Home: A Memoir of My Early Years | 
 enlarge | Author: Julie Andrews
Publisher: Hyperion
Category: Book
List Price: $26.95
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Rating:  56 reviews
Sales Rank: 2748
Media: Hardcover
Pages: 352
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.4
Dimensions (in): 9.2 x 6 x 1.3
ISBN: 0786865652
Dewey Decimal Number: 791.4028092
EAN: 9780786865659
Publication Date: April 1, 2008
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Condition: Book and cover in like new condition; dust jacket has slight fraying at top edge and minor crease on inside front flap, otherwise like new; ships in 1 to 2 business days; delivery confirmation on all U.S. shipments
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Amazon.com Review
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 Noel 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
Product Description
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.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 51 more reviews...
 She Has Confidence...in a Gracious, Generous Memoir of the Years Before Her International Stardom April 1, 2008
Ed Uyeshima (San Francisco, CA USA)
92 out of 96 found this review helpful
I am convinced that any baby boomer who does not admit to having had a bit of a crush on Julie Andrews is lying. I recall even as a toddler how I begged my parents to let me see Mary Poppins and The Sound of Music multiple times only to enjoy those movies again in sing-along versions forty years later. The crispness of her vocal delivery and the angularity of her wholesome appeal just seemed right before the counter-cultural revolution took over with the escalation of the Vietnam War. However, she does not get to that career pinnacle in her memoir, as her story stops just as she flew to Los Angeles in 1963 to film Mary Poppins. It's a major credit to Andrews that she makes intriguing those early years prior to her international success with such perceptive candor and gentle humor. Perhaps because of her long-standing success as a children's book author, she displays a great deal of dexterity as a writer.
Andrews' childhood memories are full of self-effacing observations about a most unenviable home life. Belying her image of elegant breeding, she was raised in poverty by an alcoholic mother and a lecherous stepfather during the dwindling days of vaudeville in England. Already a part of her parents' music hall act by age nine, Andrews found she had an acrobatic soprano voice that so astounded the press that she performed for the Queen and became a nightly sensation at the London Palladium. She had a range of over four octaves and yet most tellingly labels her voice "freakishly high". Her talent certainly impressed others more than herself as she became the toast of Broadway and London first in Sandy Wilson's The Boy Friend and then legendarily as Eliza Doolittle and Queen Guinevere in Lerner and Lowe's My Fair Lady and Camelot, respectively. Andrews' professional recollections are full of celebrity dish but not obnoxiously so between Rex Harrison's flatulence, Richard Burton's amorous advances, Cecil Beaton's bitchiness about how she wears his clothes, and impressionable backstage visits from the likes of Laurence Olivier and Ingrid Bergman.
However, the book's most resonant passages focus on her conflicted and still painful memories of her rather dysfunctional family - her late mother, a promising classical pianist who let the bottle overcome her; a philandering grandfather whose indiscretions eventually cost the life of her grandmother; and most harrowing is her stepfather whose violent tendencies instilled an unsettling fear in the young Julie. There are some surprising revelations Andrews willingly shares in that recognizably crisp manner, and reflecting the woman herself, there is no doubt of the personal bravery it took for her to share them. With the inclusion of over fifty personal photos, the 339-page autobiography really whets the appetite for the sequel which I am hopeful is in the works since it will cover her impressive big-screen career. In the meantime, this first volume clearly reflects how she evolved into the iconic persona that is her legacy - classy, disciplined, forthcoming, amusing, a bit starchy, and truly one of the great treasures. I think I still have that crush.
Julie Andrews's Unflinching Memoir Plumbs the Depths April 2, 2008
Susan Eisenberg (Silver Spring, Maryland United States)
28 out of 31 found this review helpful
I came of age listening to the original cast recordings of MY FAIR LADY and CAMELOT, and my first glimpse of Julie Andrews was in snippets from the latter show on ED SULLIVAN. I fell in love with her crystalline soprano and crisp diction and have always followed her career. When I heard she was writing a memoir of her early years, I couldn't wait to read it. After the book arrived from Amazon, I devoured it in two sittings, staying up late to finish. In beautiful, unflinching prose she fills in the gaps I've wondered about over the years, giving insights into her evolution from a young English girl with a big voice to the coloratura toast of Broadway--a transition she made with grit and talent. Ms. Andrews depicts a childhood that forced her to leave school at 14 and support her family with her singing, but there's not a trace of self-pity. She also shares details about her vocal training with Lilian Stiles-Allen. If you're a Julie Andrews fan, you'll want to buy this book and immerse yourself in her memories. She's a "fair lady," all right, and still the queen of the golden age of musicals. Brava, Ms. Andrews, and many thanks! -- from Susan Dormady Eisenberg, contributing writer to Classical Singer Magazine & author of the novel, THE VOICE I JUST HEARD.
An Amazing Woman's Early-Life Story Beautifully Told April 2, 2008
A. Howell (Ft. Cobb, OK United States)
28 out of 32 found this review helpful
I read the book in one evening. I could not put it down. I found myself at times forgetting that it was a book about Julie Andrews' early years and would get caught up in the storytelling. I found it to be occasionally very candid and, as with everything I've ever read, seen or heard from Ms. Andrews, included a great deal of humor. I laughed out loud many times.
What an amazing woman and a wonderful book. I eagerly await the next "chapter".
What a long-awaited delight! April 19, 2008
Nicholas A. Ziinojr (ridge, new york United States)
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
This is the best autobiography I've ever read.I have been eagerly awaiting this book since it was announced last year,and I was not disappointed.Julie tells her own life story in a straightforward and very honest manner.Her prose is lovely,and the photos are excellent.And yes,she
dishes the gossip(wait till you read what she says about Rex Harrison and Richard Burton!)The best thing about the book is that it's very informal.
You really feel like you're just having a long,intimate conversation with
Julie.This is a warm,leisurely,and highly entertaining read.I can't wat for the sequel!The Sound of Music (1965 Film Soundtrack - 40th Anniversary Special Edition)
Home - Almost A Love Story June 10, 2008
Joseph Albanese (New York, New York United States)
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
Whether as Maria Augusta von Trapp or Victor/Victoria, any role that Julie Andrews tackled assured her audience of several things: she would pour her heart and soul into the part, and, it would be a classy bit.
It is no surprise that her autobiography, HOME, is just as classy as the woman who wrote it. Although it stops with Julie Andrews on her way to Hollywood to make Mary Poppins, the parts of her life that were shadowed by her meteoric rise in popularity are now told in a clean, honest way.
Her childhood in England is discussed as is: the war; vaudeville and her early career on the stage in England. Without bragging, Julie Andrews enters the reader's mind as a dedicated, hard working and diligent performer who deserved to succeed.
There are sad parts as well: her dysfunctional family; a rather surprising introduction to a man whom she discovered was actually her father. However, Julie does not dwell on them or detail them with any sense of historonics or self pity. She is, and always was, a very strong woman.
I found her recollections on performing in MY FAIR LADY and CAMELOT to be of particular interest but there is not a dull or lagging part in this wonderful book.
Now, about the sequel . . .
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