August 4th | 10 Movies
How many people can claim they were the youngest solo artist to participate in a Royal performance in front of Queen Elizabeth, then be honored as a Dame of the British Empire over 50 years later by Queen Elizabeth II? Just one: Dame Julie Andrews. The first-time Summer Under the Stars honoree’s nine-decade career across stage, film, television, music and publishing cements her place among the most illustrious and beloved entertainers of all time. Just as her famous voice boasted different ranges—four octaves, to be exact—Andrews’ movie career does, too, from classic musicals to drama, bawdy comedy to family-friendly fare. Through it all, including highs like Mary Poppins (1964) and The Sound of Music (1965) and the lows, Andrews has been celebrated for the strength, charm and sincerity she’s radiated on and off screen.
Born in Walton-on-Thames, England on October 1, 1935, Andrews’ impressive vocal talent led to her co-starring with her mother and stepfather on the vaudeville circuit in the mid-1940s. Her professional bow came at the tender age of 12 in the musical revue “Starlight Roof,” and she made her Broadway debut in “The Boy Friend” in 1954. Rave reviews led her to the role of Eliza Doolittle in “My Fair Lady” in 1956 – and her first Tony nomination. From there, Andrews’ star would rise: she co-starred with Bing Crosby in an early made-for-TV movie, High Tor (1956); Richard Rodgers wrote the 1957 live TV musical adaptation of Cinderella for her and that same year, Andrews released her first solo album, “The Lass with the Delicate Air.”
Andrews hoped to reprise her role in the film adaptation of My Fair Lady (1964), but Jack Warner ruled that she wasn’t a big enough name to carry the picture. That proved a blessing in disguise, as Andrews instead made her feature film debut in Mary Poppins. The star’s acclaimed performance won her a Best Actress Oscar and catapulted her to superstardom. Her third film, the record-breaking The Sound of Music, earned her a second Oscar nomination and cemented her status as a Hollywood icon – all before she turned 30!
Despite acknowledging how much pleasure her two most famous movies provided fans, Andrews lamented in a 1977 “New York Times” interview, “Now I can see that I was too quickly bracketed in one category, and I couldn’t escape from it.” She sure tried throughout her career, though, starting with her second film, Arthur Hiller’s darkly comedic The Americanization of Emily (1964). The anti-war satire, adapted by Paddy Chayefsky and co-starring James Garner, was as far from kid friendly and musical as one could get, with the “New York Times” terming it “some of the wildest, brashest, and funniest situations and cracks at the lunacy of warfare” ever seen on screen.
Following The Sound of Music, Andrews traveled to Hawaii (1966). Directed by George Roy Hill, the picture centers around fundamentalist missionary Abner (Max Von Sydow) who marries strong, kindhearted Jerusha (Andrews) and relocates to Hawaii to convert the natives to Christianity. “Oh, marvelous publicity – can’t you see it? Mary Poppins married Jesus,” Andrews quipped before production began. After its premiere, the epic was chopped from 189 minutes down to 161 for general release, minimizing the complexity of Andrews' role. Best known for period films, Andrews’ only contemporary role of the decade would be Alfred Hitchcock’s Cold War-set spy thriller Torn Curtain (1966) with Paul Newman. Despite the star power, the movie failed to electrify audiences and critics, even with a highly publicized bedroom scene, though it performed well at the box office. The star wasn’t enthused about the script from the beginning, only taking the role after her agents persuaded her it would be a smart career move.
Sensing it would be “the last chance I’d have to do the ingenue,” Andrews signed on for Thoroughly Modern Millie (1967) as the exuberant, feisty and adventurous lead alongside Carol Channing, Mary Tyler Moore and Beatrice Lillie. The 1920s-set musical comedy re-teamed Andrews with Hawaii director Hill, who remarked, “If I had searched the earth for a different movie for Julie after Hawaii, I couldn’t have come up with a better one than Millie.” The lighthearted picture proved a hit and a “pleasant distraction” for Andrews in a fraught period of her personal life.
Off screen, Andrews had been dealing with the loss of her stepfather, her 1968 divorce from husband Tony Walton and her subsequent marriage to director Blake Edwards in 1969. The beloved star’s career faltered during this time, as well. Andrews’ box-office reign came crashing down with the reception of her next two films, Star! (1968) and Darling Lili (1970). The latter would be the first of seven movies Andrews collaborated on with her new husband. Loosely based on Mata Hari, Darling Lili revolves around Lili (Andrews), a German spy posing as a British singer, who falls for her target, American flier William (Rock Hudson). Weather issues on set in Ireland and Brussels, in addition to production problems in France and Paramount executive intervention, contributed to weeks-long delay and skyrocketing expenditures. The opening was pushed out months for re-editing but the film still bombed upon release.
By the late 1960s, it was becoming clear that the wholesome persona Andrews was best known for had become outdated, despite her attempts at changing her image. As her film career cooled, the star concentrated on her family and turned to television, performing in specials and even starring in her own series, “The Julie Andrews Hour,” in 1972. Despite receiving positive ratings and seven Emmy wins, including Outstanding Variety Musical Series, the show was canceled after one season, a relief to its star who found the demanding schedule exhausting. Andrews also began her foray into writing, publishing her first children’s book, “Mandy,” in 1971. Despite Darling Lili’s poor reception, Andrews and Edwards worked well together and looked for more projects to partner on. That included her Hollywood “comeback,” the spy drama The Tamarind Seed (1974) with Omar Sharif, and the romantic comedy 10 (1979), co-starring Dudley Moore and best-known today for turning Bo Derek into a sex symbol.
All but two of the films Andrews made in the 1980s were directed by her husband, and those collaborations skewed largely comedic, a departure from her previous work. They struck gold with Victor/Victoria (1982), the iconic musical comedy in which Andrews plays an impoverished singer who is guided by a gay performer, Toddy (Robert Preston), and lands a job posing as a man acting as a female impersonator, a situation complicated when King (James Garner) falls for her. Edwards based the script on a 1933 German film Viktor und Viktoria. In her book “Home Work: A Memoir of My Hollywood Years,” Andrews recounted: “It was always difficult to know whether to focus on being masculine, even when in a dress, or to show hints of the woman beneath the male façade, depending on the scene.” She pulled it off, as did the entire cast and crew, resulting in a smash hit with rave reviews – and another Golden Globe win and Best Actress Oscar nomination for Andrews. (Out of seven Academy Award nominations for the film, only Henry Mancini and Leslie Bricusse took home statuettes for their music contribution.)
Andrews followed Victor/Victoria with The Man Who Loved Women (1983), a comedy starring Burt Reynolds as an artist who seeks help from a psychiatrist (Andrews) for his debilitating obsession with women. That’s Life! (1986) is a comedy-drama centering around the personal issues a wealthy couple, Harvey (Jack Lemmon) and Gillian (Andrews), face leading up to his 60th birthday. That’s Life! was a true family affair; Andrews’ daughter Emma Walton, Edwards’ daughter Jennifer Edwards and Lemmon’s son Chris Lemmon played the couple’s three adult children. The low-budget independent film was shot at Andrews and Edwards’ Malibu home, which sometimes blurred the lines for the non-union cast and crew.
“On evenings when we shot in our own bedroom, Blake and I sometimes found ourselves preparing for bed while crew members were still removing cables and lights,” Andrews recalled. Edwards co-wrote the outline with his doctor, Milton Wexler, and from there, the actors improvised; many of the situations and characters were inspired by real occurrences. Working off a story grounded in such personal situations, directed by her husband no less, was a daunting, yet ultimately cathartic task for Andrews. Her earnest performance earned her a Golden Globe nomination for Best Actress in a Motion Picture - Comedy or Musical; astonishingly, that same year she was up for the same accolade in the Drama category for Duet for One (1986).
She directed her focus elsewhere the following decade, appearing on television (including her own short-lived 1992 sitcom, “Julie”), recording solo albums and returning to Broadway after more than three decades for a stage adaptation of “Victor/Victoria.” Her That’s Life! Character faced the potential loss of her singing voice, and Andrews confronted the same situation in real life when a surgery damaged her vocal cords in 1997. Despite dealing with such a tremendous personal and professional shock, the star forged ahead, showing no signs of slowing down.
Andrews’ career took another turn in the 2000s, this time back into family-friendly territory. Her roles in The Princess Diaries (2000, and her first Disney film in almost 40 years) and Eloise at the Plaza (2003), in addition to lending her voice to movies as diverse as the Shrek series, Enchanted (2007) and Aquaman (2018), have introduced Andrews to a new generation of fans.
Off screen, Andrews racked up numerous awards for her immeasurable contributions to the arts, including the Kennedy Center Honors, an AFI Lifetime Achievement Award, a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award and many more. She also kept pouring energy into her long-time philanthropic endeavors, most notably UNICEF, where she acted as a Goodwill Ambassador for the United Nations Development Fund for Women. Andrews still finds time to write books for kids, more than 40 over the last 50 years, many of which she co-authored with her daughter Emma. From penning children’s literature to voicing Lady Whistledown on the hit show “Bridgerton” (yet another example of her extraordinary range!), the incomparable icon is still making a name for herself and entertaining us after all these years.
