Leaders In Profile Fabulous Stage Career Of Julie Andrews

Press, Volume XCVII, Issue 28551, 2 April 1958, Page 16

Leaders In Profile Fabulous Stage Career Of Julie Andrews

IBy

SIMON KAVANAUGH)

LONDON. Julie Andrew. is every Englishman’s idea of “the girl next door.” Her face is wholesome, with a touch of primness. She doesn't drink or smoke. She calls her theatrical agent "Uncle Charles.” This combination is almost alI ways endearing. With Julie Andrews it is more than that. For at 22 years of age, the Engi lish star of the Broadway smash- ' hit musical, "My Fair Lady," is i the most popular British export in New York. She has swept to stardom on a tidal wave of acclamation comparable with that of Britain's Gertrude Lawrence. It would hardly be an exaggeration to say that Julie Andrews established “My Fair Lady” —the musical-comedy version of Shaw’s "Pygmalion”—just as the show established coloratura soprano Julie on the glittering peak of America's crowded entertainment pyramid. On the musical’s second birthday this month, record companies totted up their figures and reported a total sale of over 1,600,000 “My Fair Lady” albums. Total receipts for the show itself amount to over £12,300,000. Nearly one and a half million people have paid to see it on Broadway. The show will open in London at the end of April, Already bookings for it extend well into next year. But nothing could be further from Julie Andrews’s nature to talk about her success—or even admit it. When the notoriously blunt "Seven Butchers of Broadway," those omnipotent New York critics who can break a musical with a sentence—gushed excitedly over her “touching, beautiful and gloriously blossoming” performance, she celebrated with la plate of bacon and eggs. Understatement I Julie Andrews personifies English understatement. Her hometown folk in staid Walton-on-Thames, in Surrey, would undoubtedly agree that she was the nicest of all the nice local girls who have “made good.” Like most of the nicest girls from towns like Walton-on-Thames, Miss Andrews has candid blue eyes, unglamorous brown hair—shortened but not dyed since her success—and a willowy figure which makes her appear taller than her sft 6in. Miss Andrews was bom Julie Wells on October 1, 1935, to Surrey schoolteacher Ted Wells and his wife, Barbara. She was barely two when her parents parted and her mother remarried—this time tc singer, Ted Andrews. The newly-weds teamed up with a song-and-dance routine which soon became popular on stage and radio. Julie was fired with theatrical ambition before she was old enough to say much more than three consecutive words. At two.

her parents report, she was sing- ' ing lustily. At two and a half, an admiring aunt plonked her on ; the stage of the local village hall and commanded her to sing and dance. “Only Flop” . That act was probably her only flop. Maybe it was fright (she . still suffers first-night jitters) or loss of interest, but she forgot the I words of “Alice Blue Gown” and her dance routine ended abruptly and ignominiously. At seven years of age came a 1 hint of her powerful (now three-octave-plus) voice. Her parents took her to a singing teacher. One day, when she was 12, Brit- ' ish impresario Vai Parnell visited her father. Julie was brought in, ' grubby from the garden, to sing i for the Great Man. Parnell was impressed. He arranged a small part for her in the brassy, vigorous musical, "Starlight Roof,” which opened a . few weeks later. Julie’s name did not appear on the programme. She skipped onstage, pig-tailed and white-faced , with fear, trembled through the "Mignon" polonnaise—and had the audience stamping and cheering minutes after she had bowed her way into the wings. Next morning, the critics ' unanimously declared "She stole the whole show.” Before Julie was 13, she had ' sung "Mignon” 250 times at the ' London Hippodrome. She also i made her first recording. At 13. the girl whom experts I agreed had an “adult larynx.’’ sang at the 1948 Royal Command I Performance at the London Pali ladium. At 15, she became London’s youngest-ever Principal Girl, as the Princess in the pantomime. “Aladdin.” She also made h(r ! debut on radio and, before she was 16, became a regular and polished 1 8.8. C. performer. At 17, she toured with comedian Max Wall in the variety show, • “Cap and Bells.” At 18, she joined the smash-hit musical, "The Boy Friend,” sailed to New York and delighted critics and theatre-goers alike with her dazzling impersonation of a 1925 “flapper.” t Then, less than two years later, came the biggest chance of all—the offer to co-star with Rex Harrison and Stanley Holloway in what proved to be the most polished and sophisticated show Broadway had seen for years—“My Fair Lady.” It swept the 20-year-old Miss Andrews spectacularly to the top of the tree in the role of Eliza Doolittle, the Cockney flower girl who is transformed into a grand lady. Ten Cartain Calls The glittering first-night audience laughed until they cried. There were ten curtain calls. The critics afterwards acclaimed Miss Andrews as “Britain's greatest gift to the American musical comedy stage since Gertrude Lawrence.” Last year, the weekly theatrical newspaper, "Variety,” voted her the best actress in a musical comedy. But success has not altered the nicest of the nice English girls. In the country of the biggest, the best and the most fabulous, she remains a model of moderation and good taste. She has nothing to do with her finances; she leaves that to her business manager, Mr Charles Tucker. ("Imagine scatter-brained me coping with the money worries of New York.”) She lives in a modest service suite, cooks herself large late breakfasts and makes lots of coffee. Already she has found how burdensome success can be. Last month, on holiday in Paris, she visited the famous Lido nightclub where the chorus girls wear ostrich plumes and very little else. But they might have been swathed like Egyptian mummies when Miss Andrews arrived. Tlje band struck up a melody from “My Fair Lady” and her table became the centre of attraction. Afterwards, she lamented: “I just want to feel normal and enjoy life.” Miss Andrews has mastered television, radio and stage. But she has turned down or deferred film offers by the score. Is it because at heart, as she sings in “My Fair Lady”: "All I want is a room somewhere Far away from the cold night air, With one enormous chair— Oh, wouldn’t it be loverly"? (Express Feature Service.)