"Star" should have been made fifteen years earlier,during the golden age of musicals,a time when Miss Lawrence's name might still have meant something to a wide audience,and not merely to lovers of revue and the ever-so-slightly camp theatre scene beloved of the British. She was the Judy Garland of her time ,and,coincidentally,much admired by the Friends of Dorothy whose loyalty she repaid by having a conspicuously close relationship with GBF Mr Noel Coward. Her capers in the papers make Paris Hilton seem like Mother Theresa,her life one long melodramatic crisis after another.Not,perhaps,an obvious role for Miss Julie Andrews then.However,she does her not inconsiderable best,and while in no way resembling Miss Lawrence either in appearance or performance,she gives something of a tour de force in "Star". There is no escaping the longeurs .All the time Miss Andrews is neither singing nor dancing nor "acting" as in the excerpt from "Private Lives" the movie grinds to a halt,hung up by the fact that Miss Lawrence ,when she was not "on" was not a very interesting person,nor a particularly sympathetic one. The movie ends up as a fine showcase for Miss Andrews'talents but ,in the end,I felt that she never made a serious attempt to get into the skin of Gertrude Lawrence who remained as enigmatic a character as T.E.Lawrence.
Review of Star!
