In her revelatory book, the Mary Poppins actress reflects on her career, marriage, and friendship with Carol Burnett.
I’m old enough to remember going to see Mary Poppins at the movie theater in 1964, and I still know the words to every song from that supercalifragilisticexpialidocius movie. Not only did I see The Sound of Music at the movies a few years later, but my parents played the soundtrack so many times, I also still know that by heart. Of course, by then, I’d already fallen in love with Julie Andrews. It was impossible not to.
Her new memoir, Home Work—out now—is a quiet revelation. And by quiet I don’t mean dull. The book is packed with emotion, action, gossip, and fascinating tidbits about craft. The Julie Andrews we get to know is salty, funny, passionate, hard-working, gracious, and above all, a brilliant vocalist and actress who has braved many disappointments, including the death of her beloved husband and the loss of her singing voice. I was lucky enough to have the opportunity to chat with her on the occasion of her new book’s publication.
I devoured every single word of Home Work. And your memory was supported in putting it together by the diary you kept, right?
Over the years, writing in my diary has helped keep me sane. Things were coming at me so fast. I had to write them down to process them. And now I have the diaries to draw on for the book.
You started performing at a very young age—you didn’t have much of what we think of as a childhood. Your parents didn’t provide a lot of stability.
(Laughs) Well, it was a very unusual childhood, that’s for sure.
What did you take away from it?
A lot of experience I didn’t realize was valuable, at the time. I did wonder when I was endlessly touring around in vaudeville, what was the good of it? What was the point? Was I just going to keep doing that for the rest of my life? But then years later, which I talk about in the book, when I began filming on Mary Poppins, all the things that I’d learned in vaudeville came into play. I could sing all those wonderful songs, the ones where everyone kicks up their heels, like Supercalifragilistic, because they did have a slightly vaudevillian flavor. And I felt I could embrace and use my experience. It seems nothing is really wasted in life, although you think it might be, at the time.
When did you first realize how extraordinary your voice was? You had such a pure soprano that at times, you write, only dogs could hear it…
When it really started to work was when I began training with my superb teacher, the wonderful Madam Stiles-Allen. And she was my singing instructor for many years. Her encouragement and the work I did with her—which was pretty intense—gave me a sense of assurance. But more than anything, with all that was going on in my life; my singing voice gave me an identity that I could hold onto. Everything else—touring, my family—was rather chaotic, but I had the discipline of singing, and the realization that it was a gift. That helped me feel calmer and very grateful.
I loved the way you described how you handled not getting the My Fair Lady movie role, and how you’d drive by the studio where it was being made and wave. At one point, you realized that if you’d gotten that role instead of Audrey Hepburn, you would not have been able to do Mary Poppins. The timing wouldn’t have worked.
That’s right. It’s very hard to be upset about not getting My Fair Lady when Walt Disney comes along about three months later and says, “Would you like to come to Hollywood and do Mary Poppins?”
And Walt Disney was really supportive and kind to you—you had a lovely relationship with him…
Yes, we did have a lovely relationship, and he had a persona that was very…I think I’d describe him as sort of avuncular and friendly, and very dear to me, particularly. He had a tremendous gift for spotting talent. As I say in the book, I think, people didn’t last very long in those days at Walt Disney Studios if they weren’t decent, nice people. The angry ones, or the disturbed ones, very quickly disappeared and it was really a pleasant lot and a wonderful way to begin learning about movies.
You had some sense as to how big Mary Poppins could become because it was Disney, but on the other hand you were learning on the job, not thinking too much about the outcome.
I don’t know if anybody knows right away that something is going to be enormously successful. I certainly don’t think anyone at the time we were making Poppins thought that, either. You just put your head down, dig in, and learn. I was so green, so I couldn’t even begin to predict that it might be successful. I knew that it was great fun and that it was done with great care, and that everyone involved in it was giving it their all, but I really had nothing to judge it by. So one just did the work. How lucky we were!
And I didn’t put two and two together about being a nanny in Mary Poppins and being a nanny in The Sound of Music until I read about how The Sound of Music gave you a little pause at first because you were reluctant to play a nanny again.
Yes, with the success of Mary Poppins, I didn’t want to be so typecast that nobody ever thought of me for anything else, you know? But it was a very different experience in every way. Because as I mentioned, I think, it was a whole different scale. It was, I think, Cinemascope, which Poppins wasn’t. Everything from the size of the cameras, the detail, and the pictures that the movie recorded, and everything about it was slightly raised, a little larger and bigger than Poppins had been.
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