| |
Dame Julie Elizabeth Andrews, DBE (born Julia Elizabeth Wells on 1 October 1935) is an award-winning English actress, singer, author and icon. She is the recipient of Golden Globe, Emmy, Grammy, BAFTA, People's Choice Award, Theatre World Award, Screen Actors Guild and Academy Award honours. Andrews was a former British child actress and singer who first came to Broadway in 1954 with The Boy Friend, and rose to prominence starring in other musicals such as My Fair Lady and Camelot, and in musical films such as Mary Poppins (1964) and The Sound of Music (1965): the roles for which she is still best known.
Andrews had a major revival of her film career in the 2000s, in family films such as The Princess Diaries (2001), its sequel The Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagement (2004), and the Shrek animated films (2004-2007).
Discussion
Ask a question about 'Julie Andrews' Start a new discussion about 'Julie Andrews' Answer questions from other users |
Quotations
I'm more contented and at peace with myself now than I was as a box-office queen. I'm less uptight. I've even reached a stage where it doesn't shatter me if somebody prints something bad about me.
Saturday Evening Post (February 1980)
As you become older, you become less judgmental and take offense less. But marriage is hard work; the illusion that you get married and live happily ever after is absolute rubbish.
The New York Times (14 March 1982)
I've never minded being disciplined. I'd always rather have a quiet evening in than go to a wild party. Discipline for me has always been the foundation which leaves me free to fly.
Woman & Home (July 2000)
Encyclopedia
Dame Julie Elizabeth Andrews, DBE (born Julia Elizabeth Wells on 1 October 1935) is an award-winning English actress, singer, author and icon. She is the recipient of Golden Globe, Emmy, Grammy, BAFTA, People's Choice Award, Theatre World Award, Screen Actors Guild and Academy Award honours. Andrews was a former British child actress and singer who first came to Broadway in 1954 with The Boy Friend, and rose to prominence starring in other musicals such as My Fair Lady and Camelot, and in musical films such as Mary Poppins (1964) and The Sound of Music (1965): the roles for which she is still best known.
Andrews had a major revival of her film career in the 2000s, in family films such as The Princess Diaries (2001), its sequel The Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagement (2004), and the Shrek animated films (2004-2007). In 2005 Andrews revisited her first Broadway success, this time as a stage director, with a revival of The Boy Friend at a theatre in Connecticut.
Andrews is also an author of children's books, and in 2008 she published an autobiography, Home: A Memoir of My Early Years.
Biography
Early life
Andrews was born Julia Elizabeth Wells on 1 October 1935 in Walton-on-Thames, Surrey, United Kingdom. Her mother Barbara Wells (née Morris), was married to Edward C. "Ted" Wells, a teacher of metal and woodworking, but Julie was conceived as a result of an affair her mother had with a family friend.
With the outbreak of World War II, Barbara and Ted Wells went their separate ways. Ted Wells assisted with evacuating children to Surrey during the Blitz while Barbara joined Ted Andrews in entertaining the troops through the good offices of the Entertainments National Service Association (ENSA). Barbara and Ted Wells were soon divorced; they both remarried—Barbara to Ted Andrews in 1939, and Ted Wells to a former hairstylist working a lathe at a war factory that employed them both in Hinchley Wood, Surrey.
Julia Wells lived briefly with her father and her brother John Wells in Surrey. About 1940, her father sent her to live with her mother and stepfather, who (her father felt) would be better able to provide for his talented daughter's artistic training. While her mother wanted Julia to call Ted Andrews "Uncle Ted", she determined to refer to her stepfather as "Pop", while her father remained "Dad" or "Daddy" to her. Julia Wells's surname was legally changed to Andrews around this time.
The Andrews family was "very poor and we lived in a bad slum area of London", Andrews said, adding, "That was a very black period in my life." In addition, according to Andrews's 2008 memoir, her mother and stepfather were alcoholics. Ted physically abused Julie's brother and twice, while drunk, made advances on his stepdaughter, resulting in Julie putting a lock on her door. But as the stage career of Ted and Barbara Andrews improved, they were able to afford to move to better surroundings, first to Beckenham, and then, as the war ended, back to Andrews' home town of Walton-on-Thames. The Andrews took up residence at The Old Meuse, a house where Andrews' maternal grandmother happened to have served as a maid.
Andrews' father sponsored lessons for his daughter, first at the Cone-Ripman School, an independent arts educational school in London, then with the famous concert soprano and voice instructor Madame Lilian Stiles-Allen. "She had an enormous influence on me", Andrews said of Mme Stiles-Allen, adding, "She was my third mother -- I've got more mothers and fathers than anyone in the world." Andrews developed a strong voice and relative pitch, often referred to as perfect pitch, though noted in her 2008 autobiography Home, is actually relative. After Cone-Ripman School, Andrews continued her academic education at the nearby Woodbrook School, a local state school in Beckenham.
Andrews performed spontaneously and unbilled on stage with her parents for about two years beginning in 1945. "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. She would stand on a beer crate to reach the microphone and sing while her mother played piano, sometimes a solo or as a duet with her stepfather. "It must have been ghastly, but it seemed to go down all right." Her performances, even at the age of 12, were testament to her extraordinary talent.
Andrews got her big break when her stepfather introduced her to Val Parnell, whose Moss Empires controlled prominent venues in London. Andrews made her professional solo debut at the London Hippodrome singing the difficult "Je Suis Titania" aria from Mignon as part of a musical revue called "Starlight Roof" on 22 October 1947. She played the Hippodrome for one year.
On 1 November 1948, Andrews became the youngest solo performer ever to be seen in a Royal Command Variety Performance, at the London Palladium, where she performed along with Danny Kaye, the Nicholas Brothers, and the comedy team George and Bert Bernard for members of King George VI's family.
Andrews followed her parents into radio and television. She reportedly made her television debut on the BBC program RadiOlympia Showtime on 8 October 1949. She garnered considerable fame throughout the United Kingdom for her work on the BBC radio show "Educating Archie", which she played from 1950 to 1952.
At the age of 14, in 1950, Andrews was asked to sing at a party, and it was then that she learned that Ted Wells was not her biological father.
Andrews appeared on West End Theatre at the London Casino, where she played one year each as Princess Balroulbadour in Aladdin and the egg in Humpty Dumpty. She also appeared on provincial stages across United Kingdom in Jack and the Beanstalk and Little Red Riding Hood, as well as starring as the lead role in Cinderella.
Mid-1950s
On 30 September 1954, on the eve of her 19th birthday, Andrews made her Broadway debut portraying "Polly Browne" in the already highly successful London musical The Boy Friend. To the critics, Andrews was the stand-out performer in the show. In November 1955, Andrews was signed to appear opposite Bing Crosby in what is regarded as the first made-for-television movie, High Tor.
Andrews auditioned for a part in the Richard Rodgers musical Pipe Dream. Although Rodgers wanted her for Pipe Dream, he advised her to take the part in My Fair Lady if it was offered. In 1956, she appeared in the Frederick Loewe and Alan Jay Lerner musical My Fair Lady as Eliza Doolittle, opposite Rex Harrison's Henry Higgins. Rodgers was so impressed with Andrews' talent that, concurrent with her run in My Fair Lady, she was featured in the Rodgers and Hammerstein television musical, Cinderella. Cinderella was broadcast live on CBS on 31 March 1957, under the musical direction of Alfredo Antonini and attracted an estimated 107 million viewers.
Andrews married then up-and-coming set designer Tony Walton on 10 May 1959 in Weybridge, Surrey. They had first met in 1948 when Andrews was appearing at the London Casino in the show Humpty Dumpty. The couple filed for a divorce on November 14, 1967.
1960s
In 1960, Lerner and Loewe again cast her in a period musical, as Queen Guinevere in Camelot, opposite Richard Burton and newcomer Robert Goulet. After a slow start, cast appearances on The Ed Sullivan Show ensured that the show would ultimately become a hit.
Rave Broadway reviews aside, movie studio head Jack Warner felt Andrews lacked broad name recognition, so he hired film actress Audrey Hepburn to play Eliza for the film version of My Fair Lady. As Warner later recalled, the decision was easy. "In my business I have to know who brings people and their money to a movie theatre box office. Audrey Hepburn had never made a financial flop." Coincidentally, Hepburn's singing voice would be judged inadequate and would be overdubbed by Marni Nixon.
Andrews received the "consolation" of playing her first film in the title role of Walt Disney's Mary Poppins. Walt Disney had seen a performance of Camelot and thought Andrews would be perfect for the role of an British nanny who is "practically perfect in every way!" Andrews initially declined due to pregnancy, but Disney politely insisted, saying, "We'll wait for you." (Confirmed by 40th anniversary Mary Poppins DVD Walt Disney Pictures 2004.) Andrews and her husband headed back to the United Kingdom in September 1962 to await the birth of daughter Emma Katherine Walton, who was born in London two months later. Andrews and family returned to America in 1963 and began the film.
As a result of her performance in Mary Poppins, Andrews won the 1964 Academy Award for Best Actress and the 1965 Golden Globe Award for Best Actress - Motion Picture Musical or Comedy. She and her Mary Poppins co-stars also won the 1965 Grammy Award for Best Album for Children. As a measure of "sweet revenge," as Poppins songwriter Richard M. Sherman put it, Andrews closed her acceptance speech at the Golden Globes by saying, "And, finally, my thanks to a man who made a wonderful movie, and who made all this possible in the first place, Mr. Jack Warner."
In 1964, she appeared opposite James Garner in The Americanization of Emily (1964), which she has described as her favourite film. In 1966, Andrews won her second Golden Globe Award for Best Actress - Motion Picture Musical or Comedy and was nominated for the 1965 Academy Award for Best Actress for her role as Maria von Trapp in The Sound of Music. The movie also starred actors Christopher Plummer and Eleanor Parker.
By the end of 1967, Andrews had appeared in the highly viewed television special, Cinderella; the biggest Broadway musical of its time, My Fair Lady; the largest-selling long-playing album, the original cast recording of My Fair Lady; the biggest hit in Disney's history, Mary Poppins; the highest grossing movie of 1966, Hawaii ;
the biggest and second biggest hits in Universal's history, Thoroughly Modern Millie and Torn Curtain; and the biggest hit in 20th Century Fox's history and the most successful film of all time, The Sound of Music.
1970s, 1980s and 1990s
Star!, a 1968 biopic of Gertrude Lawrence, and Darling Lili (1970), co-starring Rock Hudson and directed by her second husband, Blake Edwards (they married in 1969), are often cited by critics as major contributors to the decline of the movie musical. Both were damaging to Andrews' career and she made only three films in the 1970s, The Tamarind Seed, Little Miss Marker and 10.
Together Edwards and Andrews adopted two daughters; Amy in 1974 and Joanna in 1975. Edwards already had another daughter, Jennifer, and a son Geoffrey who were 3 and 5 years older than Emma, Julie's first daughter.
In 1972 - 1973, Andrews starred in her own television variety series, The Julie Andrews Hour, on the ABC network. The show won seven Emmy Awards. But it was cancelled after one season, adding Andrews to the list of musical superstars who failed on television. She guest-starred on The Muppet Show in 1977. The greatest critical acclaim accorded her TV work was for her Carnegie Hall special with her close friend Carol Burnett.
Several of her 1980s films were seen as attempts to break away from her image as a "sugary sweet" personality. Most notoriously was Blake Edwards's S.O.B. (1981), in which she played Sally Miles, a character very similar to herself, who agrees (with some pharmaceutical persuasion) to "show my boobies" in a scene in the film-within-a-film. For this last performance, late night television host Johnny Carson thanked Andrews for "showing us that the hills were still alive", alluding to a lyric from the title song of The Sound of Music.
In 1983, Andrews was chosen as the Hasty Pudding Woman of the Year by the Harvard University theatrical society. The roles of Victoria Grant and Count Victor Grezhinski in the film Victor/Victoria earned Andrews the 1983 Golden Globe Award for Best Actress - Motion Picture Musical or Comedy, as well as a nomination for the 1982 Academy Award for Best Actress, her third Oscar nomination overall.
In 1993, she starred in a limited run at the Manhattan Theatre Club, of the American premiere of Stephen Sondheim's revue, Putting It Together. The show sold out immediately and proved that there was tremendous interest in seeing her return to the New York stage. In 1995, she starred in the commercially successful stage musical version of Victor/Victoria. It was her first appearance in a Broadway show in 35 years. Opening on Broadway on 25 October 1995 at the Marquis Theatre, it later went on the road on a very successful world tour. When she was the only Tony Award nominee for the production, she declined the nomination, saying that she could not accept because she felt the entire production was snubbed.
Andrews was forced to quit the show towards the end of the Broadway run in 1997, when she developed vocal problems. She subsequently underwent surgery to remove non-cancerous nodules from her throat and was left unable to sing. In 1999, Andrews filed a medical malpractice lawsuit against the doctors at New York's Mount Sinai Hospital, including Scott Kessler, who had operated on her throat. Originally, the doctors assured Andrews that she should regain her voice within six weeks, but Andrews' stepdaughter Jennifer Edwards said in 1999 "it's been two years, and it [her singing voice] still hasn't returned."
Career revival in the 2000s
In the 2000 New Year's Honours, despite Andrews's long exile in the United States and Switzerland, she was made a Dame Commander of the British Empire (DBE). She also appears at #59 on the 2002 List of "100 Greatest Britons" sponsored by the BBC and chosen by the public. In 2001, Andrews received Kennedy Center Honors. The same year, she reunited with Sound of Music costar Christopher Plummer in a live television performance of On Golden Pond (an adaptation of the 1979 play).
In 2001, Andrews appeared in The Princess Diaries, her first Disney film since 1964's Mary Poppins. The film, in which she starred as Queen Clarisse Marie Renaldi opposite Anne Hathaway, was a box office success and was followed by a sequel, The Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagement (2004). In The Princess Diaries 2, Andrews sang on film for the first time since her throat surgery. The song, "Your Crowning Glory", was set in a limited range of an octave to accommodate Andrews' recovering voice. The film's music supervisor Dawn Soler recalled that Andrews "nailed the song on the first take. I looked around and I saw grips with tears in their eyes."
Andrews continued her association with Disney when she appeared as Nanny in two 2003 made-for-television movies based on the Eloise books, a series of children's books by Kay Thompson about a child who lives in the Plaza Hotel in New York City. Eloise at the Plaza premiered in April 2003, and Eloise at Christmastime was broadcast in November 2003. The same year, Andrews made her debut as a theatre director, directing a revival of The Boy Friend, the musical in which she made her Broadway debut, at the Bay Street Theatre in Sag Harbor, New York. Her production, which featured costume and scenic design by her former husband Tony Walton, was remounted at the Goodspeed Opera House in 2005 and went on a national tour in 2006.
From 2005 to 2006, Andrews served as the Official Ambassador for Disneyland's 18-month-long, 50th anniversary celebration, the "Happiest Homecoming on Earth," travelling to promote the celebration and recording narration or appearing at several events at the park.
In 2004, Andrews performed the voice of Queen Lillian in the animated blockbuster Shrek 2 (2004), reprising the role for its sequel, Shrek the Third (2007). Later in 2007, she narrated Enchanted, a live-action Disney musical comedy that both poked fun and paid homage to classic Disney films such as Mary Poppins.
In January 2007, she was honoured with the Lifetime Achievement Award at the Screen Actors Guild's awards, and stated that her goals included continuing to direct for the stage, and possibly to produce her own Broadway musical. She published Home: A Memoir of My Early Years, which she characterised as "part one" of her autobiography, on 1 April 2008. Home chronicles her early years in UK's music hall circuit and ends in 1962 with her winning the role of Mary Poppins. For a Walt Disney video release she again portrayed Mary Poppins and narrated the story of The Cat That Looked at a King in 2004.
In July through early August 2008, Andrews hosted "Julie Andrews' The Gift of Music," a short tour of the United States where she sang various Rodgers and Hammerstein songs and symphonised her recently published book, Simeon's Gift. These were the first public singing performances in a dozen years, due to her failed vocal cord surgery.
Status as a gay and lesbian icon
Julie Andrews has long had something of a dual image, being both a family-friendly icon and an icon for gays and lesbians. According to cultural studies scholar Brett Farmer, she "... is notable as one of the few divas to enjoy a parallel popularization across both gay and lesbian reading formations."Andrews herself has acknowledged her strange status, commenting that "I'm that odd mixture of, on the one hand, being a gay icon and, on the other, having grandmas and parents grateful I'm around to be a babysitter for their kids..." She has frequently appeared as a formative presence and signifier in narratives of homosexual identity, notably in The Queen's Throat: Opera, Homosexuality, and the Mystery of Desire, Does Freddy Dance and Widescreen Dreams: Growing Up Gay at the Movies, and in May 2007, ranked 25th in a major poll ranking top gay icons.
Perhaps more interesting is that there is notable investment in the very films that cemented her alleged "sugary sweet" image, as much as, if not more, than in Victor/Victoria. The Sound of Music has long been a gay favorite, and its recent Singalong incarnation was originally created for London's Gay and Lesbian Film Festival in 1999. Recent gender/cultural studies writers such as Stacy Wolf and Peter Kemp have argued for a different reading of the image projected by her two most famous films, Mary Poppins and The Sound of Music, as that of a transgressive, subversive and life-changing force, rather than a sugary nanny committed to keeping the traditional status quo. Stacy Wolf's book, A Problem Like Maria-- Gender and Sexuality in the American Musical, analyzes Andrews' unique performance style (alongside stars such as Mary Martin and Ethel Merman) and devotes an entire chapter to The Sound of Music, studying it within a queer feminist context, and shedding light on its importance among lesbian spectators.
Filmography
Honours
Chart Sources:
Books written by Andrews
Andrews has published books under her name as well as the pen names Julie Andrews Edwards and Julie Edwards.
Home: A Memoir of My Early Years (2008) Hyperion ISBN 0786865652 Edwards, Julie Andrews (Author) and Johanna Westerman (Illustrator). . HarperTrophy 1989. ISBN 0064402967. Edwards, Julie. . New York: Harper and Row. 1974. ISBN 000184461X. Edwards, Julie Andrews. . Hyperion, 1999. ISBN 0-7868-0514-5. (several others in this series.) Edwards, Julie Andrews. . Hyperion, 2000. ISBN 0-7868-0609-5. (several others in the Dumpy series.) Edwards, Julie Andrews and Emma Walton Hamilton, (Authors). Gennady Spirin (Illustrator). . 2003. ISBN 0-06-008914-8. Edwards, Julie Andrews and Emma Walton Hamilton. . HarperTrophy, 2005. ISBN 0-06-057121-7. Edwards, Julie Andrews and Emma Walton Hamilton (Authors) and Tony Walton (Illustrator). . HarperTrophy, 2006. ISBN 0-06-057918-8. Edwards, Julie Andrews and Emma Walton Hamilton.. Julie Andrews Collection, 2007. ISBN 0061240028.
External links
|
