Star! (1968)

Noel Coward: Close personal relationships are bloody difficult, my darling but they do get easier with time. Loneliness gets harder.

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Noel Coward: You can't decide what you want until you decide who you are.

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This film grew out of a massive attempt by Twentieth Century-Fox to duplicate its earlier success with The Sound of Music by producing three expensive, large-scale musicals over a period of three years, Doctor Dolittle and Hello, Dolly! being the others. Unfortunately, tastes in popular entertainment were beginning to change and all three films' box-office performance reflected this. All were released amidst massive pre-release publicity and all lost equally massive amounts of money for the studio. The result was that several top studio executives lost their jobs, and the studio itself went into such dire financial straits that it only produced one picture for the entire calendar year of 1970. In truth, it would never recoup its losses until a highly successful theatrical reissue of "The Sound of Music" in early 1973.
Beatrice Lillie was a friend of Gertrude Lawrence but her role was written out of the screenplay after she refused to let anyone play her role but herself (she was 73 at the time).
According to a Julie Andrews, biography Ian McKellen screen tested for the role of Noel Coward by performing Coward's own "Parisian Pierrot" and received an ovation from William Fairchild and the crew. However he lost out to Daniel Massey.
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