Star!

Star! (1968) is Robert Wise's biographical musical you can watch online on iFILM. Julie Andrews plays Gertrude Lawrence, the British stage actress who owned the West End and Broadway from the 1920s through the 1940s. Daniel Massey appears as Noël Coward, her closest friend and the wry commentator on a career built as much on dazzle as on talent.

Wise directed Andrews here just three years after The Sound of Music, but the tone is deliberately different — less fairy tale, more unflinching portrait of a woman who came up from poverty and music-hall gigs and never quite learned how to exist away from applause. At 176 minutes, the film is big, glossy, packed with period production numbers, and dressed in Donald Brooks costumes that alone justify the wide-screen frame.

Star! was cut down and re-released under a different title after a rough opening in 1968, and it took decades to be reassessed on its own terms. For fans of classic Hollywood musicals and backstage biography, it remains a fascinating, undervalued piece of work. Stream Star! (1968) online on iFILM.