Starred review from October 28, 2019
Singer and actor Andrews, writing with her daughter Hamilton, offers a sincere and inspiring account of her life, focusing on her Hollywood years beginning in 1962. After a brief recap of her youth in England (covered in more detail in her earlier memoir, Home), Andrews recounts her first movie role in Mary Poppins and her experiences in the Disney studios, where Walt Disney himself offered “fatherly kindness” to the young actress, who was newly a mother and married to her childhood sweetheart, set and costume designer Tony Walton. Her next big role—again, as a nanny—was in The Sound of Music. Writing of her role in 1966’s Torn Curtain, she shares behind-the-scenes tales of Alfred Hitchcock’s wry humor, as well as shooting an “anything but dreamy” love scene with Paul Newman. Her marriage collapsed from the strain of work and travel, but in 1969 she met the mercurial producer Blake Edwards at a traffic intersection on Sunset Boulevard. Andrews shares tales of her colleagues (Peter Sellers was testy on The Pink Panther set; Dudley Moore charmed her in Ten) as well as her efforts to stabilize her marriage to Edwards (they remained married until his death in 2010). This charming account of Andrews’s professional and personal life will no doubt serve to make the venerated performer all the more beloved.
October 11, 2019
Starring in films ranging from Mary Poppins and The Sound of Music to Torn Curtain and Victor/Victoria, award-winning actress Andrews has captivated audiences with her screen presence and beautiful voice. In this memoir, cowritten with Andrews's daughter and frequent collaborator Walton Hamilton, she shares engaging behind-the-scenes stories about each of her movies from 1963 through 1986, as well as interactions with costars (including Dick Van Dyke, Christopher Plummer, and James Garner) and directors (Alfred Hitchcock and her late husband, Blake Edwards, among them). An introduction, drawn from Andrews's best-selling 2008 memoir Home, contextualizes her youth and years in vaudeville and on the stage. Andrews parses her Hollywood experience through the lens of fame and its challenges, including her struggles to balance a demanding career and frequent travel and relocation with her private life and the impact it had on her marriages, children, and extended family. She shares how she derived satisfaction in her roles as a children's book author and an activist promoting international humanitarian aid and disaster relief. VERDICT A frank and intimate storyteller whose radiant spirit fills these pages, Andrews chronicles the peaks and valleys of her life and career. This event-packed memoir is a must for fans of Andrews's life and work, students of cinema history, and anyone who is curious about musical film production. [See Prepub Alert, 4/8/19.]--Carol J. Binkowski, Bloomfield, NJ
Copyright 2019 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
October 15, 2019
It's been awhile since Andrews' first memoir, Home (2008), so she begins her second warm, graceful, and candid look back with a crisply orienting recap of her life in England as a child performer who dropped out of school to support her dysfunctional family. Her struggle to balance her longing for a stable home life with her devotion to her work underlies her phenomenal artistic evolution. Andrews begins here with her first triumph on Broadway and Walt Disney whisking her off to Hollywood, knowing that he had found the perfect Mary Poppins. A journal keeper and children's-book author as well as a gloriously gifted singer and actor, Andrews, along with her steadfast coauthor, tells captivating, sweetly self-deprecating, funny, and painful behind-the-scenes tales about her many movie adventures and frankly recounts the end of her first marriage and the high drama of her second as she and renowned director Blake Edwards collaborated cinematically and in creating a complicated extended family often beset with traumas. This deeply pleasurable and forthright chronicle illuminates the myriad reasons home work has such profound meaning for artist and humanitarian Andrews. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Andrews' star power is one lure; the other is her treasury of delectable Hollywood revelations.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)