Star!

Star! is a 1968 American musical film directed by Robert Wise. The screenplay by William Fairchild is based upon the life and career of British performer Gertrude Lawrence. The film opens in 1940, with Lawrence in a screening room watching a documentary film chronicling her life, then flashes back to Clapham in 1915, when she leaves home to join her vaudevillian father in a dilapidated Brixton music hall. Eventually she joins the chorus in André Charlot's West End revue. She reunites with close childhood friend Noël Coward who provides witty commentary on Gertie's actions. Charlot... becomes annoyed with Gertie's efforts to stand out, literally, from the chorus. He threatens to fire her, but stage manager Jack Roper intercedes and gets her hired as a general understudy to the leads. She marries Jack, but it's clear she is more inclined to perform onstage than stay home and play wife. While pregnant, she insists on going on for an absent star, and captivates the audience with her own star-making performance of "Burlington Bertie". Charlot and Roeper witness the audiences warm approval, and both realize, Charlot grudgingly and Roeper wistfully, that Gertie belongs on the stage.
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