Julie Andrews
Dame Julie Andrews is an English actress, singer and author. Her accolades include an Academy Award, a British Academy Film Award, three Emmy Awards, three Grammy Awards, seven Golden Globe Awards and nominations for three Tony Awards. One of the biggest box office draws of the 1960s, Andrews has been honoured with the Kennedy Center Honors in 2001, the Screen Actors Guild Life Achievement Award in 2007, and the AFI Life Achievement Award in 2022. She was made a Dame by Queen Elizabeth II in the 2000 New Year Honours.
A child actress and singer, Andrews appeared in the West End in 1948 and from 1950 to 1952 on the radio programme "Educating Archie". She made her Broadway debut in The Boy Friend. Billed as "Britain's youngest prima donna", she rose to prominence in Broadway musicals starring as Eliza Doolittle in My Fair Lady and Queen Guinevere in Camelot. She also starred in the Rodgers and Hammerstein television musical Cinderella. She made her film debut playing Mary Poppins in Walt Disney's Mary Poppins and won the Academy Award for Best Actress. The following year, she starred in the musical film The Sound of Music, playing Maria von Trapp and winning the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Motion Picture Comedy or Musical.
Andrews starred in various films, working with directors including her husband Blake Edwards, George Roy Hill, and Alfred Hitchcock. Films she starred in include The Americanization of Emily, Hawaii, Torn Curtain, Thoroughly Modern Millie, Star!, The Tamarind Seed, 10, S.O.B., Victor/Victoria, That's Life!, and Duet for One. She later returned to films, acting in The Princess Diaries, The Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagement, as well as Eloise at the Plaza and Eloise at Christmastime. She also has voiced roles in the Shrek franchise and the Despicable Me franchise.
Andrews is also known for her collaborations with Carol Burnett, including television specials in 1962, 1971, and 1989. She starred in her variety special, The Julie Andrews Hour, for which she received the Primetime Emmy Award. She co-created and hosted Julie's Greenroom, and voiced Lady Whistledown in the Netflix series Bridgerton. Andrews has co-authored numerous children's books with her daughter and two autobiographies, Home: A Memoir of My Early Years and Home Work: A Memoir of My Hollywood Years.
Early life
Julia Elizabeth Wells was born on 1 October 1935 in Walton-on-Thames, Surrey, England. Her mother, Barbara Ward Wells was born in Chertsey and married Edward Charles "Ted" Wells, a teacher of metalwork and woodwork, in 1932. Andrews was conceived as a result of an affair her mother had with a family friend. Andrews learned of her true parentage from her mother when she was around 15, although it was not publicly disclosed until her 2008 autobiography.With the outbreak of World War II, her parents went their separate ways and were soon divorced. Each remarried: Barbara to Ted Andrews, in 1943, and Ted Wells in 1944 to Winifred Maud Birkhead, a war widow and former hairstylist at a war work factory that employed them both in Hinchley Wood, Surrey. Wells assisted with evacuating children to Surrey during the Blitz, while Andrews's mother joined her husband in entertaining the troops through the Entertainments National Service Association. Andrews lived briefly with Wells and her brother, John, in Surrey.
In 1940, Wells sent her to live with her mother and stepfather, who Wells thought would be better able to provide for his talented daughter's artistic training. While Andrews had been used to calling her stepfather "Uncle Ted", her mother suggested it would be more appropriate to refer to her stepfather as "Pop", while her father remained "Dad" or "Daddy" to her, a change which she disliked. The Andrews family was "very poor" and "lived in a bad slum area of London" at the time, stating that the war "was a very black period in my life." According to Andrews, her stepfather was violent and an alcoholic. He twice tried to get into bed with his stepdaughter while drunk, resulting in Andrews fitting a lock on her door.
As the stage career of her mother and stepfather improved, they were able to afford better surroundings, first to Beckenham and then, as the war ended, back to the Andrews' hometown of Hersham. The family took up residence at the Old Meuse, in West Grove, Hersham, a house where Andrews's maternal grandmother had served as a maid. Andrews's stepfather sponsored lessons for her, first at the independent arts educational school Cone-Ripman School and thereafter with concert soprano and voice instructor Madame Lilian Stiles-Allen.
Andrews said of Stiles-Allen, "She had an enormous influence on me", adding, "She was my third mother – I've got more mothers and fathers than anyone in the world". In her memoir Julie Andrews – My Star Pupil, Stiles-Allen records, "The range, accuracy and tone of Julie's voice amazed me ... she had possessed the rare gift of absolute pitch", though Andrews herself denies this in her 2008 autobiography Home. According to Andrews, "Madame was sure that I could do Mozart and Rossini, but, to be honest, I never was". Of her own voice, she says, "I had a very pure, white, thin voice, a four-octave range – dogs would come from miles around." After Cone-Ripman School, Andrews continued her academic education at the nearby Woodbrook School, a local state school in Beckenham.
Andrews was also trained in dance, learning from both a professional studio and her aunt’s school, where she studied ballet, ballroom, and tap. This early training gave her strong stage movement and rhythm, which later supported her work in musical theatre and film.
Career
1945–1953: Early career
Beginning in 1945, and for the next two years, Andrews performed spontaneously and unbilled on stage with her parents. "Then came the day when I was told I must go to bed in the afternoon because I was going to be allowed to sing with Mummy and Pop in the evening", Andrews explained. During her initial shows, Andrews stood on a beer crate to sing into the microphone, performing a solo or a duet with her stepfather, while her mother played piano. She later stated that "it must have been ghastly, but it seemed to go down all right". Fellow child entertainer Petula Clark, three years her senior, recalled touring around the UK by train to sing for the troops alongside Andrews; they slept in the luggage racks. Clark later said "It was fun—and not a lot of kids were having fun".Andrews had her career breakthrough when her stepfather introduced her to managing director Val Parnell, whose Moss Empires controlled prominent performance venues in London. At the age of 12, Andrews made her professional solo debut at the London Hippodrome, singing the difficult aria "Je suis Titania" from Mignon as part of a musical revue, called "Starlight Roof", on 22 October 1947. She played at the Hippodrome for one year. Of her role in "Starlight Roof", Andrews recalled: "There was this wonderful American person and comedian, Wally Boag, who made balloon animals. He would say, 'Is there any little girl or boy in the audience who would like one of these?' And I would rush up onstage and say, 'I'd like one, please.' And then he would chat to me and I'd tell him I sang. ... I was fortunate in that I absolutely stopped the show cold. I mean, the audience went crazy."
On 1 November 1948, a thirteen-year-old Andrews became the youngest solo performer ever to be seen in a Royal Variety Performance before King George VI and Queen Elizabeth at the London Palladium. Andrews performed alongside singer Danny Kaye, dancers the Nicholas Brothers, and the comedy team George and Bert Bernard.
Andrews subsequently followed her parents into radio and television. She performed in musical interludes of the BBC Light Programme comedy show Up the Pole and was a cast member in Educating Archie, from 1950 to 1952. She reportedly made her television début on the BBC programme RadiOlympia Showtime on 8 October 1949. Andrews appeared on West End theatre at the London Casino, where she played one year each as Princess Badroulbadour in Aladdin and the egg in Humpty Dumpty. Andrews also appeared on provincial stages in Jack and the Beanstalk and Little Red Riding Hood, as well as starring as the lead role in Cinderella. In 1952, she voiced Princess Zeila in the English dub of the Italian animated movie La Rosa di Bagdad, in her first film and first venture into voice-over work.
1954–1962: Broadway, ''My Fair Lady'' and television ventures
On 30 September 1954, the eve of her 19th birthday, Andrews made her Broadway debut as Polly Browne in the London musical The Boy Friend. Andrews was recommended to director Vida Hope for the part by actress Hattie Jacques, whom Andrews regards as a "catalyst" for her career. Eve Benda recognised her special talent and predicted her stardom. Andrews was anxious about moving to New York; at the time, she was both breadwinner and caretaker for her family, and took the part upon her father's encouragement. Andrews stated that at the time, she had "no idea" how to research a role or study a script, and cites Cy Feuer's direction as being "phenomenal". The Boy Friend became a hit, with Andrews receiving praise; critics called her the stand-out of the show. In 1955, Andrews accepted a role opposite Bing Crosby in the television film, High Tor, which was filmed in November of the same year. This was Andrews's first screen project, which she described as "daunting". High Tor was televised the following March before a live audience for the Ford Star Jubilee, receiving lukewarm reviews.Near the end of her one-year run with The Boy Friend, Andrews was approached to audition to Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe for the role of Eliza Doolittle in My Fair Lady. She was offered the part during her third reading. She later wrote that she felt she could "be Eliza, could find and understand her" if only someone were to "gently unravel the knotted ... string inside my stomach". During rehearsals, director Moss Hart spent forty-eight consecutive hours solely with Andrews, where they "hammered through each scene"; Andrews later stated that "the good man had stripped feelings bare ... moulded, kneaded, and helped become the character of Eliza... her part of soul". Andrews referred to it as the best acting lesson she had ever received, later cementing the role with her "own touches and flourishes" and continuing to work on the character throughout her two-year run. On 15 March 1956, My Fair Lady opened on Broadway at the Mark Hellinger Theatre. The play was a huge success with both the audience and critics, though soon after opening she learned she needed to tone down her learned cockney accent so that the American audience could understand her, a change which was reversed at the West End performance a year later. Andrews describes her performances as Eliza as "the great learning period" of her life.
File:Richard Burton and Julie Andrews Camelot.JPG|thumb|left|upright|Andrews as Queen Guinevere with Richard Burton as King Arthur in the musical Camelot
Richard Rodgers was so impressed with Andrews's talent that concurrent with her run in My Fair Lady she was featured in the Rodgers and Hammerstein television musical Cinderella, which was written especially for her. Cinderella was broadcast live on CBS on 31 March 1957 under the musical direction of Alfredo Antonini and had an estimated 107 million viewers. The show was broadcast live in colour from CBS Studio 72, at Broadway and 81st Street in New York: CBS' only East Coast colour studio. Andrews was nominated for an Emmy Award for her role. She described the performance as "incredibly hard" and stated it took her "years to realise the enormity" of the production. In 1957, Andrews released her debut solo album, The Lass with the Delicate Air, which harked back to her British music hall days. The album includes performances of English folk songs as well as the World War II anthem, "London Pride", a patriotic song written by Noël Coward in 1941 during the Blitz, which Andrews herself had survived.
Between 1956 and 1962, Andrews guest-starred on The Ed Sullivan Show, and also appeared on The Dinah Shore Chevy Show, What's My Line?, The Jack Benny Program, The Bell Telephone Hour, and The Garry Moore Show. In June 1962, Andrews co-starred in Julie and Carol at Carnegie Hall, a CBS special with Carol Burnett. In 1960, Lerner and Loewe again cast her in a period musical as Queen Guinevere in Camelot, along with Richard Burton and newcomer Robert Goulet. Andrews called the work "monumental" due to the heavy set costuming and detailed literary themes. Camelot premiered at the Majestic Theatre to "adequate" reviews, which Andrews credited to off-set production issues and comparisons to My Fair Lady. The musical was substantially revised both before and during the show's Broadway run.
Casting for the film adaptation of My Fair Lady began in 1962; Alan Jay Lerner hoped for Andrews to reprise her role, but Warner Brothers studio head Jack Warner decided Andrews lacked sufficient name recognition; the part was played by the established film actress Audrey Hepburn, with the bulk of the singing dubbed by Marni Nixon. As Warner later recalled that the decision was made for financial purposes, stating, "In my business, I have to know who brings people and their money to a cinema box office. Audrey Hepburn had never made a financial flop." Andrews later reflected that she understood her experience on Broadway "was within a very small pond" but wished she had been able to record her performance for posterity.