“My mother pulled back the blackout curtains and gasped,” says Julie Andrews. “There, snugly settled in the concrete square of the courtyard, was the incendiary bomb.”
This and many other reminiscences make up Andrews’ new book, Home. Andrews’ life was difficult as a child, and it wasn’t only her experiences during the London Blitz. She grew up in poverty. The family moved from rural England to London for her parents’ career in vaudeville. Julie Andrews helped support her family from a young age. Her stepfather, Ted Andrews, was the first to realize that Andrews could sing. She quickly outgrew his capability to teach voice lessons.
Andrews’ voice developed rapidly. When she was nine she started lessons with Lilian Stiles-Allen, who Andrews always referred to as Madame. “I don’t recall what I first sang for Madame, but remember my stepfather being in the room and my mother playing for me,” says Andrews. “After I finished Madam gave a low chuckle then said gravely, that was just lovely. She counseled my parents that since I was so young it might be better to allow me to be a child a bit longer and to bring me back when I was, say twelve or fourteen years old.” Around the same time, Andrews started performing on the road with her parents.
Andrews performed with Rex Harrison in the play My Fair Lady. “Not long into the run, I became aware that Rex had a rather windy stomach,” says Andrews. In the penultimate scene of the show, Andrews as Eliza launches into a long speech about the difference between a lady and a guttersnipe. “All Rex has to do at this point was pace up and down at the back of the scene. He didn’t have to say a word. On this particular evening, as I finished my speech, Rex released a veritable machine-gun volley of pent up wind. Members of the orchestra heard it. Every musician looked up to the stage in bewilderment. Even the first few rows in the audience heard it.”
“There was a shocked silence,” says Andrews. “At that precise moment Cathleen Nesbitt, as Mrs. Higgins, had the line ‘Henry dear, please don’t grind your teeth.’ It was outrageously funny. The orchestra roared with laughter. I could not look at Rex. Every single line I uttered in the scene and a double meaning.”
Julie Andrews relates wonderful memories of the greats she worked with in her early years. Andrews’ book is poignant and sad at times, but she rises above the adversity of her childhood to thrive as she has more and more success. The book covers her success at Eliza in My Fair Lady, first on Broadway and then in the West End.
Andrews shares her stories of her contemporaries Noël Coward, Rex Harrison, Robert Goulet, Richard Burton, Rodney McDowell, and Rodgers and Hammerstein. There’s a little about Walt Disney. The book ends when she moves to Los Angeles to star in Mary Poppins.
Let’s hope Andrews continues with her story in another book. It would be fascinating to hear about the rest of her career and how she dealt with the loss of her singing voice.
Rating: ***
Home: A Memoir of My Early Years by Julie Andrews. Trade Paperback, 352 pages, Publisher: Hyperion, Reprint edition (April 7, 2009). Language: English, ISBN: 9780786884759 $15.99
