Home: A Memoir of My Early Years

Home: A Memoir of My Early Years

Julie Andrews Edwards

Enjoyment: Quality: Characters: Plot:
Write a review

1 ratings • 1 reviews

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.


From the Forum

No posts yet

Kick off the convo with a theory, question, musing, or update

Recent Reviews
  • Enjoyment: Quality: Characters: Plot:

    I found this to be quite interesting--picked it up because JA is the author of one of my best friend's favorite books and I was sure that JA had plenty of stories to share! Well there were lots of cool bits and SO MANY names dropped. I really only recognized names once she got to American Broadway a little over halfway through.
    Though it's right in the title that this is a memoir of early years, I was quite disappointed to have this book end just as she's coming to the US to do Mary Poppins and hasn't done Sound of Music either. Plus, JA writes many many times about her current husband Blake, but the book doesn't get up to how she and her first husband split and she met Blake and where the other 4 of her 5 kids come from... so I'm going to go searching/waiting for a memoir of middle years.

    0
    comments 0
    Reply
  • Community recs for similar books
    Buy Lucy & Jennifer a coffee ☕️