7/1/2023 0 Comments Hollywood life latest news![]() ![]() ![]() The diaries, which are quoted often in “Home Work,” kept the book accurate - “More than a few times, Mom would swear something happened one place when it was another,” Hamilton says - but they also brought all those things Andrews had shoved away right back to life. “It was a way of sorting out each day, trying to get a tiny bit of perspective about all the things that were happening.” (Warning: That “Sound of Music” helicopter backdraft was nothing compared to the burning-skirt incident during the “Hawaii” shoot.) “It was around the time I was working on ‘Hawaii,’” says Andrews. “And at a certain point in this book, Mom had begun keeping diaries.”Īlthough she had always kept copious datebooks, Andrews began writing daily journal entries around the time she began psychotherapy, an event she describes candidly as the most courageous thing she had ever done. ![]() “We had come up with a pretty good system,” Hamilton says. “But there were definitely some tears.”Īs with “Home,” she and Hamilton began by building a timeline, and then spent hours each day talking it through. “There was a lot of laughter writing this book,” she adds. It’s amazing the amount of things you shove away to get through the day-to-day. “At the time I was busy living my life, working, taking care of my kids, being a wife. “It was like living my life all over again, except in more detail,” Andrews says. Whether describing how the backdraft from the helicopter used to capture the famous opening shot in “The Sound of Music” knocked her flat into the mud on every take, or the difficulty of separating from and then divorcing her first husband, Tony Walton, her deep friendship with Carol Burnett or the grief she felt when she left her mother’s bedside hours before she died, Andrews manages to acknowledge the remarkable nature of her life while making it absolutely relatable, to offer perspective rather than a parade of nostalgic insight. Or endless moving, ailing parents and a new marriage troubled teens a spouse’s struggles with addiction and even, when she and that spouse, Blake Edwards, were adopting their second child together, the fall of Saigon. Especially when you are also dealing with, say, divorce, falling in love, raising children and entering psychotherapy. Instead, she called it “Home Work,” which plays nicely off “Home” while reminding readers that just because performers make it look easy doesn’t mean performing is easy. So when naming the book Andrews would have been forgiven a few superlatives. The American Film Institute recently announced she will be receiving its 2020 Life Achievement Award (why it took so long is known only to them). In the years the memoir covers, Andrews starred in countless films, television movies, specials and her own variety series, which won seven Emmys for its one and only season. “I was very lucky,” she says, a phrase that occurs often in “Home Work.” “I was blessed with a voice that gave me many wonderful opportunities.” While nothing like an overnight success - suggest that she took Hollywood by storm and you will be reminded, gently but firmly, that Andrews began working the British vaudeville circuit at 10 and made her Broadway debut at 19 - the fact remains that she began her film career by winning an Oscar for her very first movie (“Mary Poppins”), a feat she followed up a year later with the critically acclaimed antiwar drama “The Americanization of Emily” and a little picture called “The Sound of Music.” After all, when choosing a title for the story of her transition from “star of stage” to “star of stage, screen, television and the hearts of millions,” Andrews could have gone big. ![]()
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