Andrews is busier than ever, but still has time for S.F.
Friday, May 19, 2006
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Yes, Mary Poppins is 70. She can't sing, thanks to throat surgery in the late 1990s. Yet there's an unmistakable joy in Julie Andrews' voice, and no wonder: With a happy family life and recently successful movies and books, she is experiencing something of a renaissance.
"I think it's what you put out, you get back," Andrews said last week by telephone from Los Angeles. "It's basically as simple as that."
Fittingly, then, Andrews will be in San Francisco on Monday to headline a gala benefit for stem cell research, which begins with a black-tie dinner in the City Hall Rotunda. Later, at the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium, she'll speak about her career, and Marvin Hamlisch and several Broadway stars will perform.
To prep for the event, the star of "Mary Poppins," "The Sound of Music" and "The Princess Diaries" chatted about her movie career with The Chronicle -- a career that began, ironically, when she was denied her dream role.
Andrews originated the role of Eliza Doolittle in "My Fair Lady" on Broadway, but for the movie, producer Jack Warner and director George Cukor went with Audrey Hepburn, whose singing was dubbed by Marni Nixon for the film version.
Andrews was devastated, but when one door closed, another opened. Walt Disney offered her the title character in "Mary Poppins." So while it would have been loverly to be Eliza, it turned out to be supercalifragilisticexpialidocious to be Poppins: In the next year's Academy Awards, Hepburn wasn't even nominated, and Andrews won her only Oscar.
"I really understand why they needed a star for as big a project as 'My Fair Lady,' " Andrews said. "Something like three months later, Mr. Disney came along and offered me this beautiful role on a platter, so it's hard to be churlish about anything when you get that fortunate. I don't know if it was karma or just good luck, but it worked out."
Of course, "Poppins" led to "The Sound of Music," but before that came Andrews' most underrated film, a fabulously entertaining anti-war parable, "The Americanization of Emily." Written by Paddy Chayefsky, directed by Arthur Hiller and co-starring James Garner, it was about a Navy admiral's plan to manipulate media coverage of the D-Day invasion.
Released on DVD within the past year, it is uncanny how it foretells some of the Pentagon's media manipulation blunders in the current war on terror.
"It is one of my favorites. I think it's one of James Garner's favorites, too," Andrews said. "We both felt it was a very important statement to make. We make heroes of people who go to war, and somehow that's wrong (when their sacrifice is exploited). It was definitely an anti-war statement, even though there's a slight cop-out at the ending."
She and Garner became "firm friends" and worked together twice more -- a clue as to what Andrews was like to work with lies in the number of her lasting friendships with collaborators. From "The Sound of Music," she is still in regular contact with co-star Christopher Plummer, with whom she starred in a television remake of "On Golden Pond," and she was friends with director Robert Wise, whom she saw just five days before his death in September at 91.
She did not become pals with Alfred Hitchcock, but her experience on the lackluster "Torn Curtain," co-starring Paul Newman, was a good one, thanks to an impromptu master class in filmmaking from Hitch himself.
"One day, our cameraman was suggesting a lens, and I guess it was too big or too wide, and Hitchcock turned to him and said, 'Our woman, in close up? Good heavens, no,' " Andrews recounted. "(Hitchcock) told him what was appropriate, and I'm afraid I knew so little about the actual technique and lenses in filming, and he said, 'Oh, my dear, it's going to be very important in your life that you do know. Come with me.'
"He took me into his trailer and literally for 45 minutes, drew and explained about focal lengths of lenses, and lenses that made my nose too long or too wide, and he was very generous that way. I thought it was a very kind thing to do."
How cool is that?
Andrews had one more hit soon after -- "Thoroughly Modern Millie" -- but the musical became passe in Hollywood, and "Star!" and "Darling Lili" tanked. For most of the '70s she was relegated to stage work, then in the '80s enjoyed a revival in two films directed by her second husband, Blake Edwards. The savage Hollywood satire "S.O.B." featured Andrews' only nude scene, and she earned her third Oscar nomination for "Victor/Victoria," a rollicking transgender musical with Garner.
Now she is popular with a whole new generation through the "Princess Diaries" and "Shrek" movies and her children's books. Her latest book, released last month, is "The Great American Mousical," co-written with her daughter, Emma Walton Hamilton, and illustrated by her first husband, Tony Walton (her publishing empire, an imprint of HarperCollins, just launched a Web site, julieandrewscollection.com).
To be within arm's reach of that side of the business, Andrews has a home in Long Island, N.Y. She also maintains a hideaway in Switzerland with Edwards, to whom she is still married.
Which raises the obvious question: How does it last, especially in La-La Land?
"We'd both give you the same answer," Andrews said. "We take it a day at a time. Marriage is full of ups and downs, so we just get through each day, and lo and behold we've been married 36, almost 37 years. It's phenomenal to me, just mind-boggling."
Her solid family structure and late success has taken the sting out of the botched throat surgery (for which she was reportedly awarded a $30 million settlement).
"To be honest with you, I've never been busier in my life," Andrews said. "I'm not quite sure what I was supposed to learn from all of that. It did bother me. I can't say that I wasn't devastated. Singing, with an orchestra, being able to sing, was what I'd known my entire life.
"Whatever happened, I think I found so much to keep me feeling that
I'm contributing still."
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