A History of... Julie Andrews

To celebrate the 75th birthday of the great Julie Andrews, our favorite singing governness, our favorite magical nanny, our favorite gender bending toast of Paris. Something big was in order. Why, she's practically perfect in every way... so in her honor, a resurrection of a long dormant exhaustively researched 100% true* series that was once the Film Experience's most popular feature.

1935 Julia Wells is born to Mrs. Barbara Wells in Surrey, England. Mr. Wells is not the father. Scandal! This bastard child will one day become the icon of squeaky clean family entertainment. She won't always enjoy it. At her christening the good fairy Fauna grants her the gift of song

One gift, the gift of song,
Melody your whole life long!
The nightingale her troubadour,
Bringing his sweet serenade to her door.

(We figure that's the only way you get a voice that lovely.)

1940 Having already recognized the fairy's generous gift, non biological daddy Ted Wells sends Julia to live with mom's new man Ted Andrews (also not her biological father --- so confusing!) who is better equipped to give her the musical education she needs.

1947 Julia -- now "Julie Andrews" -- makes her professional debut at the London Hippodrome singing the aria "Je Suis Titania" (i.e. 'I am Titania' -referencing the Queen of the Fairies in A Midsummer Nights Dream, no doubt an homage to generous Fauna) from the opera Mignon. She blows the roof off the place.

1951 Does not prick her finger and fall into an unnatural slumber but is, by now at 16, a British star of stage and radio. Waits impatiently, but sweetly, for love's first kiss total world domination.

1954 Start at the top: Debuts on the American stage on Broadway in the lead role of The Boyfriend.

1956 Wouldn't it be loverly if she originated the plum role of Eliza Doolittle in My Fair Lady and concurrently became a superstar with the live television airing of the musical Cinderella? Statistics vary but her numbers are basically up their with the explosion of the Beatles on the Ed Sullivan show and the final episode of M*A*S*H. We're talking everyone... or roughly 10 times the numbers that even the biggest "event" nowadays.

1959 Love's first kiss: Marries set designer Tony Walton who she met on the stage in London many years prior whilst playing the Egg in Humpty-Dumpty.

1960 Her eggs produce first child, Emma. Also creates the original Guinevere in the smash hit Broadway musical Camelot.

1962/1963 Julie, already a household name in America, is passed over for the movie version of the role she created in My Fair Lady because Jack Warner, in a typically lazy movie industry move (that we still see every day in 2010) only wants someone "bankable." Never mind that her first two movies become enormous "all time" blockbusters, each outgrossing My Fair Lady (which was also a hit with "bankable" Audrey Hepburn). Nobody can see into the future and most people aren't willing to risk casting based on rightness for a role... even though anyone in the right role at the time can become bankable as Mary Poppins will soon prove.

1964 Kill Audrey, Vol 1: Julie's movie debut Mary Poppins outgrosses My Fair Lady. So much for not bankable. She also stars in the acclaimed adult-oriented drama The Americanization of Emily, a film which she reportedly loves, though few notice in the enormous wake of that flying nanny.


1965 Kill Audrey Vol. 2: Julie wins the Oscar, besting Audrey Hepburn (who actually wasn't nominated but this isn't the way history remembers it. Shut up!).

As follow up, Julie spins around on a mountain top; billions of people all over the world get dizzy, and thousands of fairies are born. The Sound of Music outgrosses every movie that's ever existed including Gone With the Wind (if you don't adjust for inflation).

After defeating Audrey Hepburn, Julie targets Vivien Leigh. 'You can make one dress out of curtains? Amateur!'

Von Trapp play-clothes

1966 Hitchcock, having worn on Tippi Hedren's last nerve, has to find a replacement blonde. He tries Julie out for Torn Curtain. Outcome: Not icy and anonymous enough for Hitch. They never work together again. The film is a big hit. So is Hawaii that same year. Even outside of musicals Julie is beyond bankable.

1967 Julie stars as wannabe flapper Millie in Thoroughly Modern Millie. People remember it today as a misfire or flop but sorry: another huge hit, the biggest in Universal's history up till then. Julie + musicals = box office gold.

1968 Except when it don't. Oops. Star, a bloated biopic of Gertrude Lawrence becomes her first failure. Julie divorces Tony Walton and...

1969 ...marries Blake Edwards after filming Darling Lili (1970) for the director with Rock Hudson.

1970s After five years on the mountain top of global stardom, Julie bows out of the movies, making only two more films over the decade. She has two more children and then adopts two more still. She makes multiple television appearances.

1981 Blake convinces his wife to bare her breasts, which he had undoubtedly seen thousands of times already but he's a sharer. Her boob flash in S.O.B totally scandalizes Mary Poppins fans and my parents (also Mary Poppins fans). I remember the fallout vividly from my youth. They were furious.

1982 Despite her "betrayal" of squeaky clean loving fans, Hollywood and pop culture reembrace the icon when Victor/Victoria hits. Her multi-octave slide in "Le Jazz Hot" shatters glass and thousands more fairies are born. Julie is nominated for another Oscar for her woman-pretending-to- be-a-man-pretending- to-be-a-woman nightclub act wherein she falls in love with gangster King Marchand (James Garner again) or "Fairy Marchand" as his arm-candy girlfriend rechristens him in a jealous rage.



1983 Julie Andrews loses the Oscar to Meryl Streep in Sophie's Choice as would anyone from any year in any film under any circumstance.

rest of the 1980s makes a few more movies with Blake Edwards but nothing ascends. Bares her breasts again opposite Rupert Everett in Duet For One (1986) but few notice. You only get a shock from that once.

1990s-1999 returns to Broadway, eventually revives Victor/Victoria in new form, refuses a Tony nomination for their "egregious" snubbing of her fellow cast members. Vocal problems begin. Undergoes surgery for throat nodules and something goes wrong and she is unable to sing again. A special new circle of hell is created for whomever is to blame though...

2000 ...here on earth the matter is settled in a malpractice lawsuit. Julie's Just Rewards: She becomes "Dame" Julie Andrews by order of the Queen.

2001 Speaking of Queens...  The Princess Diaries opens, surprising virtually everyone by becoming a smash with non-bankable Anne Hathaway in the leading role of the Princess and non-singing no-longer bankable Julie as the Queen of Genovia. The hit film will win her a new generation of young fans and set in motion a new career in children's films, albeit usually just as voice work. As in...

2010 Despicable Me wherein Julie Andrews plays the disapproving mother of super villain Gru. On October 1st, Julie Andrews celebrates her 75th birthday.

Here's to her next quarter century as one of the great entertainers of all time!

*or truthy, same diff.

American Woman: Sister Suffragettes and Screen Sirens

Mike i.e. Goatdog (of the Best Pictures From the Outside In series) was visiting from the Windy City this past weekend. He brought the wind with him. It was so strong and crazy that he cracked "I think we're going to land on someone's sister". Hee!

We took in the "American Woman" exhibit at the Met. They had a section on Screen Sirens so... that's always one way to hook the cinephiles. Only one section was about the movies but I was reminded of other movies a few times as the decades past by: Howard's End and Thoroughly Modern Millie in particular.


It was a costume exhibit mostly, which covered the long slow rise of female liberation.

Reminders that it took multiple decades to get half of the population something as obvious as the right to vote suddenly gives you perspective about how slow progress is. And it reminds you that today's civil rights struggles will pay off... eventually. The problem is there's always huge conservative forces working against progress. And they're always so proud of it at the time. Decades later their ancestors will watch a period movie about some civil rights struggle and everyone will cluck at the screen and feel confident that they would have been on the progressive side and 'how horrible that people treat [fill in blank with any minority] this way!'. And they won't see the hypocritical parallel when they vote against whatever is the new civil rights struggle.

This is the way history (and movies about it) goes...and why everyone should stop fighting against other people's rights fer chrissakes [/soapbox]

It was totally fun to see how one decade would bleed into the next fashion-wise... but you know how I get about costume design. The whole thing made me long for a really great epic about the Suffragette movement. I love the "Sister Suffragette" number from Mary Poppins but it does depress me a little that that's my chief touchstone, cinematically speaking. Or am I missing some great obscure drama?

I also think we need a really big budget eye candy movie about flappers. My favorite fashion evolution was watching the slim androgynous lines of the flapper dresses morphing into the sleek but very feminine dresses of Hollywood's golden age.

The tail end of the exhibit, before you exit from the gift shop, is a circular room filled with costumes one might easily have seen in 30s and 40s movies with huge looping clip reels of greats like Jean Harlow, Katharine Hepburn and Rita Hayworth. A Norma Shearer vs. Joan Crawford clip from The Women, which I've seen a trillion times, was made fresh by Mike's Old Hollywood knowledge. He pointed out the ample display of Joan Crawford's legs while Norma is only shot from the waist up or covered up with a huge full skirt. I guess they rarely showed Norma's legs because they were considered unsexy/stumpy? It's another variation on Natalie Wood's bracelet (she was uncomfortable about her left wrist) or Barbra Streisand's 'only from the left side' profile edict.

I love Norma and I did not know this.

One of my favorite things about hanging out with fellow movie-obsessives is that you can make bad jokes and constant movie references all day and no one looks at you funny but instead plays along. Right before leaving the museum for dinner we chanced upon this statue of Cleopatra.

Nathaniel: I want my money back. This looks nothing like Liz Taylor.
Mike: OR Claudette Colbert.

The American Woman exhibit runs through August 15th and you can see a slideshow (partial) here. If you missed the celebrity attended opening last week you can see pics here.