JULIE ANDREWS HOW I SAVED A VON TRAPP CHILD FROM DROWNING
In a practically perfect memoir, national treasure Julie Andrews reveals the triumphs, trials and secrets of 74 years of stardom
SHE IS one of the most iconic British actresses of all time, beloved by generations for her starring roles in Mary Poppins and The Sound of Music. But, as her new memoir, Home Work, reveals, behind the scenes, Julie Andrews’s life wasn’t always “practically perfect in every way”.
Growing up during the Second World War in Surrey, she sang with her mum, a pianist, and stepfather Ted Andrews, a Canadian tenor singer, in vaudeville shows from the age of 10.
But off stage, her childhood was beset by anxiety.
Though she was later famed for her beauty, Julie struggled to fit in at school, “ever aware” of what she describes as her bandy legs, buck teeth and lazy eye.
Meanwhile, her stepfather – whom she called Pop – turned to drink and became increasingly loud and volatile. “He would go on allnight benders,” she writes. “The more Pop drank, the more abusive he became.”
But while her home life was difficult, Julie’s crystal-clear singing voice was getting her noticed. In her teens she was signed to an agent and went on to star in Cinderella at the London Palladium. By 19 she was performing on Broadway.
And at 23, she married Tony Walton, a set designer she’d known since they were teenagers. By her mid-20s, she landed starring roles in three major Broadway productions: The Boy Friend, My Fair Lady, and Camelot.
Her stellar performance in Camelot got her noticed by Walt Disney himself. He came to see the production and was so entranced he went backstage to meet her.
Julie was amazed when he asked her to be in a new film he was working on – Mary Poppins.
“He then asked if I would consider playing the title role,” she writes. “I was overwhelmed by the offer, but told him I was newly pregnant. To my astonishment, he replied, ‘That’s OK. We’ll wait’.”
Turning to Tony, Walt asked what he did for a living. On hearing that he was a set designer and seeing some of his work, Walt offered him the job as the principal set and costume designer.
WALT’S persona “was that of a kindly uncle – twinkly-eyed, chivalrous and genuinely proud of all he had created”, she writes in her memoir. So, in 1962 with newborn baby Emma, she and Tony started their new life in Hollywood.
When Emma was just three months old, Julie started rehearsals for Mary Poppins. Keen to lose the baby weight, she threw herself into work. It was then she developed Mary Poppins’s signature walk.
“I felt that she would never stroll leisurely, so I practised walking as fast as I could, placing one foot immediately after the other to give the impression of hardly touching the ground.”
But acting in Hollywood was a different world from Broadway. Julie was amazed to discover how long it took to film a single scene – including hours suspended from a harness for flying sequences. At one point, the wires gave way and she was dropped from the ceiling, narrowly avoiding injury. She recalls letting rip with a very un-Poppins-like stream of expletives.
As shooting continued, tensions emerged between Walt and P L Travers, author of the children’s story. When Travers was sent back to England to prevent her interfering, Julie wrote often to mollify her.
She understood Travers’s concerns for her character, so tried to keep the letters positive, focusing on how well the shooting was going and the talented crew and cast. Travers would later praise Julie’s beautifully understated performance.
Indeed, Julie went on to win an Oscar for Best Actress, as well as a Golden Globe – but admits she hid the Oscar in her attic for some time. She had been disappointed at missing out on the role of Eliza Doolittle in My Fair Lady, which went to Audrey Hepburn.
“I honestly felt that I didn’t deserve it, and that perhaps it had been given to me as a kind gesture because I hadn’t been cast in My Fair Lady,” she writes. Indeed, at the award ceremony, Audrey herself told her: “Julie, you really should have done My Fair Lady... but I didn’t have the guts to turn it down.”
But Julie’s performance in Mary Poppins won her the role that defined her career, Maria von Trapp in The Sound Of Music.
Julie wasn’t sure. She worried about being typecast as another nanny, had seen The Sound Of Music on Broadway and wasn’t a fan of its “saccharine” storyline.
But her agent encouraged her to accept the part. The film was shot on location in Austria, mostly in brilliant sunshine, but Julie recalls that the cast and crew often waited days for a break in the rain.
Possibly the biggest challenge came in a boating scene, where Maria and her charges had to sing as they fell out of their rowing boat into a lake.
Julie recalls: “The assistant director waded rather urgently through the water towards me and whispered, ‘The little one can’t swim...’ ‘WHAT?!’
“‘Yes,’ he said. ‘We’d be most grateful if you could get to her as quickly as possible once you’re in the water’. The first take was per
fect but the director still felt he needed another shot.
“In the second take, the boat rocked so violently that I went over the back as Kym Karath (playing Gretl) went over the front. I have never swum so fast in my life.
“I could see the poor child flailing away and going under at least twice. Crew members dived into the water to help save her, and mercifully we got there in time.”
As she was pulled out, Kym, seven, coughed up the water she’d swallowed and was bundled into blankets.
Filming continued in Hollywood and wrapped on September 1, 1964. On its release the following year, Julie won a second Golden Globe. Behind the scenes, however, her marriage was unravelling.
She writes movingly of wanting to be the adoring wife her husband deserved – but feeling the pull of Hollywood while he was unable to give up his work elsewhere.
The pair divorced, and in the late 1960s, she married American filmmaker Blake Edwards, who was 13 years her senior and had two children of his own. She continued starring in films, including playing the lead in her husband’s Darling Lili.The couple tried unsuccessfully for more children. In the mid-1970s they adopted two girls from Vietnam, Amelia and Joanna.
As she got older, Julie felt increasingly torn between looking after her parents, who both lived in the UK, and looking after her children and Blake in the US.
In 1982, she starred in comedy Victor/Victoria. After filming, she reflected in her diary: “Would it have been better for my career if I had sacrificed family, or husband?”
Despite her reservations, Victor/ Victoria was well received and Julie won yet another Golden Globe.
In 1997, her singing career was ended after throat surgery for strained vocal chords. She underwent four corrective operations, and in 2000, won a payout from the hospital where she had the original surgery. In 2010, Julie lost husband Blake to pneumonia. He was 88.
Looking back, 84-year-old Julie – made a Dame in 2000 for services to the performing arts – lauds The Sound Of Music as her greatest success. Its songs stay with her to this day. “The music, still – and always – lives in my bones and in my soul.”
●Home Work: A Memoir Of My Hollywood Years by Julie Andrews (Weidenfeld & Nicholson, £20). For free UK delivery, call Express Bookshop on 01872 562310, or send a cheque/PO payable to Express Bookshop: Julie Andrews Offer, PO Box 200, Falmouth TR11 4WJ or visit express book shop.co.uk. Dame Julie will discuss her book at The Southbank Centre’s Royal Festival Hall with FANE Productions on November 2.