Home: A Memoir of My Early Years
by Julie Andrews
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Book Summary Information
Author: Julie AndrewsEdition: Hardcover
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2008-04-01
ISBN: 0786865652
Number of pages: 352
Publisher: Hyperion
Product features:
- Memoir, Entertainers
Book Reviews of Home: A Memoir of My Early Years
Book Review: Tough Life; Tough Woman
Summary: 4 Stars
This memoir reads as if it were two different books. The part dealing with her early work in British musical theater (after her emergence from the dying music hall tradition) reads mostly, but not entirely, like a stereotypical "show-biz" memoir, full of good friends, great colleagues and generally lovely people. It is saved from utter cliche by two things: First, Andrews clearly portrays the hard, wearing and sometimes humiliating work that goes into performing at the highest levels (particularly while trying to establish one's self). Second, she portrays some of the nastiness that can go on in this world where your status rises and falls with each performance and your ego and self-esteem with it. Fear of failure is powerful and all-pervading.
Andrews provides a number of startling vignettes that are distinctly not of the "beautiful person" school. There is Rex Harrison trying hard to get the very young (around 21) Andrews fired from My Fair Lady during rehearsals while she was struggling to find herself in the role. Harrison did not care one whit who (including Andrews) might overhear him or the obscene and abusive language that he used. There is Richard Burton dealing with the pressure of performance in Camelot by the occasional heavy drinking binge and appearing on stage while totally drunk. Burton, a famous and successful womanizer, also tried to seduce the younger Andrews and did not scruple to try to manipulate her into his bed by undermining her sense of security as an actor in working with him. Nasty stuff and there are other such stories involving lesser known people. It is worth noting that Andrews does not mention receiving any help from other cast members while Harrison was busy trying to destroy her. The great director Moss Hart, however, showed enormous faith and patience and worked one-on-one with her to save her confidence, her role and probably her theater career. She says that she loved him for it, and I do not doubt her.
The other book, though, is about her childhood; and the events that it relates are often bleak and occasionally harrowing. Born in 1935, Andrews clearly remembers the bombs falling on London during the Battle of Britain and the Blitz of 1940-41. Her mother was an accomplished pianist and her Dad (as she always calls him) a working man. Her mother was working as a pianist at a resort when she met another man and left the family to live with him and eventually marry him. The two of them formed an act for the British music halls (vaudeville). Her mother insisted that Andrews come to live with her and her new husband and Dad acquiesced. This was a terrible blow to Andrews because Dad was essentially the only source of love in her life that was reliable, responsible and unconditional.
Nonetheless off Andrews went. She neither liked nor trusted her stepfather whom her mother insisted that Andrews call "Pop." Her new parents were busy working on their music hall career and became successful enough to be "second top" performers, especially after they discovered Andrews's amazing voice and other talents. She became part of the act and traveled with them. Success did not last, however, because Pop had ever growing alcohol problems which eventually affected his work and made him unemployable. Money became scarce, and he reacted in a very typical way: he began first to have flaming arguments and then to beat first his wife and eventually their two younger sons. Andrews, in her room, overheard many of these episodes and felt guilt for not somehow intervening. She is certain that her mother, whom she believes was abused in her own childhood, sometimes deliberately goaded Pop until he exploded into violence.
Pop apparently never beat Andrews but did make sexual advances to her at least twice, once when she was about ten and again when she was about 16. Each time she successfully forestalled him; but after the second occasion her mother's sister had a lock installed on Andrews's bedroom door, a necessary precaution as the drunk and befuddled Pop tried the door just after the lock was installed. He never tried again.
Andrews's primary sources of love and comfort during these times were her Dad, her aunt (she of the bedroom lock) and her voice teacher. Only her aunt had some periods when she was around Andrews more or less constantly. Her Dad could not be, but he seems to have simply suffused her with love when he was able to see her.
Andrews now became the main breadwinner for the family as her mother also slipped into alcoholism. Her mother informed her that if she failed they would lose their house, so there was plenty of pressure on a very young child. Her mother also one day took her to a house party and had her sing for the guests there. The party's host then questioned her closely. On the way home her mother informed Andrews that this man was Andrews's actual biological father. Her Dad, who loved Andrews's mother, had married her while she was pregnant and raised Andrews as his own child. This must have been shocking to Andrews but she does not make much of her reaction, and it certainly did not affect her relationship with her Dad.
We now know how deeply unsettling, indeed devastating, this sort of family background can be to the emotional life of a child and the adult that they grow to be. Some people can be emotionally stunted in various ways for life. Andrews herself is unlikely to be unscathed. The prose style that she employs in discussing these events is telling in this regard. She writes frankly and clearly about them, but she is guarded. Her tone is matter of fact, much as if she were describing what had happened to someone else. It is a tribute to her that she was able apparently to be not merely functional but greatly successful as an actor, a mother and a wife.
Summary of Home: A Memoir of My Early Years
Since her first appearance on screen in Mary Poppins, Julie Andrews has played a series of memorable roles that have endeared her to generations. But she has never told the story of her life before fame. Until now.In Home: A Memoir of My Early Years, Julie takes her readers on a warm, moving, and often humorous journey from a difficult upbringing in war-torn Britain to the brink of international stardom in America. Her memoir begins in 1935, when Julie was born to an aspiring vaudevillian mother and a teacher father, and takes readers to 1962, when Walt Disney himself saw her on Broadway and cast her as the world's most famous nanny.
Along the way, she weathered the London Blitz of World War II; her parents' painful divorce; her mother's turbulent second marriage to Canadian tenor Ted Andrews, and a childhood spent on radio, in music halls, and giving concert performances all over England. Julie's professional career began at the age of twelve, and in 1948 she became the youngest solo performer ever to participate in a Royal Command Performance before the Queen. When only eighteen, she left home for the United States to make her Broadway debut in The Boy Friend, and thus began her meteoric rise to stardom.
Home is filled with numerous anecdotes, including stories of performing in My Fair Lady with Rex Harrison on Broadway and in the West End, and in Camelot with Richard Burton on Broadway; her first marriage to famed set and costume designer Tony Walton, culminating with the birth of their daughter, Emma; and the call from Hollywood and what lay beyond.
Julie Andrews' career has flourished over seven decades. From her legendary Broadway performances, to her roles in such iconic films as The Sound of Music, Mary Poppins, Thoroughly Modern Millie, Hawaii, 10, and The Princess Diaries, to her award-winning television appearances, multiple album releases, concert tours, international humanitarian work, best-selling children's books, and championship of literacy, Julie's influence spans generations. Today, she lives with her husband of thirty-eight years, the acclaimed writer/director Blake Edwards; they have five children and seven grandchildren.
Featuring over fifty personal photos, many never before seen, this is the personal memoir Julie Andrews' audiences have been waiting for.
Syphilis, alcoholism, infidelity, and indeterminate parentage may seem improbable touchstones in the back story of one who didn't so much portray as embody the blithe Maria in The Sound of Music. But as this memoir of her formative years makes clear, there is more gravitas to Andrews than meets the eye. From her childhood in rural England and initial forays into British theater, to her first massive successes on Broadway and in the West End--notably as Eliza Doolittle in My Fair Lady--Home puts her celebrated career in context. While arguably offering more detail about the Andrews family than necessary, it nevertheless dishes wonderful anecdotes about legends and Andrews contemporaries like Noël Coward, Rex Harrison, Robert Goulet, Richard Burton, and Rodgers and Hammerstein, in prose as crisp and immaculate as the author herself. It also offers a revealing look into the intricate, exhaustive craft of performing--skills often taken for granted in tabloid times. Since the book ends just as Andrews is about to launch into the celluloid stratosphere, can Volume II be far behind? After Home, it would be most welcome. --Kim Hughes
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