GERTRUDE LAWRENCE

Star of Screen, Musical and Revue

Original Recordings 1927–1936

For more than two decades Gertrude Lawrence was the undisputed ‘First Lady’ of musical comedy in London and New York, having had parts in best-selling shows bestowed upon her by Coward, Rodgers and Hammerstein, Cole Porter, and Kurt Weill. Revered and beatified in theatrical circles even before her sudden death, on September 6, 1952, she was the very stuff of legends by the time Twentieth Century Fox finally embalmed her in Star! (the $14-million, Oscar-nominated, 1968 evocation of a lost theatrical world in which she was portrayed by Julie Andrews). Opinions varied as to Gertrude’s greatness, but she remained a topic for conversation and that was the main thing. Coward confessed "she would simply take my breath away", while Agnes De Mille averred "She can’t sing – but who cares?" For Lawrence Olivier "She was a blazing great star, and we shall