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Mitchell Reports | Aired on February 05, 2013
Screen legend on being a children’s book author
Actress Julie Andrews and her daughter Emma Walton Hamilton talk about their latest children’s book, which is the fourth in “They Very Fairy Princess” series.
http://video.msnbc.msn.com/mitchell-reports/50708041#50708041
February 5, 2013 – Julie Andrews
A parking lot covers up royal remains, CBS brings unemployment to reality TV, Californians thank a hatchet-armed hitchhiker, and Julie Andrews responds to kids’ book critics.
http://www.colbertnation.com/full-episodes/tue-february-5-2013-julie-andrews
TODAY | Aired on February 05, 2013
Julie Andrews and daughter discuss new book
Beloved actress Julie Andrews and her daughter Emma Walton Hamilton are out with another children’s book in the “Very Fairy Princess” series. They’ve written 27 books and say they write every word together.
http://video.today.msnbc.msn.com/today/50705471#50705471
Julie Andrews Helps Ring in the New Year
Looking for someone to spend New Year’s Day with? We’d like to recommend one of the most amiable and talented performers in musical history: Julie Andrews. The star of such movies as “The Sound of Music,” “Mary Poppins,” and “The Princess Diaries” is returning as the host of “From Vienna: The New Year’s Celebration 2013″ airing on PBS on New Year’s Day (check local listings). This year the event is conducted by Franz Welser-Möst, who has been music director at The Cleveland Orchestra since 2002.
Recently, NBC announced that they’re remaking “The Sound of Music” with country singer Carrie Underwood in the lead role. Before that, we caught up with the 77-year-old Andrews, who has been directing for the stage (she recently helmed a production of “The Great American Mousical” at Goodspeed Opera House in Connecticut). Andrews chatted about directing, musicals and her coming PBS New Year’s Day special.
You made your Broadway debut in 1954. What about the musical theater do you love so much?
Well the music is the first thing. To have been part of so many wonderful musical shows and films I feel really blessed. I think the immediacy of being on stage is quite wonderful. The audience that night doesn’t know you gave a great performance the night before. They want that communication, and that communion with you as an actor and actress. It is that moment of togetherness that’s so magical. When it works it’s a thrill that’s hard to describe.
Do you get the same fulfillment out of directing that you get from being on stage yourself?
Yes, I do. When I’m directing I’m actually looking at the whole team, and being responsible for them and trying to guide them into a cohesive whole, It’s very thrilling work—especially when I work with the young people I’ve worked with it.
You co-wrote the book “Little Bo in London,” it’s another in a series with your daughter Emma. How do you go about collaborating with her?
We began writing together about fifteen years ago as a happy accident. My publisher asked if I had anything for very young children that I might consider writing about and I thought, let me ask Emma, she’s got a brand new son. And I asked her if you went to the library what would you choose for him? And she said Mom, there’s no discussion about it, it would have to be a book about trucks. My daughter couldn’t find any with a family theme so I said, let’s write one together. And from that came such joy we developed our Dumpy-the-dump-truck series. Since then we’ve written about 27 books together.
You’re also hosting “From Vienna: The New Year’s Celebration 2013.” What about Vienna attracts you?
I think it’s as much because of PBS, who are the people responsible for it. They bring such phenomenal work to television. Originally Walter Cronkite was the host of this particular show, and when he passed they asked if I would take up the baton. I’m so thrilled that they asked me– I love doing it. It’s a beautiful New Year Day’s concert of wonderful music, mostly Strauss. I’m the narrator and I take the audience on a kind of small picture postcard tour. It’s a lovely show. It airs New Year’s Day.
http://blogs.wsj.com/speakeasy/2012/12/31/julie-andrews-helps-ring-in-the-new-year/
Julie Andrews ‘looking forward to’ another New Year’s in Austria for PBS
December 27, 2011 2:15 PM ET
“It’s kind of a wonderful picture-postcard,” Andrews tells Zap2it, “particularly the way PBS frames it. I do get to travel around, and it’s a joy. And, of course, the music is spectacular and so is the hall (the Musikverein). In this case, I’m doing it right up to the moment … going to various spots and taping for four or five days, then hosting the concert itself on New Year’s Day.”
Andrews has done little singing in recent years, a byproduct of throat surgery she had in 1997, but she maintains her appreciation of great music. When she was a young performer, she sang Strauss compositions with what she now recalls as unfortunate lyrics set to the classic melodies.
“With ‘The Blue Danube,’ for example,” she says, “there I was, piping away, little guessing that I would be in Vienna and hearing it for real. And in that beautiful hall, too, which is exquisite. It’s filled with flowers, and the people are wearing the traditional costumes of the country. It’s lovely.”
Though she also was scheduled to host “From Vienna” last year, Andrews had to bow out due to the death of her husband, “The Pink Panther” and “Victor/Victoria” filmmaker Blake Edwards. (News personality Paula Zahn was the last-minute substitute.) Though she allows that she and her family are still coming to terms with his passing, Andrews is glad to be involved in the special again.
Before flying to Austria, she anticipated leaving “a lot of wrapping paper around, and I hope somebody gets it cleaned up before I return. I’m looking forward to this, and it’s a good thing to be doing this year. It helps.”
ABC aired “The Sound of Music” on Christmas Eve, and the Disney studio’s “Mary Poppins” — which earned Andrews her Academy Award — is being shown twice daily through Friday (Dec. 30) in a holiday-season family film festival at New York’s Lincoln Center.
“I’m so proud to have been a part of them,” she reflects. “That may sound a little Pollyanna-ish, but it’s the absolute truth. I mean, how lucky can anybody be to be asked to be in those movies? I’m thrilled that every seven years or so, a new generation gets to see them.”
