Dame Julie Andrews - Belated Happy Birthday!

[PeterRS]

Oscar Winner Dame Julie Andrews was 90 yesterday. Virtually born on the stage, she was taking part in British music hall entertainments before her teens. Encouraged by her step-father to take voice lessons, it was eventually realised that she possessed an extraordinary 4-octave vocal range. By the time she was 20 Broadway had beckoned and she became a star playing Eliza Doolittle in Lerner and Lowe's magnificent musical My Fair Lady. When it came time to make the movie, she was the obvious choice for Eliza - to all but the studio head Jack Warner. He believed the film needed a more obvious star and chose Audrey Hepburn instead, even though she could not sing and Eliza's singing is dubbed throughout the film.

But Andrews got her own back. At that year's Golden Globe ceremony, she thanked Warner because it freed her up to take on the lead role in Mary Poppins the part for which she won an Oscar.  Soon she would become a worldwide sensation in the movie of Rodgers & Hammerstein's The Sound of Music. Following that monster success, though, was less easy. She spent a decade working in television and in a few movies that were essentially flops. But in one she met the man who was to become her husband of 41 years, the director Blake Edwards, best known today perhaps for his association with comedian Peter Sellars in the Pink Panther movies, a particularly happy marriage that was to last till his death in 2010. 

And it was in a musical comedy directed by her husband that her career rebounded. In Victor/Victoria, she plays a clasically trained singer in 1930s Paris very much down on her luck. A chance meeting with a gay cabaret singer (marvellously played by the late Robert Preston) leads to a major new career as a  man singing as a woman. When I first saw this on a Garuda flight from Bali to Hong Kong, I was on the floor collapsed in laughter. Whenever I show it now to young Thai friends, they love it.

But it was also a show which all but killed her career. Edwards decided to make it into a stage musical which ran in New York for a respectable 734 performances. But during a four week vacation near the end of the run when Liza Minelli took the role, Andrews felt problems with her vocal chords and eventually pulled out of the show altogether. A small nodule was discovered on one of the chords and her doctor prescribed a long period of rest. Her husband was not satisfied and proposed surgery, a delicate operation that sadly turned out badly. Andrews vocal chords were effectively destroyed as far as singing was concerned. She basically never sang again. They sued the surgeon and won an award of US$20 million. 

But she turned to writing and since then has written no less than 36 books for children. She also continued acting in speaking parts, as in the sugary Princess Diaries, as well as many voice-overs as in the Shrek series.

But surely it is for Maria, Mary Poppins and Victor/Victoria that we remember her most today. For her wonderful contribution to film and the stage, here's wishing Dame Julie belatedly the happiest of birthdays.