Home: A Memoir of My Early Years - Julie Andrews Edwards

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.

Published: 2008-04-01 (Hachette Books)

ISBN: 9780786865659

Language: English

Format: Hardcover, 339 pages

Goodreads' rating: -

Genres

Nonfiction Memoir Biography Autobiography

Reviews

Melba rated it

This was an interesting read. I know I certainly learned some things about how Julie Andrews grew up. It wasn't what I was expecting. I do hope that she does a second memoir continuing where she left off.

Melina rated it

An avid admirer of the best voice on Broadway (and in movie musicals), I couldn't wait to crack open this book after being on the wait list for weeks. However, after reading this pleasant memoir, I closed the book with many more questions about what makes Julie Andrews tick than I had before I finished the first chapter. The strength in this easy read are the few times that Andrews delivers wonderful "Broadway in the making" tales of working opposite such greats as Rex Harrison and Richard Burton. A wonderfully down-to-earth Andrews doesn't seem to realize that she was a great at all... there are plenty of stories of stage fright, embarrassment and gaffes. She seems blissfully unaware of her own stage presence (which leapt off the screen and hit me hard as a child watching The Sound of Music for the first time in 1970). Maybe that's why this book never goes too deep into what was her driving force, other than the weight of keeping her somewhat unstable family afloat.Moss Hart described her great English strength of character in a great quote that probably sums Andrews up best... Despite her childhood angst, teen awkwardness and the lack of a stable home environment, Andrews just kept looking forward. However, I would have loved a little less "stiff upper lip" and a little more depth of emotion-- but there's no bitterness or anger here-- just wisps of sadness and the occasional moment of regret and then more marching onward.Andrews collected an amazing array of friends along the way. Here's one life that made me wish I could have been a fly on the wall and filled in some of the emotional blanks.

Julissa rated it

As a lifelong devotee of Julie Andrews and having read many of her children's books, I knew fairly well what to expect in this, her first volume of autobiography.She's charming and polite and as forthcoming as she can be, which is to say, not very forthcoming. There's crisp British distance between the events of her childhood and young adulthood, none of which was terribly storybook. The product of a one-night stand (which she didn't know until much later), Andrews dearly loved the man she thought was her real father and was leery of her stepfather (and for good reason). Once she got sucked into vaudeville with her freakishly high child soprano, she got a front row seat to watch her mother and stepfather's dysfunctional marriage (they were a vaudevile act, too) and her mother's alocholism.The book takes Andrews to New York for "The Boyfriend," her first Broadway show, and through "My Fair Lady" and "Camelot." "Home" ends with Andrews and her baby daughter heading to Los Angeles and the welcoming arms of Walt Disney and "Mary Poppins."Andrews is a lovely writer, and you can just her hear voice in nearly every sentence.Probably for fans only, but this fan was charmed.