouchi Piccadilly (“On the Spot”, 584; Edwards 1993) –– ticket sales started to soften. Star! did however enjoy a more high profile afterlife in Japan than in many other territories. In line with the popularity of revivals in the Japanese film market, Star! had several theatrical rereleases in Tokyo and other major cities during the 70s and 80s. In addition, the soundtrack LP, which was a solid seller in Japan, was reissued in 1974 with new cover art. 

All of which confirms the timeless truth of that ancient Zen proverb: 

“If the lady’s someone who is worshipped from afar She’s a genuine, positive, totally marvellous, perfectly wonderful STAR!”

Notes:

* For some reason, IMDb incorrectly lists the Japanese opening of Star! as 24 August 1968. It is also gives incorrect release dates for the film in several other territories including Australia. Don’t always believe what you read on the internet, kids!

Sources:

Edwards, T.J. “The Saga of ‘Star!’”. Star! Special Edition LaserDisc. Beverley Hills, CA: Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment, 1993.

Erwin, Elson. “International News Reports: Tokyo.” Billboard. 6 July 1968″ 54-58.

Gerow, Aaron. “Japan.” The International Film Musical. C. Creekmur and L. Mokdad, eds. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2012: 157-170.

Kitamura, Hiroshi. Screening Enlightenment: Hollywood and the Cultural Reconstruction of Defeated Japan. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2010.

Masuda, Tetsuya and Black, Kairakutei. Japanese Movie Posters: Yakuza, Monster, Pink, and Horror. Tokyo: Cocoro Books, 2002.

Mitani, Koji, Julie Andrews: Kiyorakana hibiki meruhen no yume / ジュリー・アンドリュース―清らかなひびき、メルヘンの夢. Tokyo: Haga Shoten, 1975.

Mullen, Shaun D. “Schmaltzy Movies Queue ‘Em up In Tokyo.” The News Journal. 5 October 1970: 14.

“On the Spot Reports.” The Outlook. 30 September 1968: 584.

Screen, Queen of Musical Julie Andrews / ミュージカルの女王 ジュリー・アンドルーズ. Tokyo: Kindai Eiga-sha, 2006.

Segrave, Kerry. American Films Abroad: Hollywood’s Domination of the World’s Movie Screens. Jefferson: McFarland, 1997.

“Tokyo Shoppers Will Be Walking Ads for ‘Star’.” Film and Television Daily. 12 August 1968: 3. 

“Unprecedented Raves Greet 20th Century-Fox’s Newest Roadshow Attraction at its Premieres Around the World!” Daily Variety. 29 October 1968: 111-12.

Wade, Bonnie C. Music in Japan: Experiencing Music, Expressing Culture. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2005.

Wells, Elizabeth A. West Side Story: Cultural Perspectives on an American Musical. Lanham: Scarecrow, 2011.

Copyright © Brett Farmer 2018

[paralleljulieverse]

Star!, the 1968 musical biopic of Gertrude Lawrence celebrating its 50th anniversary this year, signalled a substantial shift for the on-screen persona of Julie Andrews. Although the actress had tackled slightly ‘darker’ roles in some of her previous dramatic films –– notably, The Americanization of Emily (1964), Hawaii (1966) and Torn Curtain (1966) –– her star image in this era was primarily defined by the trio of hit screen musicals –– Mary Poppins (1964), The Sound of Music (1965) and Thoroughly Modern Millie (1967). Together these family-friendly blockbusters cemented a popular ‘nice girl’ image humorously described by one commentator of the time as “Miss Sunshine of the Sixties” (Coleman, 118). 

The part of Gertrude Lawrence, by contrast, was no sunny musical ingenue. As depicted in Star!, she is an ambitious arriviste driven to theatrical and social success at all costs. A self-absorbed hedonist, Gertie drinks, swears, and leaves a trail of broken romances and –– perhaps, most subversive vis-à-vis the traditional Julie Andrews screen image –– abandoned children in her wake. Much of the film’s commercial underperformance has been attributed to the difficulty audiences of the time had in accepting Julie Andrews in such a radically atypical role (Kennedy, 154; Silverman, 131). Even the Dame herself subscribes to this theory, musing in retrospect that:

“It was a time of enormous change for me and for movies…And people then were not ready to accept me in an unsympathetic role like Gertrude Lawrence in Star!” (Anderson, 27).

Things weren’t possibly helped much by the film’s pre-release publicity campaign. The second of two films that Julie was contracted to make for Twentieth Century-Fox, Star! was initially announced in late 1964, before her first film, The Sound of Music was even in the can (Scheuer, V-15). By the time Star! was ready for production, The Sound of Music had become the highest grossing film of all time and Fox spared no expense in promoting their new big Julie Andrews musical. The studio assigned not one but two Publicity Directors to handle the film, Howard Newman and Mike Kaplan. Together they helmed what was described as “the biggest publicity barrage in Hollywood history” with countless media releases, photographs, interviews, and PR stories (Edwards). 

From the outset, Fox was quick to promote Star! as a reunion of the “dream team” behind The Sound of Music: star Julie Andrews, director Robert Wise and producer Saul Chaplin (”Movie Call Sheet,” IV-10).  “Julie Andrews…returns to singing and dancing in Star! with the same two movie makers who guided The Sound of Music,” trumpeted a widely syndicated press release to mark the start of shooting in early 1967. “If any picture is likely to match The Sound of Music in public popularity, it will be Star!” (Kaplan, B-10). As a purely attention-grabbing marketing strategy, it made sense to play up The Sound of Music connections, but it arguably served to foster false expectations that Star! was set to be another upbeat family musical. 

During the film’s long 18 month production, media articles started to hint that Star! marked a change of pace for Julie. However, the focus was largely on change at the level of visual style with Star! framed as little more than a cosmetic makeover for “our Julie”: 

“To play Gertrude Lawrence should give Julie Andrews a much deserved chance to prove what a charmer she is. On the screen Julie has been hidden under nun’s robes and missionary muumuus for the past two years…In Gertrude Lawrence’s chiffon and ostrich she should come alive as a glamorous woman instead of a wholesome girl” (Sheppard, D1).

Or again:

“In ‘Star!’ [Julie is] playing her first glamorous role, a musical comedy star based on the life of Gertrude Lawrence. Donald Brooks designed a $250,000 wardrobe for her, not including the $2,500,000 worth of real jewels supplied by Cartier’s in New York…It’s a chic and elegant Julie you’ll be seeing in ‘Star!’, singing more than two dozen songs by Noel Coward, Kurt Weil, George Gershwin, Cole Porter, and other great composers” (Sherman, B-3).

The net effect of these widespread media reports was to present Star! as a variation on the classic Cinderella ‘makeover’ musical which had been central to Julie’s stardom from My Fair Lady to Thoroughly Modern Millie (Cantu 2015). Small point that Julie’s new character was possibly more Wicked Stepmother than Cinderella.

One of the most spectacular examples of the promotional framing of Star! as fairytale makeover is this lavish cover spread from the popular US weekly magazine, Look. Hitting the stands in mid-September 1967 –– nine months before Star!’s UK premiere and a full year before its US release –– the magazine spread is essentially a photographic panegyric to Julie as ‘glammed up’ princess with costume designer Donald Brooks cast in the the role of symbolic Fairy Godmother:

“At this point, Star! is only half-born…However, publicity on the Robert Wise production for 20th Century-Fox starts now, and its uproar will echo immediately through the world of fashion. Julie will wear 124 different costumes in Star! They are all glamorous, a word invented for the likes of Gertie Lawrence and captured now by designer Donald Brooks. For women who do not want to follow the hippie road or slick moon-blast to fashion, here is salvation” (Zill, 63).

In glossy full page shots by famed photographer, Cal Bernstein, Julie is showcased in some of Brook’s most lavish costumes, set against a series of fantasy backdrops courtesy of the Fox prop department: Julie as darling flapper, as ‘swellegant’ society lady, as landed gentry. It’s a stunning preview of "Julie’s Dazzling New Look” but it offers nary a hint about “Julie’s Acidic New Personality”!

On its release, reviews of Star! were sharply mixed. The film garnered more praise than is often remembered, but among the many brickbats, critics were quick to highlight the jarring disjunction between Julie’s received star image and her waspish new role. In a typical example, Renata Adler* of The New York Times wrote:  

“Miss Andrews, who plays Gertrude Lawrence, is not at her best in this one. There is some sort of clash between her special niceness and innocence and the attitude that the film, directed by Robert Wise (of ‘The Sound of Music’), has toward the star of ‘Private Lives’ and ‘The King and I’" (Adler, 21).

Could this type of response have been averted with a more careful pre-release framing of the film and its casting of Julie ‘against type’? Possibly, but then Star!’s problems were never limited to the film’s surprise revision of Julie’s ‘girl next door’ persona. Failure may be a proverbial orphan but in the case of Star! it most definitely had ‘multiple fathers.’ Some of the other factors operative in the film’s underperformance will likely be flagged in future posts but the Look magazine cover from 1967 provides a telling insight into one of them. The cover’s uneasy juxtaposition of Julie’s fantasy glamour makeover alongside headline allusions to the war in Vietnam and rising murder rates serves a symbolic snapshot of the rapidly brewing social tumult that would rise to engulf America and bedevil the reception of Star! and other big screen musicals of the era. 

Variously dubbed ‘the year that rocked the world’, 'the year of awakening’, ‘the year of revolt’, 1968 was nothing if not a watershed moment of profound social upheaval. As post-war baby boomers came of age and countercultural youth movements reached critical mass, “there occurred a spontaneous combustion of rebellious spirits around the world” united by “a sense of alienation from the established order and a profound distaste for authoritarianism in any form” (Kurlansky, xvii). In such a context, the complexion and tastes of movie audiences were, like the times, a-changin’ fast. Small youth-oriented and iconoclastic social realist films like The Graduate (1967) Bonnie and Clyde (1967) and Easy Rider (1969) were the new order of the day and, almost overnight, big budget musicals like Star! were deemed woefully old-fashioned, even irrelevant.

In a remarkably hostile piece that is possibly more cultural symptomatology than actual film review, Robert Kotlowitz, resident critic for Harper’s magazine, took Star! to task for what he saw as the film’s reactionary obliviousness to America’s changing zeitgeist. The filmmakers, he writes, seem to:

“have simply strolled over to Hollywood’s immense fantasy bin –– in which slivers of our national psyche lie buried –– and casually plucked dozens of the gaudiest clichés from the dust and packaged them as a Technicolor extravaganza…[Star!] is less concerned with the biography of Gertrude Lawrence than with using the rags-to-riches, triumphs-and-heartaches outline of her story to define an extinct type of glamor, the ideal of an anti-serious and pre-pop generation…it’s impossible to imagine the John Lennon legend ever receiving this kind of treatment “ (169).

Not sure about John Lennon –– though fifty years after the fact, one would be hard pressed to claim his legend hasn’t been subject to its own forms of clichéd idealisation –– but Kotlowitz’s diatribe certainly gives a sense of the extent to which Star! suffered substantial fallout from the era’s rapidly transforming social climate. 

And, pace Kotlowitz’s testy dismissal of the film as “extinct glamor”, Star! possibly offers its own eloquent rejoinder when, in a spirited defence of Gertie’s mercurial eccentricities, Noël Coward grandly declaims: 

“I know she’s maddening, infuriating and impossible…but she’s also probably the most beautiful and entrancing creature ever to walk onto a stage. Glamour is a very overworked and quite indefinable word but I think the world could do with a little of her brand of it at the moment” (Fairchild, 142).

Five decades on, some of us are still entranced by the glamour of Star!…warts and all! ___________________________

Notes:

* It was widely reported that Renata Adler left the press screening of Star! early due to illness. The fact that she went ahead to file a negative, and dismissively short, review despite only having seen half the film prompted an outraged letter to the editor from Twentieth Century-Fox head, Daryl F. Zanuck. It was one of several gaffes that marked Adler’s brief but tempestuous tenure as resident film critic at The New York Times (Roberts, 181ff).

Sources:

Adler, Renata. “Screen: ‘Star!’ Arrives: Julie Andrews Featured in Movie at Rivoli.” The New York Times. 23 October 1968: 21.

Anderson, George. “Andrews Garned in New Image.” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. 23 March 1982: 27, 30.

Cantu, Maya. American Cinderellas on the Broadway Musical Stage: Imagining the Working Girl from Irene to Gypsy. London: Palgrave MacMillan, 2015.

Coleman, John. “Per Adua ad Julie.” New Statesman. 26 July 1968: 118.

Edwards, T.J. “The Saga of ‘Star!’”. Star! Special Edition LaserDisc. Beverley Hills, CA: Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment, 1993.

Fairchild, William. Star! Unpublished screenplay. Final version: 26 January 1967. 

Kaplan, Mike. “Julie Andrews to Film ‘Star’.” The San Bernadino County Sun. 29 April 1967: B-10.

Kennedy, Matthew. Roadshow!: The Fall of Film Musicals in the 1960s. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013.

Kotlowitz, Robert. “Films: ‘Star!’, ‘Finian’s Rainbow’, ‘Hot Millions’.” Harper’s. Vol. 237. No. 1422, November 1968: 168-171.

Kurlansky, Mark. 1968: The Year that Rocked the World. New York: Random House, 2004.

“Movie Call Sheet.” The Los Angeles Times. 24 May 1965: IV-10.

Roberts, Jerry. The Complete History of American Film Criticism. Santa Monica: Santa Monica Press, 2010.

Scheuer, Philip. “Julie Andrews Just Right for Gertie.” The Los Angeles Times. 2 December 1964: V-15.

Sheppard, Eugenia. “Julie Will Play Gertrude Lawrence Role.” The Honolulu Advertiser. 7 November 1966: D1.

Sherman, Eddie. “’STAR’ Communique.” Honolulu Advertiser. 8 August 1967: B-3.

Silverman, Stephen M. The Fox That Got away: The Last Days of the Zanuck Dynasty at Twentieth Century-Fox. Seacusus, NJ: Lyle Stuart, 1988.

Zill, Jo Ahern. “Julie Plays Gertie.” Look. Vol. 31, no. 19. 19 September 1967: 63-68.

Copyright © Brett Farmer 2018

[paralleljulieverse]

Last time in our ongoing series honouring the 50th Anniversary of Star!, we profiled Jenny Agutter, the young actress who played Julie’s screen daughter, Pamela, in the celebrated 1968 film musical. Agutter’s performance in Star! was warmly praised but the actress describes how she encountered one very vocal critic in the pint-sized form of Julie’s real-life daughter, Emma Kate:

“I was coming up for 15 when I played Julie Andrews’ daughter in the film Star! I remember being incredibly impressed by her because she was such a star herself. Her little daughter was on set and got quite upset with me. She said, ‘Will you tell that girl to stop calling you Mummy!’” (McGibbon, 10).

Aged 4 at the time, Julie’s daughter, Emma, was a not infrequent visitor to the set of Star! and, as this selection of magazine images attests, her visits garnered considerable media attention. Typically accompanied by her Swedish nanny, Inga, Emma was by all accounts a well-behaved visitor, playing happily in Julie’s dressing room or watching proceedings patiently from the sidelines, often perched on director Robert Wise’s knee (Cottrell, 203; Wilson, 13). 

However, Wise recounts another humorous instance where Emma was a little less placid than usual. In the scene where financial lawyer, David Holzmann (Richard Kaplan) comes to Gertie’s Long Island estate while she is in the midst of hosting a charity party for disadvantaged children, Wise relates:

“The children playing in the background in the garden were all cast in New York and brought up. It so happened that Julie’s daughter, Emma came visiting one day while we were shooting this [scene]. She was a little younger than these children but she couldn’t understand why she wasn’t allowed to be out there and play with them in the scene. So just to pacify her a bit or please her I put her in in one take and let her play in the background there. Then when we’d finished and got things printed up, I gave her that take to have” (Wise, 1993).

Not sure if she still has that take –– we certainly hope so –– but here’s to Emma Kate, another of the unsung “little stars of Star!”.

Sources:

Cottrell, John. Julie Andrews: The Story of a Star. London: Arthur Barker, 1968.

McGibbon, Rob. “From Railway Child to star of ‘Call The Midwife’: Jenny Agutter's colourful life in photos.” Daily Mail. 15 December 2013: 10.

Wilson, Jane, “Thoroughly Wholesome Julie.” West: Los Angeles Times Magazine. 15 October 1967: 11-17.

Wise, Robert. “Audio Commentary.” Star! Special Edition LaserDisc. Beverley Hills, CA: Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment, 1993.

Copyright © Brett Farmer 2018

[paralleljulieverse]

Happy New Year from the Parallel Julieverse

With STAR! celebrating its 50th Golden Anniversary, 2018 promises to be a “genuine, positive, totally marvellous, perfectly wonderful” year!

[paralleljulieverse]

Following our previous entry where we recalled some of the juvenile actresses who portrayed the young Gertrude Lawrence in the landmark 1968 Julie Andrews musical Star!, this post turns the spotlight briefly to another of the “little stars of Star!” Unlike other juvenile players in the film, though, this young actress not only received credit for her work in Star! but went on to enjoy considerable stardom in her own right.

When director Robert Wise was casting for the small but pivotal role of Pamela Lawrence, Gertrude’s neglected daughter from her first marriage, he reportedly considered scores of young hopefuls from the US, the UK and beyond. He says he knew instantly he’d found the perfect choice as soon as he saw Jenny Agutter:

“She has that special something that sparks in front of the camera and there is a nice rapport between her and Julie” (Kaplan, n.p.).

Although she was only 14 years old at the time, Agutter came to Star! with a number of screen acting credits well under her belt. Trained as a ballet dancer, she had her first major role at age 11 when Walt Disney Productions cast her in a fictional film based around the Royal Danish Ballet, Ballerina also known as The Copenhagen Ballet (1966). But the young actress had also appeared in East of Sudan (1965), a big British film of the era, as well as several high profile TV series including The Newcomers (1967) and The Railway Children (1968).

This background experience undoubtedly helped Agutter’s work in Star! where, despite the brevity of her role, she projects a self-possessed maturity and emotional depth well beyond her tender years. Certainly, the hallmarks of Agutter’s distinctive early screen persona –– described by one critic of the time as the “ingenue with a tremulous voice, wide innocent eyes and pinched face that works on the tear ducts like a fresh-cut Bermuda onion” (Orin, 2) –– are already in evidence in Star! and would be developed more fully in later standout performances in films like The Railway Children (1970), Walkabout (1971), The Snow Goose (1971) and Equus (1977). 

Looking back on Star!, Agutter recalls:

“The whole experience made a great impression on me. I had never worked on a film of that size…This was an enormous project, a major film on a scale that I had never come across and have never come across since…Julie Andrews was someone I was very much in awe of and knew her work and she was a huge star. I was quite worried about meeting and working with her and she was so extraordinarily down-to-earth. I’m sure that everybody says that, but it was an amazing thing to come across…She was so gentle to me as a child and made me feel extremely relaxed and didn’t seem at all like a star” (Agutter, 1993).

For her part, Julie professes an almost symbolic parental pride in Agutter:

“Little Jenny Agutter who played my daughter is now the most beautiful young lady and a big star in her own right and has made many films and I was so pleased, I felt like we had personally started her career. In fact, she had done a great deal before she did Star! but I think it did give her a good boost” (Andrews, 1993).

Even today, Julie still follows Agutter’s career with interest. The Dame reportedly loves to watch British TV dramas and claims that one of her current faves is the popular BBC series, Call the Midwife (2012-2018) in which Agutter stars as Sister Julienne. Described on the series website as a nun “who is deeply religious” but “also profoundly practical” with "a sensitive, non-judgemental approach,” Sister Julienne sounds for all the world like a Mary Poppins-Maria von Trapp hybrid –– so, who knows, perhaps Jenny Agutter got in early training for the part working all those years ago on Star! 

Sources:

Agutter, Jenny. “Audio Commentary.” Star! Special Edition LaserDisc. Beverley Hills, CA: Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment, 1993.

Andrews, Julie. “Audio Commentary.” Star! Special Edition LaserDisc. Beverley Hills, CA: Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment, 1993.

Bortsen, Orin. “Jenny Blossoms as Goody-Two-Shoes.” Showtime. 29 August 1971: 2.

Coffin, Howard A. “Robert Wise and his Films.” Entertainment World. 30 December 1969: 19-31.

Kaplan, Mike. Publicity Notes for Star! Hollywood: 20th Century Fox/Robert Wise Productions, 1968.

Copyright © Brett Farmer 2018

[paralleljulieverse]

Here’s to a Golden Year!

[paralleljulieverse]

STAR! Attention

“Before Julie Andrews does a scene as a fashion model in STAR!, the Robert Wise 20th Century-Fox roadshow musical, she gets attention from (left to right) Adele Balcon and Dorothy Drake from wardrobe, Mary Bashe from make-up, Gary Isbell, a property assistant, and Michael Kidd, famous choreographer who is helping her on with a proper bit of footwear.”

[paralleljulieverse]

Shake off those sad ‘Limehouse Blues’… Kung Hei Fat Choi! from the Parallel Julieverse