Dan's Papers - May 16, 2008 - Dan's Book Review: Home: A Memoir of My Early Years

When the 19-year-old Julie Andrews was struggling to master her first dramatic role as Eliza in the Broadway musical My Fair Lady, director Moss Hart remarked to his worried wife, Kitty Carlisle, "Oh, she'll be fine. She has that terrible British strength that makes you wonder how they ever lost India."

Anyone who has enjoyed the many wonderful performances by the iconic Julie Andrews will enjoy Home: A Memoir of My Early Years. It begins with her family tree, a bit slow going, but livens up as she describes the troubled family life stirred up by her mother, Barbara, who left Julie's father for Ted Andrews, a Canadian tenor she met while playing the piano at a seaside resort. Julie was six years old and though she lived with Barbara and Ted near London during the blitz, she deeply missed her father.

As a child and preteen, she trooped into music halls all over England, usually billed "second top" just below the headliner. For all their faults, her mother and stepfather encouraged her talent and from age nine she never stopped studying voice.

A big breakthrough came at age 12. When singing "Polonaise" from the opera Mignon she hit high F above top C and the audience went wild. Julie became the star of the act at age 14, billed as the "Little Girl with the Phenomenal Voice." One night after performing at the London Casino, on the train heading home, she met Tony Walton, who would be an important part of her life.

When Cy Feuer and Ernest Martin bought the American rights to The Boyfriend, a big hit in London, they signed Julie to play the female lead. The Boyfriend opened on Broadway to smash reviews in September 1954 on the eve of her 19th birthday.

Near the end of her contract, Alan Lerner and Fritz Loewe asked her to audition for their new musical, My Fair Lady. She writes, "I could not know at that moment that I was about to undertake one of the most difficult, most glorious, most complex adventures of my life, or that I would be guided through the daunting forest of self-discovery by several of the kindest, most brilliant giants one could ever hope to meet."

My Fair Lady was a huge hit. In May, while doing the show in London, she married Tony who was busy designing sets for West End productions. For the film version of My Fair Lady, Hollywood passed her up in favor of Audrey Hepburn. Years later Hepburn confided, "You should have done the role...but I didn't have the guts to turn it down."

Lerner and Hart were creating Camelot and sought her for the role of Queen Guinevere. She flew to New York in August 1960 and rehearsed with Richard Burton, Robert Goulet and Roddy McDowell, as well as Hart, Lerner and Loewe.

Goulet was a prankster and one night on stage kissed her passionately, uncalled for in the script. She chased him afterwards and slapped him but he merely laughed.

Walt Disney saw Camelot and asked her to star in his film Mary Poppins. To her great delight she became pregnant in 1962. Emma Katherine Walton was born in November and Julie's close friend Carol Burnett served as godmother.

In 1963, Julie, Tony, baby Emma and nurse Wendy all traveled to Disney Studios where she was "venturing into a new world." The last line of the book reads, "As it turned out...I was going home." Perhaps another memoir will tell us what this born and bred English girl meant by that intriguing remark.