Lately, I've been reckoning with the heavy influence Julie Andrews had on my early years. At age 6 or so, my parents took me to the re-release of The Sound of Music. In case you aren't aware, that tune-infused biopic is a cinematic marathon, clocking in at 3 hours long. As I recall, the theatrical release including an intermission.
And yet, I recall quite clearly sitting rapt on my mom's lap, nary a squirm or complaint.
I became a child obsessed. My sister and I endlessly played the soundtrack. I dug through my parents' record collection, and came across two more Andrews' masterpieces, the original soundtracks of My Fair Lady and Camelot. For many years, everything I knew about medieval and Edwardian England, I knew through Julie.
Later, we added the Julie Andrews Christmas album to the collection, and in grammar school, I stumbled across Julie's first children's book, Mandy, which I read and loved.
Then I grew up, and poor Julie became kind of passe. Sure, I'd later marvel to her freakishly flutelike 19-year-old voice in The Boyfriend, but I'd moved on.
So it was with some delight of rediscovery that I happened upon an interview with Ms. Andrews on NPR, in which she was plugging her new book, Home: A Memoir of My Early Years. Despite her reputation as the sugar-coma queen, Julie came across in interview in a way I'd always supected she would. Very humble, realistic, practical, and good-humored. As she talked about her fairly brutal childhood (alcoholic parents, overwork, poverty, London blitzes), she projected a remarkable air of blithe survival. I knew I really had to read her book.
And so it is that I discovered that our Miss Julie also has a healthy love for potty humor, bless her soul. And so it is that I, in defiance of copyright law, print my favorite excerpt, which I hope and trust is still well within the parameters of "fair use." Enjoy.
Not long into the run [of My Fair Lady], I became aware that Rex had a rather windy stomach. I expected that much of his balletic "dancing" stemmed from attempts to clench through gaseous moments.
One night his timing was impeccable.
In the penultimate scene of the show, Eliza runs away to Higgins's mother's house. Higgins barges in and confronts Eliza, and she launches into a long speech about the difference between a lady and a guttersnipe; i.e., it is not how she behaves but how she is treated. All Rex had to do at this point was pace up and down at the back of the scene. He didn't have to say a word.
On this particular evening, as I finished my speech, Rex released a veritable machine-gun volley of pent-up wind. Members of the orchestra heard it--every musician looked up to the stage in bewilderment; even the first few rows of the audience heard it. There was a shocked silence, and at that precise moment, Cathleen Nesbitt, as [Higgins' mother], had the line "Henry, dear, please don't grind your teeth."
It was outrageously funny. The orchestra roared with laughter. I could not look at Rex, and every single line I uttered in the scene after that had a double meaning.
HIGGINS: Eliza, you ungrateful wretch, you talk about me as if I were a motor bus.
ELIZA: So you are a motor bus; all bounce and go and no consideration for anyone!
...Eliza's song "Without You" follows this dialogue, and I could see the lyrics coming at me before I sang them: "No, my reverberating friend, you are not the beginning and the end!"
I took so many pauses in that scene trying to contain myself that the show ran over by about ten minutes.
I found myself punching Rex during the curtain calls.
"How could you do such a thing?"
He pulled at his tie and straightened it. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry! I was always a windy boy--even when I was young."
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