Julie Andrews is still best-known for her roles as Mary Poppins in the film of that name (1964) and Maria von Trapp in The Sound of Music (1965). Born Julia Elizabeth Wells in Walton-on-Thames, Surrey, England, on October 1, 1935, she made her stage debut at the age of 12, in London's West End. Radio and stage successes, including her performance in a London Palladium production of Cinderella when she was 20, led her to Broadway, where she starred in The Boyfriend (1954), My Fair Lady (1956) and Camelot (1960). She lost the lead role in the film version of My Fair Lady to Audrey Hepburn and instead was tapped for the Disney musical Mary Poppins — a role which brought her that year's Academy Award for Best Actress. She was also nominated for the Oscar the next year for her role in The Sound of Music. She was voted the world's most popular star, but suffered from typecasting, and for some time was given very little opportunity to perform on the big screen.
Her husband, director Blake Edwards, helped to change that by casting her in several of his own films, such as Darling Lily (1970), 10 (1979), S.O.B. (1981), Victor/Victoria (1982) and That's Life (1986). Later films include Relative Values (2000) and Princess Diaries (2001), as well as the voice of Fiona's mother, the Queen, in the animated film Shrek 2 (2004).
Among Andrews' forays into television were much-acclaimed specials, including one that she made with Carol Burnett in 1971, Julie and Carol at Lincoln Center, and an Emmy-winning show, The Julie Andrews Hour (1972). In 2001, she teamed up again with Christopher Plummer, her co-star from The Sound of Music, in a TV adaptation of On Golden Pond.
In 1995, Andrews returned to Broadway after 35 years to star in the stage adaptation of Victor/Victoria, which was written and directed by Edwards. When, in spite of rave reviews, she was the only cast member nominated for a Tony Award that year, she declined the nomination.
Andrews became Dame Julie Andrews in 2000, when Queen Elizabeth II named her a Dame of the British Empire (DBE). She was honored by the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in 2001 and also appeared in the 2002 list of "100 Great Britons." In 2005, Andrews directed her first stage production, and in January 2007, she received the Screen Actors Guild Award for Lifetime Achievement.
Andrews, Julie [née Julia Elizabeth Wells] (b. 1935), actress and singer. The attractive English performer was born in Walton‐on‐Thames and found acclaim as a child soprano in variety and pantomime. She came to New York's attention playing Polly in The Boy Friend (1954) then became a bona fide Broadway star when she created the role of Eliza Doolittle in My Fair Lady (1956), followed by her Guinevere in Camelot (1960). After many years in films, Andrews returned to the New York theatre in the Off‐Broadway revue Putting It Together (1993) and won plaudits on Broadway as the cross‐dressing title characters in Victor/Victoria (1995), which had a long but unprofitable run. She brought to her roles, as Stanley Green has noted, an “air of patrician innocence and her cool, clear voice.” Biography: Julie Andrews, Robert Windeler, 1997.
Alternative Name: Julie Edwards, Ainsley Jarvis, Julie Andrews Edwards
Genre: Vocal Music
Active: '50s - 2000s
Instrument: Vocals
Biography
At the commercial height of her career in the '60s, actress/singer Julie Andrews could claim to be the primary performer associated with the longest running musical in Broadway history, the highest grossing Hollywood film ever made, and the biggest-selling album of all time. Each of those achievements was surpassed by others eventually, of course, but Andrews, while experiencing the ups and downs that are the lot of any popular entertainment figure, retained her status as a theater and film legend, and even enhanced her reputation as she became a senior citizen early in the 21st century. By then, her professional career stretched back more than 50 years and included stage work, recordings, radio, television, films, and children's literature. By 2005, she had added stage director to her list of accomplishments.
For most of her career, Andrews was blessed and burdened with an established persona. Her massive successes in the film musicals Mary Poppins (in which she played a magical nanny to two pre-World War I British children) and The Sound of Music (in which she played an aspiring nun-turned-governess to seven pre-World War II Austrian children) coalesced in the public mind into the character of a sweet-voiced, proper Englishwoman quickly ready to soothe childish traumas by crooning about "A Spoonful of Sugar" or "My Favorite Things." After those performances, she spent decades alternately conforming to and rebelling against the image they had given her. This struggle was played out against the background of the socially and politically tumultuous era of the late '60s and '70s, during which Andrews, who had conquered the entertainment world only a few years before, became virtually persona non grata, at least as far as the Hollywood film establishment was concerned. She persevered with the same determination that had brought her from a childhood in English vaudeville to Broadway stardom in only a few short years and that had sustained her. By the '80s, she was back to making films regularly; by the '90s she was back on Broadway; and by the 2000s her movie appearances were again coming in some of the highest grossing pictures of the day. Throughout, she made regular, if infrequent recording sessions that eventually added up to a considerable body of audio work including both solo albums and soundtrack discs. Although her exquisite four-and-a-half-octave voice was injured in a 1997 throat operation, she eventually made at least a partial recovery to the point of singing professionally again by 2004.
Julie Andrews was born Julia Elizabeth Wells in Walton-on-Thames, Surrey, England, on October 1, 1935. She was the daughter of Edward C. Wells, a teacher of woodworking and metal-crafting, and Barbara (Morris) Wells, a pianist and piano teacher. When she was four-years-old her parents divorced, and she went to live with her mother, who married Ted Andrews, a vaudeville entertainer. Her mother and stepfather performed together, and Andrews, who soon revealed an excellent singing voice, began participating in the family act, using the name Julie Andrews. She started taking singing lessons at the age of seven. She also studied acting and ballet at the Cone-Ripman School in London. In 1946, she made her radio debut with her mother and stepfather on the BBC program Monday Night at Eight, and on December 5 of that year the family appeared at a royal command performance at the Stage Door Canteen in London for Queen Elizabeth and Princess Margaret. Andrews gradually became the star attraction in the act, and the following year was cast in her first legitimate stage show, singing the "Polonaise" aria ("Je Suis Titania") from Ambroise Thomas' 1866 opera Mignon in the revue Starlight Roof at the London Hippodrome starting on October 23, 1947, shortly after her 12th birthday. She made her recording debut on the double-78 EP cast recording of the show, made for the English Columbia label. As the child labor law required, she appeared in the revue for only one year, then went back to touring the country with her parents. On November 1, 1948, she became the youngest performer ever chosen to appear in the Royal Command Variety Performance at the London Palladium. The same year, she released her first single under her own name when English Columbia issued the 78 "Je Veux Vivre"/"Come to the Fair," on which she sang with her stepfather to a piano accompaniment by her mother. During the Christmas season, she began a year-long run in the London Casino's pantomime show, Humpty Dumpty. She made her television debut on the BBC program Radiolympia Showtime on October 8, 1949.
Andrews continued to take major roles in children's shows over the next several years: Little Red Riding Hood (1950), Aladdin (1951), Jack and the Beanstalk (1952), and Cinderella (1953). Meanwhile, she had a continuing role on the BBC radio series Educating Archie starting in 1950, and in 1952 hers was one of the dubbed-in English-language voices heard in a version of the 1949 animated Italian movie The Rose of Baghdad, her screen debut. In 1954, she appeared in a play, Mountain Fire, her debut as a dramatic stage actress. That summer, she was cast in the leading role in a British musical, The Boy Friend, for its Broadway production. She arrived in the U.S. for the first time in August 1954 and opened in the show on September 30, the day before her 19th birthday. Both the show's notices and hers were good, and The Boy Friend ran for 483 performances. RCA Victor Records recorded the original Broadway cast album, marking her U.S. record debut.
After leaving The Boy Friend, Andrews was cast opposite Bing Crosby in a musical adaptation of Maxwell Anderson's play High Tor for television, with songs by Anderson and composer Arthur Schwartz. Sometimes referred to as the first made-for-TV movie, the production was shot in Hollywood in November 1955 and broadcast as an episode of Ford Star Jubilee on CBS on March 10, 1956, Andrews' American television debut. A soundtrack album was recorded and released by Decca Records. At the start of 1956, Andrews began rehearsals for My Fair Lady, a musical based on George Bernard Shaw's play Pygmalion, with songs by Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe, playing the title character, a London flower girl who is passed off as an upper-class woman by an elocutionist played by Rex Harrison. Andrews, then 20-years-old, opened in the show on March 15, 1956, and it went on to become the longest running Broadway musical up to its time, continuing for 2,717 performances. Andrews, who earned a Tony Award nomination for her performance, naturally appeared on the cast album recorded and released by the American Columbia Records label, which hit number one in the Billboard chart and in 1986 was certified for sales of three million copies in the U.S. (Worldwide sales by 1966 were estimated at six million copies.) Among the songs Andrews introduced were the standards "Wouldn't It Be Loverly" and "I Could Have Danced All Night."
While still appearing in My Fair Lady, Andrews starred in a musical adaptation of Cinderella for television with songs by Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II that was broadcast live on CBS on March 31, 1957. She earned an Emmy Award nomination for her performance, and Columbia issued a cast album that reached the Top 20. Her increasing prominence led to other opportunities to record, and she paired with Martyn Green, a star of Gilbert & Sullivan operettas, for Tell It Again, a children's recording issued by Angel Records. She then signed with RCA Victor and cut her debut solo album, The Lass with the Delicate Air, a collection of British folk songs, released in January 1958, and followed it with an LP of standards, Julie Andrews Sings, and a studio-cast recording of the operetta Rose-Marie with opera singer Giorgio Tozzi later that same year. Meanwhile, she, Harrison, and other members of the original Broadway cast of My Fair Lady went to London and opened the West End production of the musical on April 30, 1958. It was nearly as successful in England as it had been in the U.S., running 2,281 performances. On February 1, 1959, Andrews and the cast re-recorded the score in stereo for the original London cast album, which Columbia released. Andrews married set designer Tony Walton on May 10, 1959. She gave her final performance of My Fair Lady on August 8, 1959.
Freed from stage work for the first time in years, Andrews hosted four episodes of The Julie Andrews Show for BBC television in November 1959 and made appearances on American television in 1960 before going into rehearsals for another Lerner and Loewe musical, Camelot, based on the Arthurian legend. The show opened on Broadway on December 3, 1960, and ran 873 performances. Columbia released the cast album, which topped the charts and went gold. Andrews, again nominated for a Tony Award, was contracted to stay with the show for a year-and-a-half. During that time, she again found time for moonlighting activities. She signed a new recording contract with Columbia and in June 1961 cut her third solo album, Broadway's Fair Julie, an LP of show tunes released in December. On March 5, 1962, she and her friend, television star Carol Burnett, appeared together in concert for the Emmy Award-winning television special Julie and Carol at Carnegie Hall, which was broadcast in June, with a charting LP version released simultaneously by Columbia. Andrews, by then pregnant, left Camelot and restricted her activities for the rest of the year, though she did cut a fourth solo album, Don't Go in the Lion's Cage Tonight, containing some of her favorite British music hall songs. On November 27, 1962, she gave birth to Emma Kate Walton.
Warner Bros. Pictures had purchased the screen rights to My Fair Lady, but the studio passed over Andrews, who had no movie experience, in favor of Audrey Hepburn, whose vocals were dubbed by veteran Hollywood ghost singer Marni Nixon. Instead, Walt Disney cast Andrews in the title role of his musical screen adaptation of the children's stories of P.L. Travers, Mary Poppins. She shot the film during 1963, and even before it was released was cast in two subsequent films, the non-musical The Americanization of Emily (October 1964), which she began working on immediately after completing Mary Poppins, and the screen version of the 1959 Rodgers & Hammerstein musical The Sound of Music, which began shooting in the spring of 1964. Mary Poppins, Andrews' onscreen film debut, opened in September 1964 to general acclaim, immediately establishing her as a movie star. At $45 million, it became the highest grossing movie released that year. Although only certified gold in the U.S., the soundtrack album, featuring such Andrews performances as "A Spoonful of Sugar" and the singles chart entry "Super-cali-fragil-istic-expi-ali-docious," hit number one and reportedly had sold over six million copies worldwide by 1968. (The LP also won the 1964 Grammy award for Best Recording for Children.) Andrews won the Academy Award for best actress for the film.
The Sound of Music, which followed in March 1965, was even more successful. Grossing nearly $80 million domestically, it became the first film to beat 1939's Gone with the Wind as the biggest moneymaker in movie history, a ranking it held until the appearance of The Godfather in 1972. Again certified only as a gold record, the RCA Victor soundtrack album was estimated to have sold 15 million copies worldwide by 1976. (In 2000, RCA claimed U.S. sales of 11 million copies.) Andrews received a second Oscar nomination for the film. Naturally, she was much in demand for more film work, and she spent most of 1965 on location shooting the big-budget Hawaii, a straight movie in which she sang only one song. Toward the end of filming, she found time to appear on The Andy Williams Show on September 12, 1965, earning an Emmy Award nomination for her trouble. Soon after finishing Hawaii, she began work on director Alfred Hitchcock's thriller Torn Curtain, which actually opened prior to Hawaii, in July 1966. But she also managed to squeeze in her first television special, The Julie Andrews Show, broadcast November 28, 1965, on NBC. Hawaii, which finally appeared in October 1966, was the highest grossing film released that year, although, because of its high production cost, it was not profitable. Nevertheless, 1966 marked the third year in a row that Andrews had been the star of the film that sold the most tickets at the box office. Not surprisingly, she was named the top female movie star of the year in the Quigley Poll, a ranking she would repeat in 1967 and 1968.
During 1966, Andrews shot her sixth movie, an original musical set in the '20s called Thoroughly Modern Millie. After completing it, she joined conductor André Previn and members of the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra to record a Christmas album released initially as a promotion for the Firestone Tire Company during the 1966 Christmas season and issued commercially by RCA Victor the following year under the title A Christmas Treasure. Thoroughly Modern Millie, which opened in March 1967, was a popular success, albeit not on the scale of Mary Poppins or The Sound of Music, and the soundtrack album, released by Decca, reached the Top 20 and went gold. Andrews went into production on her next movie musical, a film biography of British stage actress-singer Gertrude Lawrence called Star! that took up most of her time in 1967. The big-budget film, accompanied by a Top 100 soundtrack album released by 20th Century-Fox Records, appeared in July 1968 and was a financial disaster. Meanwhile, Andrews was filming another expensive movie musical, Darling Lili, co-written, directed, and produced by Blake Edwards, whom she would marry on November 12, 1969, having divorced Tony Walton on May 7, 1968. Three days before her second wedding, she starred in her second TV special, An Evening with Julie Andrews and Harry Belafonte, on NBC. Darling Lili finally appeared in theaters in the summer of 1970, along with a charting soundtrack album on RCA Victor. It was Andrews' second consecutive major flop, as a result of which her next two screen projects were canceled and, a mere five years after starring in the biggest movie hit of all time, she found herself without any film offers.
Andrews turned to other media, but worked less frequently in the '70s. On July 1, 1971, she and Carol Burnett taped their second television special together, Julie and Carol at Lincoln Center, for broadcast on CBS December 7, accompanied by an LP released on Columbia. Also in 1971, Andrews published her first children's book, Mandy, under her married name, Julie Edwards. (It would be followed by The Last of the Really Great Whangdoodles in 1974.) She signed with ABC for her own series, and the musical variety program The Julie Andrews Hour premiered on September 13, 1972. Although it was canceled after only one season, it won seven Emmy Awards, including one for Outstanding Variety Musical Series. After the end of the series, Andrews and her family moved to Gstaad, Switzerland, but she continued to make frequent TV specials including Julie on Sesame Street (November 1973), Julie's Christmas Special (December 1973), Julie and Dick in Covent Garden (with her Mary Poppins co-star Dick Van Dyke; April 1974), Julie and Jackie: "How Sweet It Is" (with Jackie Gleason; May 1974), and Julie: "My Favorite Things" (April; 1975). She also devoted more time to charity, notably the Committee of Responsibility, an organization devoted to obtaining medical treatment for Vietnamese children, which inspired her to adopt two infant girls, Amy Leigh and Joanna Lynn Edwards.
Andrews returned to filmmaking after four years in The Tamarind Seed, a spy picture written and directed by her husband, in July 1974. But it did not reignite her film career. In 1975, she made her first solo album in nearly a decade, and it was another holiday collection, The Secret of Christmas, released in the U.K. on Embassy Records. (In 1982, Columbia issued the album in the U.S. with two extra tracks under the title Christmas with Julie Andrews.) In 1976, she turned back to singing more seriously, appearing in concert at the London Palladium from June 9-19 and then taking her show to Caesar's Palace in Las Vegas. (She also adopted the alias "Ainsley Jarvis" to sing "Until You Love Me" on the soundtrack of Blake Edwards' film The Pink Panther Strikes Again.) This was followed in 1977 by a concert tour of the U.S. and Japan that resulted in a live album, An Evening with Julie Andrews, released on RCA Victor only in Japan. She did more TV work in late 1977 and 1978, notably the CBS special Julie Andrews: One Step into Spring (March 1978), and returned to singing onscreen in a featured role in Edwards' 1979 hit comedy 10, also appearing on the soundtrack album released by Warner Bros. Records.
Andrews began to work more frequently in film in the '80s, beginning the decade in a remake of Little Miss Marker that was her first movie not directed by her husband since Star! in 1968. After another TV special, Julie Andrews' Invitation to the Dance (November 1980), she co-starred in the film S.O.B. (July 1981), a black comedy written, directed, and co-produced by Edwards that reflected on their disastrous experience with Darling Lili, as a movie star with a goody-goody image who appears in a big flop directed by her husband, then agrees to add a topless scene that turns it into a hit. More successful was the Edwards' next screen venture, Victor/Victoria (March 1982), which found Andrews starring in a movie musical for the first time in 12 years, playing a penniless woman in the Depression era who becomes a female impersonator with comic results. The film, with a score by Henry Mancini and Leslie Bricusse and a soundtrack album on MGM/Polydor Records, earned Andrews her third Oscar nomination, and plans began to convert it into a stage production. Meanwhile, in July 1983, Peach River Records released Love Me Tender, an LP on which Andrews sang country songs; it reached the British charts. That December, she played a psychiatrist in Edwards' film The Man Who Loved Women. She was largely out of the public eye for the next few years before turning up within months in two films, Edwards' midlife-crisis comedy/drama That's Life! (September 1986), shot in part on the couple's Malibu estate and also featuring her daughter, Emma Walton, and other family members and friends, and Duet for One (December 1986), a drama in which she played a violinist diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. She had a surprising new album in release in 1987. Privately, she had cut a collection of love songs as a birthday present for her husband, who had turned 65 on July 26, 1987. He encouraged her to find a record company to issue it, and later in the year it was released commercially by the USA Music Group under the title Love, Julie. (Unfortunately, the recordings were subsequently licensed repeatedly to other small companies, resulting in a rash of albums all containing the same tracks with different titles including Nobody Sings It Better [K-Tel, 1996], Tea for Two [Hallmark, 1999], The Essential Julie Andrews [Red X, 2000], Collection [MRA, 2002], So in Love [Mastersong, 2002], and Come Rain or Shine [Going for a Song].) In December, she starred in the ABC television special Julie Andrews...The Sound of Christmas, which won five Emmy Awards. At that point, she had already embarked on her first concert tour in ten years, performing across the U.S. from late October 1987 into early 1988. In April 1989, she recorded her third holiday album, The Sounds of Christmas -- From Around the World, available only to Hallmark greeting card customers during the 1990 Christmas season. On June 9 and 10, 1989, she and Carol Burnett taped their third TV special, Julie and Carol: Together Again, at the Pantages Theater in Hollywood, for broadcast on December 13. After the taping, Andrews embarked on a concert tour that continued into the fall. An August 1989 performance was taped for a TV special broadcast as part of the PBS series Great Performances in March 1990.
Andrews turned back to acting at the start of the '90s, shooting an Italian romantic comedy with Marcello Mostroianni based on the play Tchin-Tchin that was released under different titles in different territories. Upon its European release in 1991, it was called Cin Cin; its British video title was A Touch of Adultery; in Japan it was known as Afternoon Tea in Bed; and when it finally appeared for a brief theatrical run in the U.S. in September 1992, it was called A Fine Romance. Andrews next appeared in a made-for-TV movie broadcast on ABC in May 1991, Our Sons, in which she co-starred with Ann-Margret as the mother of an AIDS patient. In the spring of 1992, she tried her hand at television situation comedy, taping half-a-dozen episodes of Julie, in which she played a TV star who insists on doing her show in Iowa where her new husband lives. The show was canceled after the fifth broadcast. Again alternating her acting and singing careers, she next participated in a studio cast recording of The King and I released by Philips Records that made the British charts and earned a Grammy Award nomination for Best Musical Show Album. She undertook another concert tour, then surprised fans by agreeing to appear in a theatrical production for the first time in more than 30 years, joining the ensemble cast of the Off Broadway musical revue Putting It Together, an anthology of Stephen Sondheim songs, which ran at the Manhattan Theater Club for 59 performances starting on April 1, 1993; RCA Victor issued a cast album. In 1994, she recorded two new albums of show tunes for Philips under the rubric "Julie Andrews Broadway." The first, The Music of Richard Rodgers, appeared in October 1994; the second, Here I'll Stay: The Words of Alan Jay Lerner, was held for release until October 1996.
Putting It Together turned out to be a dry run for a more ambitious return to the stage for Andrews. On October 25, 1995, she opened on Broadway in the stage adaptation of Victor/Victoria, which had a cast album released by Philips. While her personal notices were positive, the show received generally negative reviews but ran successfully as a star vehicle. Nevertheless, Andrews was angered when only she was nominated for a Tony Award, and in a curtain speech days afterward in May 1996, she rejected the nomination. Voters respected her decision, and she did not win the award. She remained in the show until June 1, 1997, and it closed two months later after 738 performances. The year-and-a-half of stage work had taken its toll on the 61-year-old, however, and she suffered nodes on her vocal cords that she had surgically removed. This damaged her singing voice, and though she was able to speak well enough to record the non-singing part of Polynesia the parrot in the British stage production of Doctor Doolittle in 1998, she was not able to return to singing, and she sued her doctors, resulting in a large settlement in 2000. Although this experience may have been the most trying of her career, Andrews did not retire; if anything she became more active in the early years of the 21st century. She had reached the age at which lifetime honors are conferred, and she was made a Dame of the British Empire in 2000, and was awarded the Kennedy Center Honors in 2001. If she couldn't sing, there were other things she could do. Co-writing with her daughter, Emma Walton Hamilton, and employing illustrations by her ex-husband, Tony Walton, Andrews (billed as Julie Andrews Edwards) turned out a new series of children's books about Dumpy the Dump Truck starting in 2000. She also worked extensively in television, hosting several musical theater programs for PBS and acting in such made-for-TV movies as One Special Night (1999) and On Golden Pond (2001). And she took on roles in increasingly successful features starting with a screen version of Noël Coward's Relative Values (2000). In August 2001, she co-starred in The Princess Diaries, which grossed over $165 million worldwide. She voiced the Queen in the animated feature Shrek 2 (May 2004), a massive hit that neared one billion in worldwide film rentals within a year of release. And when she repeated her role as Queen Clarisse Rinaldi in The Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagement (August 2004), another popular film that made over $130 million, she was heard singing the song "Your Crowning Glory" with young actress-singer Raven on the soundtrack and the soundtrack album released by Walt Disney Records. Although she downplayed this return to singing, that is exactly what it was, demonstrating that she had made at least a partial recovery from her botched throat surgery. Whether or not she ever made a full recovery, Andrews was on to yet another aspect of her career as she approached the age of 70. In August 2004, the Goodspeed Opera House in East Haddam, CT, announced that she would be the director of its stage production of The Boy Friend, her first Broadway musical, to run from July 8 to September 18, 2005, followed by a national tour. ~ William Ruhlmann, All Music Guide
Born: Oct 01, 1935 in Walton-on-Thames, Surrey, England, UK
Occupation: Actor
Active: '60s-2000s
Major Genres: Comedy, Children's/Family
Career Highlights: The Sound of Music, Victor/Victoria, Mary Poppins
First Major Screen Credit: Cinderella (1957)
Biography
The British actress, comedienne, singer and dancer Julie Andrews stakes a claim to fame for having one of the single most astonishing voices (four octaves!) of any entertainer alive. Yet the breadth of this raw ability is often hugely obscured by Andrews's milquetoast image and onscreen persona. Thus, in the late '60s, Andrews - who began her film career rooted firmly in family-oriented material - traveled far out of her way to expand her dramatic repertoire, with decidedly mixed results.
A music-hall favorite since childhood, Andrews spent the war years dodging Nazi bombs and bowing to the plaudits of her fans. Thanks to her own talents and the persistence of her vaudevillian parents, Andrews maintained her career momentum with appearances in such extravaganzas as 1947's Starlight Roof Revue. It was in the role of a 1920s flapper in Sandy Wilson's satire The Boy Friend (1953) that brought Andrews to Broadway; and few could resist the attractively angular young miss warbling such deliberately sappy lyrics as "I Could Be Happy With You/If You Could Be Happy With Me." Following a live-TV performance of High Tor, Andrews regaled American audiences in the star-making role of cockney flower girl Eliza Doolittle in the 1956 Broadway blockbuster My Fair Lady. The oft-told backstage story of this musical classic was enough to dissuade anyone from thinking that Andrews was an overnight success, as producer Moss Hart mercilessly drilled her for 48 hours to help her get her lines, songs and dialect in proper working order. In 1957, Andrews again enchanted TV audiences in the title role of Rodgers & Hammerstein's musical adaptation of Cinderella. Later, Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe -- also the composers of My Fair Lady -- developed the role of Guinevere in their 1960 musical Camelot with Andrews in mind, and the result was another Broadway triumph, albeit not as profitable as Fair Lady.
Although a proven favorite with American audiences thanks to her frequent TV variety show appearances (notably a memorable 1962 teaming with Carol Burnett), Andrews did not make a motion picture until 1964. As Mary Poppins, Andrews not only headlined one of Walt Disney's all-time biggest moneymakers, but also won an Oscar -- sweet compensation for having lost the Eliza role to Audrey Hepburn for the adaptation of My Fair Lady. Andrews hoped that Mary Poppins would not type her in "goody-goody" parts, and, to that end, accepted a decidedly mature role as James Garner's love interest in The Americanization of Emily (1964). However, Andrews' next film, The Sound of Music (1965) effectively locked her into sweetness and light parts in the minds of moviegoers. On the strength of the success of Music, Andrews was signed to numerous Hollywood projects, but her stardom had peaked.
Perhaps recognizing this, Andrews started to branch out fairly aggressively by the late '60s, with such "adult-oriented" pictures as Alfred Hitchcock's espionage thriller Torn Curtain. That film, and others (Hawaii, Star!) all flopped. In the late '60s, Andrews fell in love with and married the then white-hot American director Blake Edwards; her decision to collaborate with Edwards on a professional level, to boot, waxed incredibly strategic. Today, many view Edwards in a negative light for cranking out moronic studio fodder such as A Fine Mess and Sunset). In 1969, however, he sat among Hollywood's creme-de-la-creme, notorious for crafting mature genre pictures for adult audiences (The Days of Wine and Roses, Breakfast at Tiffany's, Experiment in Fear) and sophisticated slapstick comedies unafraid to take chances (the {#Pink Panther series, The Party). By marrying Edwards and aligning herself with him creatively, then, Andrews was also consciously or unconsciously bucking to change her image. Unfortunately, the two began at a low ebb to end all low ebbs. The WWI musical farce Darling Lili (1970) featured Rock Hudson, electric musical numbers, stunning dogfight sequences, and - significantly - a semi-erotic striptease number by Andrews. Apparently audiences didn't buy this sort of behavior coming from Mary Poppins: the film tanked at the box office, as did the spy thriller The Tamarind Seed, also starring Andrews.
Aside from a couple of televised musical specials, Andrews stuck with her husband for each successive film - for better or worse, as they say. Their next collaborations arrived in the late '70s and early '80s, first with the smash Dudley Moore sex farce '10' (1979) and then with the Hollywood satire S.O.B. (1981). In the former, Andrews took a backseat to sexy bombshell Bo Derek, who catches the infatuation of Moore but delivered a finely-modulated comic performance nonetheless; the latter - an unapologetically 'R' rated comedy about a nutty director who attempts to turn a family-friendly stinker into a porno musical -- exposed a topless Andrews to the world for the first time. This rank, cynical and angry "satire" represented the couple's creative nadir; one critic rightly pointed out that Andrews could have used it as grounds for divorce. The 1982 transvestite musical Victor/Victoria (with Andrews in the lead) fared better; it was followed by Edwards's 1983 Truffaut remake, The Man Who Loved Women (with Andrews as the lover of sculptor Burt Reynolds). Andrews's attempts at image-extending here are obvious in each case; the individual films have various strengths and weaknesses, but - love 'em or hate 'em -- they broadened the appeal of Andrews only slightly - with many perceiving her as either an onscreen accessory to her husband or as an okay straight man in mediocre romantic comedies. The couple fared a thousand times better with the excellent mid-life crisis comedy-drama That's Life! (1986), starring Andrews and Jack Lemmon.
Two esteemed dramatic roles sans Edwards - that of a frustrated multiple sclerosis victim in Duet for One (1986), and that of a grieving mother of an AIDS victim in Our Sons (1991) - did what the prior films were supposed to have done: they secured Andrews's reputation as an actress of astonishing versatility. Yet, as Andrews aged, she ironically began to segue back into the types of roles that originally brought her infamy, with a series of sugar-coated, grandmotherly parts in family-friendly pictures. Notably, she co-starred in the first two installments of The Princess Diaries as Queen Clarisse Rinaldi, a European monarch of a tiny duchy, who tutors her "hip" teen granddaughter (Anne Hathaway) in the ways of regality. Andrews also used her polished and cultured British diction to great advantage by voicing Queen Lillian in the second and third installments of Dreamworks's popular, CG-animated Shrek series: Shrek 2 (2004) and Shrek the Third. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
Perhaps best known for her award - winning roles in the films "Mary Poppins" and "The Sound of Music", the multi - talented Julie Andrews (born 1935) has been entertaining fans with her singing ever since she was a little girl. Even though she lost her singing voice in the late 1990s, she has continued to delight her fans by writing children's books and taking supporting roles in hit movies.
In his 1983 biography Julie Andrews, writer Robert Windeler reflected, "By the time she was 30, Julie Andrews was the best - loved, highest - paid entertainer in the world. With her crystalline, five - octave voice and impeccable demeanor, she was the essence of innocence, the nanny - next - door." However, he noted, her fame "stamped her with an image she would come to hate: wholesome."
Talented From an Early Age
Julie Andrews was born Julia Elizabeth Wells on October 1, 1935 in Walton - on - Thames, a suburb south of London. She was the daughter of Ted Wells, a teacher, and Barbara Morris Wells, an accomplished pianist who was also a piano teacher and part - time pianist for her sister's dance school. Biographers James Arntz and Thomas S. Wilson noted in Julie Andrews, "From a very early age, baby Julia was aware of the sound of music. As a toddler, she was already learning tap and ballet from her aunt."
Educated by her father, the little girl was reading and writing by age three. Biographers Arntz and Wilson wrote that the child "displayed such exceptional imagination, intelligence, and musical talent that both parents became convinced she would find success in the world of entertainment."
When Andrews was four years old, her parents divorced and her mother married Ted Andrews, her vaudeville partner. In an attempt to get to know her better, her stepfather began to give her singing lessons. Andrews recalled to Windeler, "I loathed singing and resented my stepfather." However, later in life, she would admit she was grateful that he instilled a sense of discipline and structure.
As World War II began and England was bombed, citizens were often forced to take cover in air raid shelters. The Andrews tried to keep up everyone's spirits by getting people to sing. Now called [Julie], the little girl's voice often stood out, even among the experienced adult singers. In a 1996 interview with the Saturday Evening Post, Andrews shared with Earl L. Conn, "For some reason, I had this freakish voice. I was sort of a child prodigy who had a really strong voice and a very large vocal range."
In fact, the biography on the Julie Andrews website noted, "To everyone's surprise [she] had a fully developed larynx, perfect pitch and a large four octave vocal range." The website continued, "At the age of eight [she] began to have singing lessons from Madame Lilian Stiles - Allen, who had once been a renowned concert singer."
When Andrews was ten, World War II ended, and she spent much of her time touring with her mother and stepfather. Biographers Arntz and Wilson noted that many theater managers liked family acts, so "eventually [she] changed her last name to Andrews to make the billing simpler." As noted on the Julie Andrews website, "On December 5th 1946, [she] performed alone for the first time at London's Stage Door Canteen. The Queen (later the Queen Mother) and the late Princess Margaret were in attendance."
Made Professional Debut
In the fall of 1947, shortly after Andrews turned 12, she made her professional debut in London in a revue called "Starlight Roof." In December of that year, the Julie Andrews website noted, she was given a screen test by the British division of Metro - Goldwyn - Mayer. The studio decided against signing her because they said she was "unfilmable."
Andrews went on to perform in other revues and pantomimes, including "Humpty Dumpty" in 1948, "Red Riding Hood" in 1950, and "Cinderella" in 1953. The role in "Humpty Dumpty" was the most significant to her personal life, as she met Tony Walton, whom she would later marry.
Playing in "Cinderella" impacted Andrews' professional life. While doing this role, she caught the eye of the director who was working on the London production of a musical about the 1920s, entitled The Boy Friend. The show was to debut in the United States, on Broadway, in New York City. Andrews was offered the lead role and eventually accepted the part. At the age of 18, she joined the cast of The Boy Friend and went to New York in August of 1954. The show became an overnight success and Andrews became a star.
A Star in Musical Theatre
After almost 500 performances, Andrews' run in The Boy Friend ended, and she took on her next professional challenge. She played Eliza Doolittle in My Fair Lady, the musical version of George Bernard Shaw's "Pygmalion." For this role, Andrews was nominated for an Antoinette Perry (Tony) Award and won the New York Drama Critics Award for best actress in a musical. It was during her run in My Fair Lady that Andrews married Walton, her childhood sweetheart, who was now a set designer. They would have a daughter, Emma, in 1962.
In 1960, Andrews took on the role of Queen Guinevere in Camelot on Broadway. The show ran for two years, and she received another Tony Award nomination. It was during the run of Camelot that Andrews was introduced to American comedienne and actress Carol Burnett. The two became good friends, and would later do many television shows and specials together.
In 1962, producer Walt Disney went to see a performance of Camelot and was impressed by Andrews' performance. He thought she would be perfect in the production he was working on. Arntz and Wilson noted that Andrews met with Disney "who offered her a choice role in what was to be her first motion picture, Mary Poppins." Arntz and Wilson added, "Once Hollywood beckoned, [she] would not return to the stage for more than three decades."
Hollywood
Although Andrews had success on Broadway, she was passed over in favor of "name" actresses when the musicals My Fair Lady and Camelot were made into films. Her luck changed, however, when she made her screen debut in Mary Poppins in 1964. The story of a nanny with magical powers that featured the songs "A Spoonful of Sugar," "Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious," and "Chim Chim Cher - ee" was unique because it mixed real, live people and animation.
For her first feature film, Andrews earned the Golden Globe Award as Best Actress in a musical or comedy in February of 1965, and two months later, she won the Academy Award for Best Actress. Right after Mary Poppins, Andrews tackled her first dramatic role, The Americanization of Emily, before taking possibly her best - known role.
Biographer Windeler noted that initially, Andrews "did not greet the prospect of playing Maria in The Sound of Music with great joy." However, she did take on the role of the singing novice who is sent from the convent to be the governess of the seven von Trapp children. Partially filmed in Europe and based on a true story, the film featured memorable songs like "I Have Confidence in Me," "My Favorite Things," and "Do - Re - Mi."
As noted on the Julie Andrews website, The Sound of Music "would end up being one of the most loved movies of all time." The movie won five Oscars, including Best Picture, and Andrews received a Golden Globe Award for Best Actress. Subsequently, Andrews took a role in yet another musical film, 1967's Thoroughly Modern Millie. Arntz and Wilson commented, "Her first six films were so successful that for nearly a decade [she] held the record as the highest grossing performer in the history of movies." However, Arntz and Wilson added, "Almost as abruptly, [her] box office temperature plunged."
Slipped at the Box Office
In 1968, shortly after wrapping up Thoroughly Modern Millie, Andrews and her husband divorced. She began work on a new project, Darling Lili with producer Blake Edwards, perhaps best known for the Pink Panther movies. Arntz and Wilson described the movie as an "entertaining, well - crafted, often - funny, always - beautiful movie musical . . . a notorious Hollywood flop."
Even though the film did not succeed, the relationship between Andrews and Edwards did. Although both were divorced with children from their previous marriages, the couple married in 1969. Andrews shared with Conn, "You try harder and are more realistic with a second marriage . . . We vowed when we married that this we would take a day at a time - not have any fantasies that sort of precluded the realities." The couple adopted two daughters, Jeanna and Amy, and even though Andrews would continue to perform, family would be the priority.
Andrews did several variety shows and specials in the late 1960s and early 1970s, including "Julie and Carol at Lincoln Center" and the television series, "The Julie Andrews Hour." She also did a concert of Christmas songs, performing with the London Symphony Orchestra, and gave concerts where she would perform most of her Broadway and Hollywood hits.
In addition to acting and singing, Andrews worked on another talent, as a children's author. Using the pen name Julie Edwards, Andrews wrote her first two books. Mandy was published in 1971, and The Last of the Really Great Whangdoodles in 1974.
Andrews did continue acting, however, and she worked on many of her husband's projects. She played Dudley Moore's girlfriend in 10 and had a somewhat notorious part in the movie S.O.B. (Standard Operating Bull), where she had a brief nude scene. Biographers Arntz and Wilson called it "one of the most talked - about events of her career." They added that "[her] willingness to take on this relatively small role, disrobe, and then endure the inevitable press frenzy, [was] proof positive that she and [Edwards] have a loving, highly supportive relationship, as well as a healthy sense of humor."
In 1982, Andrews received high marks for her performance in Victor/Victoria, a musical comedy about a female singer who impersonates a man impersonating a woman, so she can find work in a night club. Andrews earned another Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in a musical or comedy.
In 1986, Andrews received great reviews for her role as a concert violinist stricken with multiple sclerosis. Biographers Arntz and Wilson described Duet for One as "a thoughtful, beautifully crafted film" where Andrews gave her "finest dramatic performance."
Triumphant Return to Broadway
In 1995, Andrews returned to Broadway in what she described to Conn as her "big, new adventure." She and her husband collaborated on the stage version of her hit movie Victor/Victoria, with Edwards as the director. It was a demanding role, and Andrews was in almost every scene. Doing eight shows per week and performing eight numbers per show did take a toll on Andrews, and she missed several performances due to illness.
Andrews caused a bit of controversy when she declined a Tony award nomination for her role in Victor/Victoria after she was the only one with the show who was recognized. As noted by Belinda Luscombe of Time, Andrews told a matinee crowd at a performance, "I have searched my conscience and my heart, and I find that I cannot accept this nomination - and prefer to stand with the egregiously overlooked." Luscombe added that the controversy caused ticket sales to the show to dramatically increase.
Near the end of her two - year run with Victor/Victoria, Andrews was diagnosed with a non - cancerous growth on her vocal cords. She wrapped up the musical in June of 1997, and had surgery shortly afterwards. Even though she had been told her vocal cords would not be compromised, Andrews lost her singing voice.
Lost Singing Voice
As recounted by People Weekly, Andrews told television reporter Barbara Walters, "I went in for a routine procedure that I was told would not be threatening to my vocal cords. And since then . . . I've just been unable to sing." Stepdaughter Jennifer Edwards added, "She said that when she lost her voice, she had lost her identity." Ultimately, the People Weekly article noted, Andrews became depressed and "underwent grief therapy at Sierra Tucson, an Arizona rehab clinic noted for treating celebrity clients."
Andrews was bolstered by the support and love of her family, and threw herself into other projects. She told Sean M. Smith and Jac Chebatoris of Newsweek, "It was a tremendous setback. But I'm one of those people who see the glass as half full rather than half empty. And in truth, it seems I've never been busier." Early in 2000, Andrews filed a lawsuit against her doctor and his associates. Later that year, she accepted an undisclosed settlement and dropped the lawsuit.
Still Entertained Her Fans
As Andrews shared with Newsweek, despite the loss of her singing voice, she kept busy with many projects. In 1998, she appeared in a stage production of Dr. Dolittle in London. As recounted on the Julie Andrews website, she performed the voice of Polynesia the parrot and "recorded some 700 sentences and sounds, which were placed on a computer chip that sat in the mechanical bird's mouth. In the song "Talk To The Animals," Polynesia the parrot even sings."
Andrews also returned to her writing. Little Bo: The Story of Bonnie Boadicea was published in 1999. She also made the Dumpy the Dump Truck series a family affair, as she wrote the books with her daughter, Emma Walton Hamilton, which were in turn illustrated by her ex - husband, Tony Walton. Andrews also collaborated with old friends. In 1999, she teamed up with James Garner to make One Special Night, a television movie for CBS. In 2001, Andrews and Christopher Plummer worked together for the first time since making The Sound of Music, when they appeared in a live broadcast of the play On Golden Pond.
In addition to entertaining her fans, Andrews worked on behalf of many charities, including Operation USA, UNICEF (United Nations Children's Fund), and Save the Children. She received many honors for her charity work as well as for her contributions to entertainment. In 2000, she was made a Dame Commander of the British Empire by Queen Elizabeth II. In 2001, she received an Honor Award from the John F. Kennedy Center for Performing Arts, in Washington, D.C. She also received a 2002 Common Wealth Award of Distinguished Service, and was recognized for "bringing joy and inspiration to audiences of all ages."
Andrews also returned to the big screen in a big way in 2001. The Princess Diaries told the story of a gawky teenager who learned that her deceased, long - lost father was a prince of a small European country, and she was now the heir, if she wanted to be. Andrews played her grandmother, the queen, who wanted to transform her into a crown princess. Richard Natale of Variety wrote, "Thirty - seven years after Walt Disney transformed her into an instant movie star in Mary Poppins - and Oscar winner to boot - [Andrews] returned to the studio this year with another $100 million winner."
The year 2004 was also a busy, successful movie year for Andrews. She appeared in two movie sequels playing queens in both. She reprised her role as Queen Clarisse Renaldi in The Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagement, and also starred as the voice of Queen Lillian in Shrek 2. And on December 14, 2004, everyone's favorite magical nanny was re - introduced to audiences as the 40th anniversary edition DVD of Mary Poppins was released. The DVD featured both commentary and a musical reunion of Andrews and her co - star, Dick Van Dyke.
Biographers Arntz and Wilson noted that her friends and family consider Andrews "warm, sensitive, bright, upbeat, and funny." In addition, she is a successful author, dedicated to her charities, and a fine of fine arts. Arntz and Wilson concluded that Andrews "is celebrated around the world for a remarkable career encompassing stage, film, television, recordings, and the concert stage."
Books
Arntz, James, and Thomas S. Wilson, Julie Andrews, Contemporary Books, 1995.
Contemporary Musicians, Volume 4, Gale Research, 1990.
Windeler, Robert, Julie Andrews, St. Martin's Press, 1983.
Periodicals
Entertainment Weekly, January 7, 2000.
Newsweek, April 28, 2003.
People Weekly, December 13, 1999; September 13, 2004.
PR Newswire, April 20, 2002.
Saturday Evening Post, May - June 1996.
Time, May 20, 1996; October 16, 2000.
Variety, September 24, 2001; August 16, 2004.
Online
"Biography for Julie Andrews," Internet Movie Database Website,http://www.imdb.com (December 2, 2004).
(born Oct. 1, 1935, Walton-on-Thames, Surrey, Eng.) British-U.S. actress and singer. She made her London debut at 12 in a revue and her New York City stage debut in The Boy Friend (1954). A major star of the Broadway musical, she originated the roles of Eliza Doolittle in My Fair Lady (1956) and Guinevere in Camelot (1960). She also starred in films such as Mary Poppins (1964, Academy Award), and Victor/Victoria (1982), one of several films she made with her husband, director Blake Edwards. In 2000 she was made a Dame of the British Empire.
Although she is best known as a singer and actress, star of such musical films as Mary Poppins and The Sound of Music, in recent years Julie Andrews has become a prolific children's book writer under the name Julie Andrews Edwards. Andrews began her career in show business as a child, performing in her mother and stepfather's vaudeville shows. She soon graduated to performing on her own in pantomimes, performances of fairy tales and other classic stories for children that were popular in Britain at that time. Her tremendous, four-octave vocal range was recognized early, and by the time she was a teenager Andrews was much sought-after as a stage entertainer. At the age of eighteen, she signed on to perform in her first Broadway musical, The Boy Friend, which opened September 30, 1954, one day before her nineteenth birthday.
Andrews made several other successful turns on stage in the following years. She played the lead role of Eliza in My Fair Lady for over three years, first on Broadway and then in London, and then starred as Guinevere in Camelot. After being passed over for the role of Eliza in the film version of My F
