Home Work Read online

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  First Edition: October 2019

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  Library of Congress Control Number: 2019947243

  ISBNs: 978-0-316-34925-3 (hardcover), 978-0-316-34923-9 (ebook)

  E3-20190912-DA-NF-ORI

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Introduction

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  Discover More

  Photos

  ALSO BY JULIE ANDREWS

  For my grandchildren, with love.

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  I know that I am—all that I am.

  And all that I am

  is full and ripe.

  All that I am is standing still,

  waiting and watching

  and bursting with life.

  Holding the straining seams of my skin,

  my passion and wit

  and my sanity in.

  Waiting for someone

  to soothe and to say

  “I understand. You’re home.”

  —Julie Andrews, 1978

  Introduction

  IN MY FIRST MEMOIR, entitled Home, I wrote about my youth, growing up during World War II, and my experiences performing in vaudeville from ages ten to eighteen and on Broadway in my early twenties. I wanted to share what it was like in those days; living through the Blitz, touring endlessly around England, singing in the old music halls, trying desperately to learn my craft and feel at home, in spite of my transience. Only when I became moderately successful on Broadway did I dare to trust that I’d never have to go back to the bleak existence of those early days.

  In this new memoir, I describe my years working in Hollywood, beginning with the filming of Mary Poppins. For those who did not read my first book, or who might like a reminder of what led to this next chapter in my life, I offer the following recap:

  I WAS BORN in Walton-on-Thames, a small suburban village in the county of Surrey, just eighteen miles southwest of London. My mother’s father was a coal miner, and her mother was a chambermaid. My mother, Barbara Morris, was just eighteen when her parents died within a year of each other. Her aspirations to become a classical pianist were cut short by the fact that she was now the primary caregiver to her thirteen-year-old sister, Joan. It wasn’t long before the girls met my father, Ted Wells, an impoverished teacher. He fell madly in love with my red-haired, vivacious mother, and offered stability for both sisters, despite his economic status. When my parents married, they moved with my aunt to a small cottage, which they called “Threesome.” My mother gave piano lessons, and my aunt taught dance, to augment my father’s wages.

  My father was the family’s rock. My brother, John, was born two years after me, and Dad showed us the wonders of nature—trees, seasons, wildlife. Dad adored rivers and lakes, and often took us rowing on the Thames. He wasn’t physically demonstrative, but there was never any doubt as to his love for and dedication to us.

  In the summer of 1939, when I was not quite four years old, my mother was playing at a series of concerts in a coastal town. She provided piano accompaniment to a Canadian tenor by the name of Ted Andrews. They began to tour together, and just before the start of World War II, my mother left my father and moved with Ted Andrews to London. Shortly thereafter, she sent for me to come and live with them, while Johnny remained with our dad.

  The time in London was a radical awakening for me. The city was filthy with soot and gray with fog, and I was unsettled by this new man in my mother’s life. He was large, loud, and volatile, and as ill at ease with me as I was with him. My basement room in our apartment was hot and sterile, with bars on the windows. At night, rats ran across the exposed pipes. Air-raid sirens wailed often, and we were required to employ blackout curtains and keep all lights off after dark. Bombing raids became a regular occurrence, and we were frequently forced to retreat to the Underground subway stations for shelter.

  After my mother moved away, my aunt Joan married her boyfriend, Bill Wilby. Because of the war effort, my dad had been assigned to work in a converted factory, making parts for Spitfire aircraft—and there he met a young widow named Winifred. By this time, Mum was pregnant with my half brother, Donald, and not long thereafter, she married Ted Andrews and Dad married Win. Mum and Ted decided that my name should be changed from Julia Wells to Julie Andrews, and that I should call my new stepfather “Pop,” presumably to make us feel more like a family.

  In the spring of 1943, Mum, Pop, Donald, and I moved out of London to a suburban part of Kent. Pop began giving me singing lessons—perhaps in an attempt to bond with his new stepdaughter, perhaps to give me something to do, since my school had shut down briefly due to the escalation of the war. I disliked these lessons intensely. I was shy and embarrassed, but Mum and Pop were surprised to discover that I had a strong soprano voice, quite unique for my age.

  Our new home in Kent had an air-raid shelter in the garden, and as the war continued, we often spent nights out there. By mid-1944, the Germans were sending “doodlebugs” to England. These were pilotless flying bombs that came across the English Channel, cut out over their target, and plummeted to earth. I could tell the difference between the sound of these doodlebugs approaching and our own fighter planes. The air-raid sirens became so constant that they prevented families from accomplishing the most basic of tasks—making dinner, doing the laundry. My mother came up with the idea that I should sit on top of the air-raid shelter with a pair of opera glasses and a whistle. Whenever I heard a doodlebug approaching, I would blow the whistle, giving my mother (and, as it turned out, many other neighborhood homemakers) time to finish a chore before running to take shelter. I was on duty in all weathers. One rainy day, I rebelled, and stayed in the house. After the bomb dropped, several neigh
bors came to the door, demanding, “Why the hell didn’t she blow her whistle?”

  My dad, Win, and Johnny moved to Chessington, about an hour away from us. I visited when I could, which was not often. Returning home from those visits was always emotionally painful.

  By age nine and a half, my singing voice had improved so much that I began taking lessons with Pop’s voice teacher, Madame Lilian Stiles-Allen. “Madame,” an esteemed dramatic soprano, was short and stout, with a kindly nature. She was a phenomenal teacher, with whom I studied for many years. She provided me with a solid technical foundation that carried me through the decades that followed.

  Soon after the war ended in 1945, I began to travel with Mum and Pop as they toured in vaudeville. I was struck by the contrast between the glamorous appearance of life in the theater and the rather shabby reality of it backstage. Just before my tenth birthday, Mum and Pop invited me to join them onstage during one of their performances. I stood on a beer crate in order to reach the microphone, and sang a duet with Pop, while Mum accompanied us at the piano. Little by little, I began to join their act more often.

  Back at school, I struggled to find my place socially—ever aware of my bandy legs, buckteeth, and lazy eye, along with my ineptitude at sports. On Saturday mornings, whenever possible, I escaped into programs for children at the local cinema—it was my first introduction to the “magic” of Hollywood.

  One day, just before Christmas of 1946, I was collected early from school. My mother told me that we were to perform for the troops that night at the Stage Door Canteen in London. When Mum, Pop, and I arrived at the venue, I learned that Queen Elizabeth, wife of King George VI, would be in attendance. After my parents performed the bulk of their act, I was introduced, and sang my duet with Pop and then a solo aria. At age eleven, I was the only child in the program. Her Majesty came backstage to greet the performers. When she approached me, I curtsied, and she said, “You sang beautifully tonight.” I was amazed that she took the time to compliment me. At school the next day, I found myself the center of attention.

  Mum, Pop, and I began touring more extensively around the country. My dad and Win had welcomed a baby girl—my half sister, Celia, nicknamed “Shad”—into the family, and the following spring my mother gave birth to my youngest half brother, Christopher.

  My mother had long wanted to return to her hometown of Walton-on-Thames, and she and Pop found and purchased—with a sizeable mortgage and a down payment that took almost every penny they had—a house called “The Old Meuse.” It was a major step up for us. Originally it had been the servants’ quarters to a mansion next door; Mum discovered that her mother had been a below-stairs maid there in her teens, and had actually lived in our house at that time.

  “It was meant that we should be here,” my mother said.

  The best thing about the Old Meuse was the large garden. It had lilac trees, an arbor with climbing roses, a vegetable plot, and a small orchard. There was a shabby grass tennis court, and beyond that a tiny copse of fir trees.

  Of course, there was a snag; we couldn’t afford to maintain it. In the early months, my mother’s uncle, Harry, took care of the garden for us. When he was sober, he was jolly and kind, and there was no better gardener on earth. Harry planted vegetables, pruned, and mowed; but he drank like a fish and never came often enough. I agonized when the weeds came back and the grass grew shaggy.

  My aunt Joan came to live at the house with her husband, Uncle Bill. Pop erected a tiny prefab cottage in the garden for them, and converted our three-car garage into a studio for my aunt’s dancing school. Students were forever coming up and down our driveway and music echoed across the courtyard all day long. It seemed wonderful to me, for there were Auntie’s classes to attend and companionship whenever I needed it—which was often, since the main house was frequently empty.

  Just prior to moving into the Meuse, I had the good fortune to be cast in a musical revue in London called Starlight Roof. It was a glamorous evening of songs, dance, and comedy. My part involved singing one aria—a fiendishly difficult coloratura piece, “The Polonaise” from Mignon, that finished with a high F above top C. My debut was surprisingly successful, and I was dubbed a “prodigy with pigtails.” Because we were playing two performances every night but Sunday, I had to drop out of school. A tutor was hired for me, with whom I worked four hours a day.

  Mum couldn’t travel back and forth to London with me every night, so sometimes Uncle Bill or Aunt Joan chaperoned me. Between shows, I would do my homework, have a bite to eat, or if I was lucky, watch an hour of cartoons at a nearby cinema.

  Starlight Roof ran for just over a year, and within weeks of its conclusion, I was cast in a holiday “pantomime,” Humpty Dumpty, playing the egg himself. English pantomimes are not in fact mimed shows; they are seasonal family-audience fare written around familiar fairy tales, with a good measure of popular music and comedy thrown in. I was barely old enough to do so, but for this show, I journeyed back and forth to London on the train by myself.

  One evening, a group of rowdy boys sat in the front row during the performance. On my way home, they happened to be on the same train as I was, still giggling and being silly. They introduced themselves, and when it was discovered that we were all from Walton-on-Thames, they asked where I lived. I cagily replied, “Oh—the other side of the railroad tracks.”

  The following morning there was a knock at the door of the Old Meuse. It was two of the boys, who had apparently looked up all the Andrews families on the “other side of the tracks” and were hoping for an autograph. They were brothers, by the name of Tony and Richard Walton (unrelated to the name of our town). I subsequently received a charming letter from the eldest, Tony, and we embarked on an easy and pleasant friendship. He was at boarding school, but we visited when he was on vacation. I met his family, whom I adored, and whose elegant home was a stark contrast to my own.

  Mum, Pop, and I spent the summer of 1949 performing in Blackpool, a resort town in Northern England. I began to notice how much my stepfather was drinking. He drank so much that during performances his words were slurred, or he forgot them. He and my mother began to have loud fights, which frequently became physical. One night, after an especially bad round, my mother tearfully begged me to telephone my aunt and ask her to come immediately. Auntie remained with us for the rest of the summer.

  Pop’s alcoholism escalated quickly. He would go on all-night benders, after which he would stagger up our driveway, vomit, and pass out. He tried several times to get sober, but always relapsed. Eventually, the music hall booking agents stopped hiring him. Mum and Pop began to sleep in separate rooms, and she started drinking as well. I became the primary caregiver for my half brothers, now three and seven—babysitting, fixing their meals, putting them to bed.

  The more Pop drank, the more abusive he became. My brother Donald received his first caning when he was just six, due to a poor school report. This soon became a regular occurrence. Eventually, Donald was enrolled in boarding school, albeit in Walton-on-Thames, not far from our house. Soon afterward, Chris was sent there as well. He was four years old, and utterly miserable. The justification was that our parents were away so often, performing.

  My dad and Win moved to Ockley, a charming country village on the Surrey/Sussex border. Dad created a thriving garden, with all manner of vegetables and flowers. Our trips through the English countryside when he would come to collect me were breathtaking, and he took great pleasure in showing me the fields of bluebells and daffodils in the spring, or listening to the sound of nightingales together in the evenings. As always, it was hard to return home from those visits.

  Mum and I continued to tour around the country, now performing without my stepfather. He and Mum were in over their heads on the mortgage for the house, so it was imperative that I keep working, even though I was only fourteen. We traveled the country by train, and during those long journeys I buried myself in books. Mum, on the other hand, simply stared out the window fo
r hours on end as we rattled through the countryside. One day, after she and Pop had been fighting dreadfully, she had a kind of nervous breakdown on the train to Aberdeen, Scotland. She wept the entire way, worrying about finances, the house, the two boys. I did everything I could to comfort her, promising that I would help make it right and would keep working, no matter what. I had no idea what I actually earned, since Mum and Pop had always given me a small allowance of £1 per week and used the rest of my earnings for household expenses. Nevertheless, I resolved to assume responsibility for the entire family as best I could.

  Sometime that fall, I attended a party with Mum at the home of a friend of hers in a neighboring town. They asked me to sing, which I reluctantly did. I remember feeling distinctly uncomfortable when the owner of the house sat beside me afterward, and asked a number of questions. Mum became very drunk—so much so that I had to drive us home, despite the fact that there was a serious London fog and I was not yet old enough to have a license. During the journey, Mum confessed to me that the man at the party was in fact my biological father; the result of a brief affair.

  My immediate reaction was that it didn’t matter, that I would always consider my father to be the man who raised me. The following day, I tentatively asked Mum if what she had told me was true. She said it was. I never thought to ask whether the man I had always known as Dad was aware of the fact, and we never spoke of it again. In later years, after Mum and Dad had passed away, I finally discussed it with Aunt Joan. She confirmed Mum’s story, and told me that Dad had indeed known the truth, and had decided to raise me and love me as his own nonetheless. The selflessness of that act knocked me sideways.

  When I turned fifteen, my mother decided that a tutor was no longer necessary for me. I worried about missing further schooling, but my mother stated that I would get ample education from life. Because I was so busy working to help support the family, I didn’t argue.