An evening with Julie Andrews / Julie, Madly, Deeply

Saturday 24th May 2014 / Saturday 14th June 2014 

I love Julie Andrews. I love Julie Andrews. Did I mention that I love Julie Andrews?

This is a well-known and celebrated fact. There is a picture of Julie in my living room (courtesy of a birthday present from my friend, Demelza). There is a picture of her on my kitchen cupboard (courtesy of a newspaper cutting from my housemate, Anna). There’s a picture of her in my work inbox (courtesy of Jacqueline trying to cheer me up during a tough week). Julie is simply one of my favourite things!

My love of Julie is not simply limited to her most famous films: the glorious Sound of Music and the outstanding Mary Poppins. No, I am far more of a Julie-fanatic than that. I am an admirer of all of her work from her magnificent performance in Victor Victoria (1982) as a woman pretending to be a man pretending to be a woman, to her hilarious television specials with the wonderful Carol Burnett (1962, 1971 and 1989), to her heartbreaking portrayal of a violinist crippled by Multiple Sclerosis in Duet for One (1986). Itunes informs me that I have nine Julie Andrews’ albums. I suspect it might be more!

I cannot really explain why I love Julie so much. It's partly because I grew up with her, but I think it’s also because of the sincerity that she brings to each performance. Watch her sing in those Austrian Alps and your heart soars with joy. Watch her speech-making as Genovia's Queen and you want to curtsey. Watch her struggle to hold it together in Blake Edwards' That’s Life (1986) and you want to cry with her. She inspires you to sing, to get up and dance, even to tidy your bedroom (spit, spot), and, in recent years, after the devastating loss of her singing voice, to grit your teeth and carry on, no matter what.

A new poster for my collection!

The moment I learned Julie was returning to the UK this year for a series of speaking engagements in Birmingham, Liverpool, London and Bournemouth, I rushed to book my ticket. And so, a few weeks’ ago with my mummy and brother in tow, I saw the great lady herself at Birmingham’s National Indoor Arena.

The audience at the NIA was a delightful mix of golden oldies, children, families, young couples, mums and daughters. The excitement was palpable. Even before Dame Julie appeared on stage, the woman in front of us was in tears of joy at the opening clip from The Sound of Music. Others chatted merrily about their admiration for Julie. A pair of women behind us concluded that she was indeed ‘practically perfect in every way,’ except for her hair, which was sometimes a little flat!

The NIA was set up in auditorium form with a simple platform and lectern from which Julie spoke. Very importantly, this tour was described as a series of speaking-engagements. Julie would be in conversation. I say ‘very importantly’ because I have seen Julie before. I was there at the O2 arena in 2010 when she brought her concert tour, ‘The Gift of Music,’ to the UK. This was a celebration of the music of Rodgers and Hammerstein, coupled with a musical adaptation of one of Julie’s own stories, Simeon’s Gift. Julie was accompanied by several Broadway singers and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. These concerts had proven extremely successful in the U.S. The UK, however, was not so friendly. In fact, if you google ‘Julie Andrews’, you can easily find the Daily Mail’s assessment of proceedings: ‘Julie Andrews’ great comeback? But no one told fans she can’t sing’ shouts the venomous headline. The press almost universally slated the show, stating ‘fans’ were angry and disappointed that their heroine had not been singing, and had demanded their ticket-money back.

Julie at the O2 in 2010

Even writing about this event makes me angry! I think at the time, I even wrote to The Telegraph to protest! I am not suggesting that the evening at the O2 was perfect. It wasn’t. The venue itself is cavernous and was wholly unsuited to a concert of this sort. It needs to be filled with loud rock or noisy sport. Although the supporting singers were hugely talented, they were largely unknown to a British audience and therefore a connection was missed. What upset me, however, was the notion propagated in the press that Dame Julie had somehow deceived her audience. For a start, whatever the tabloids say, no genuine fan of Julie Andrews could fail to know that she tragically lost her singing voice in 1997 as the result of a botched vocal chord operation. Secondly, even if some admirers of Julie had still been unaware of this in the spring of 2010, there were so many interviews on television and in the newspapers prior to the concert, in which Julie spoke frankly about her vocal surgery, that you’d have to be living in a cloister to have remained uninformed. Thirdly, Julie did sing at the O2. She even sang two songs by herself, ‘My Funny Valentine’ from Babes in Arms and ‘A Cock-Eyed Optimist’ from South Pacific. Of course, the gorgeous soprano of her golden days was gone, but she gave a brave and beautiful performance. One verse from the latter song struck me as particularly poignant:

I could say life is just a bowl of jello,

And appear more intelligent and smart,

But I’m stuck like a dope with a thing called hope,

And I can’t get it out of my heart...

Not this heart.

For Julie Andrews, the show always goes on. In spite of the bad press, she returned to the UK this summer, and I’m very glad she did.

The evening at the NIA began with a series of clips from Julie’s career, including – to the joy of my brother who’s very much a Carol Burnett fan – the hilarious tea-drinking scene from Julie and Carol’s last reunion, Together Again (1989). If you haven’t seen Julie and Carol in action, YouTube offers a wealth of delights. This, folks, is what you call true entertainment. (The tea-drinking scene can be found here.) Julie then arrived on stage to rapturous applause and began telling us tales of her life. She described her upbringing in Walton-on-Thames; her childhood stardom in the music halls alongside her mother, Barbara, and her stepfather, Ted Andrews; her show-stopping appearance as a twelve-year-old at the Royal Variety Show; and her first trip to Broadway at nineteen to join the cast of The Boyfriend. She took us through her first starring roles as Eliza Doolittle in My Fair Lady, opposite the difficult and oftentimes unfriendly, Rex Harrison, and as Guinevere in Camelot alongside the attractive, unpredictable, and oftentimes drunk, Richard Burton. She told us anecdotes from Mary Poppins and The Sound of Music, as well as details of her charity work for Operation USA and her role as a children’s author with her daughter, Emma Walton Hamilton.

Many of the stories I had heard before and appear in Julie’s wonderful autobiography, Home. I really recommend this book. Focusing on her childhood and ending just before she went to Hollywood for Mr Disney, it’s very different from the standard, self-indulgent celebrity memoir: well-written; at times, shocking; moving; and very funny. Julie’s stories don’t get old. I could hear some of them one-hundred times and still find them amusing! She described how she was dropped 100 feet from a studio roof during the making of Mary Poppins; how she was distracted on stage by Robert Goulet’s marvellous legs; and how her husband, Blake Edwards, would admonish her when directing sex scenes: ‘Cut! Very nice dear, but I know you can do it better!’

In the second half, we were treated to more anecdotes, though this time the conversation was led by Aled Jones. Yes, that’s right: Aled We’re Walking In The Air Jones! Julie delightfully announced that we would be joined after the interval by ‘her dear friend, Alec Jones.’ This gorgeous slip only makes me like her more! Aled asked some questions of his own and read out questions submitted by audience members. Some of these (who does your hair?) were hardly challenging, but others provoked a more insightful response. We learnt that Julie had a serious (though unconsummated) passion for her co-star in The Americanization of Emily, James Garner, which made it difficult to act during the bedroom scenes. Julie spoke movingly of her late husband, Blake, and talked us through a clip from their movie, Darling Lili, explaining the innovative and stunning camerawork. (You can see it here). A yelp of joy was emitted behind us as a young teacher had her question on children’s books chosen.    

It was hardly an exposé. Jones is no Paxman or even Parky. Julie glossed over the more difficult parts of her life – her mother and stepfather’s alcoholism; her mother’s revelation that the man she thought was her father was not her biological dad; her divorce from her childhood sweetheart, Tony Walton; and of course, the loss of her four-octave voice. The latter omission, in particular, I think is characteristic of Julie’s attitude to life. Since she became the main breadwinner for her family as a child singer, she has worked, worked, worked, and carried on regardless. Beneath the sweetness, Julie is a woman of strong backbone, who doesn’t sit and feel sorry for herself. She wasn’t dubbed ‘the nun with a switchblade’ for nothing. She has simply refused to let the loss of her voice defeat her and I greatly admire that. As she put it in Victor Victoria:

Crazyworld

Ev’ryday the same old roller coaster ride

But I’ve got my pride

I won’t give in,

Even though I know I’ll never win.

Oh, how I love this

Crazy world.

Towards the end of the Q&A in Birmingham, Aled had a proposal for Julie: perhaps, if she felt up to it, they could have a little singsong? Of course, the audience was simply ecstatic! In the interval, my brother had overhead a young woman chatting to her companion. ‘I don’t care if it’s bad,’ she said wistfully, ‘I just wish she’d just sing.’ Well, she wasn’t bad, but even if she had been, it wouldn’t have mattered. We all joined in and sang ‘Edelweiss’ with Dame Julie Andrews. It was simply magical.

This evening was one hundred times better than the O2 concert. The setting was warm and intimate. While at the O2 I needed binoculars to see the stage, I paid considerably less for my ticket in Birmingham and was in the seventh row. There were no other players as distractions. It was all Julie! There is undeniably something mesmerising about her. You feel that you could watch her reading the telephone directory and still be interested! She exudes star quality. It was a privilege to be there and to hear her reflect on her career.

Of course I wish I’d been able to see Julie in her glory days on Broadway. Top of list of theatrical dream tickets would be a seat for Julie and Carol at Carnegie Hall. To hear her spectacular voice at its peak must have been breathtaking. Thank goodness for all those movies and the many, many CDs.

Thank goodness too for Sarah-Louise Young. Last night, I was privileged to see her show, Julie,Madly, Deeply, at the Cornerstone Arts Centre in Didcot. After running to much acclaim at Trafalgar Studios in London, this show is now on nationwide tour. Sarah-Louise is an award-winning cabaret performer and a self-proclaimed Julie Andrews superfan (though I think I could give her a run for her money!).She has penned this marvellous show in tribute to her icon. Together with Michael Roulston on piano, and dressed in an Andrews-esque wig and Von Trapp dress, she takes us through Julie’s life and career. There are stories, impressions, audience interactions, dance routines, and songs galore. Unlike Julie herself, Sarah-Louise explored the rough and the smooth, triumph and disaster. She started the show with a letter she wrote to Julie as a child and brought it to a close with a letter of support she penned after the O2 performance. She had no props apart from a chair, a microphone, Michael(!), the piano, and a rather spectacular Alpine costume, yet she kept the audience hugely entertained for nearly two hours. Her admiration for Julie and her joy in performing this tribute shines through.

I had so many favourite parts of this show, I almost can’t begin! It reminds me of watching The Sound of Music with my mum a few years ago. I sat on the sofa grinning inanely: ‘I love this bit’ ... ‘I love this bit’... ‘Ohhhhh.... I love this bit.’ After a while, my mum turned to me and said: ‘Andrea, is there actually a bit in this film that you don’t love?’ Quite.

Sarah-Louise was a veritable encyclopaedia of fascinating facts about Julie. The extent of Julie’s professionalism and drive was emphasised. As Eliza Doolittle, without even the help of a microphone, she belted her way through 2000 performances, then went straight into a live-television broadcast of Cinderella, shown to over 107 million viewers. Over three and a half decades later, at nearly sixty years of age, she battled bronchitis, pneumonia, and gall bladder surgery to continue with the Broadway run of Victor Victoria. And who else but Julie Andrews could have had Liza Minnelli as her understudy? Sarah-Louise’s impressions were priceless, particularly of Minnelli and of Audrey Hepburn, who famously stole Julie’s role in the film version of My Fair Lady (but not Julie’s Oscar)!

I very much enjoyed the audience participation! Sarah-Louise asked whether any of us had ever seen Julie live. Of course, I waved my hand frantically in the air and got to tell everyone about my experiences! A very nice man called Gareth had also seen Julie twice – at the O2 and on her recent tour at the Hammersmith Apollo. (I had a wonderful chat with him and his partner in the interval about all things Julie!). As the show continued, a cheerful chap in the front row was given custody of an imaginary penguin. We were also allowed to practise our singing. In the best Julie Andrews fashion, the show ended with a sing-along. Not ‘Edelweiss’ this time, but a medley of songs from The Sound of Music, My Fair Lady, and Mary Poppins.   

I loved little Julie’s interaction with her singing teacher, Lilian Stiles-Allen. I loved Sarah-Louise and Michael’s duet, You and Me, summing up the relationship between Julie and Blake. The most touching part of the show for me was, however, Sarah-Louise’s exploration of the events surrounding Julie’s ill-fated vocal surgery and the loss of her voice. She mimed the surgeon carrying out the botched operation, finishing off with a grim and whispered ‘FUCK!’ Then, using real dialogue from Julie’s heartbreaking interview with Barbara Walters in 1999, where she admitted that her voice was gone, she highlighted the operation's grievous consequences. You can watch this interview on YouTube here, though you’ll need some tissues. Walters is not the most sympathetic of interviewers and Andrews’ pain is evident through her stoicism.

‘Julie, if you can’t sing anymore, how will it change your life?’

‘God, you’ll have to ask me that again, another time... Right now, as I said, I simply cannot contemplate it. I don’t want to say that I never can.... So ask me again in a couple of years, okay?’

‘And then if it’s still ‘no’.’

‘Oh... then I think it’ll change something inside of me forever...’

Sarah-Louise removed her wig at this point and sang the haunting ‘Crazy World.’ How eloquent. If only the tabloid hacks and disgruntled punters at the O2 could have seen this.

Happy Passes in Birmingham on the way to see Dame Julie

The real Julie’s trips to the UK are all too brief and infrequent – rare and special treats. The famous voice might be gone, but the warmth, good-humour, and star quality of Dame Julie continues to radiate. And if you’re missing her, and longing to hear that four-octave voice soar again, do not despair, for thanks to Michael Roulston and Sarah-Louise Young:

The hills fill your heart

With the sound of music   

And Julie sings once more...