Julie

The above 2008 book caught my eye in a discount bookstore, so I bought it for a fiver [£5] purely for the cover picture of Julie, who has fascinated me ever since BILLY LIAR. Terrific picture - dreadful book, the epitome of a cut-and-paste job, by not one but two writers I had never heard of! Its 240 pages and by page 200 they are still on DON'T LOOK NOW - then the rest of her career and life from 1973 is rushed through in the remaining 40 pages telling us (or me, at any rate) nothing I did not know before. Everything about DARLING and its making is lifted verbatim from Dirk Bogarde's book SNAKES AND LADDERS! It is such a bland book that there is no mention of John Schlesinger being gay and Tony Forwood, Dirk Bogarde's partner, is referred to as his manager. How do books like this get commissioned in the first place? - I trust nobody paid full price for it! Julie though remains as enigmatic as ever and survives their intrusion.

Here is another picture of Julie which I like from the cover of the London National Film Theatre programme when they did a retrospective on her films back in 1989: