The Parallel Julieverse

Visual and textual musings on the sublime Julie Andrews, her stardom and career...from the real to the surreal. Unless otherwise noted, Copyright © Brett Farmer. All rights reserved.

[paralleljulieverse]

BREAKING NEWS: White House Regifts 2025 Nobel Peace Prize to Dame Julie Andrews in “Tremendous” Diplomatic Gesture

Washington, D.C. — April 1, 2026

In a surprise announcement today, the White House confirmed that President Donald J. Trump has formally regifted the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize to Dame Julie Andrews.

The award had previously been presented to President Trump by its original recipient, Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado, in what observers at the time described as “a bold gesture,” “a complex diplomatic move,” and “a deeply confusing WTF moment.”

In a rare act of humility and selfless generosity, President Trump explained that, upon reflection, the Prize should go to:

“The only person I know who is practically perfect in every way.”

“She sings. She lifts morale. She brings people together — people love it. They absolutely love it. Frankly, incredible operation. Very smooth. Very classy,” the President said.

In a late-night post on Truth Social, @realDonaldTrump described Dame Julie as “one of the greatest ever — maybe the greatest,” adding that “many people — very smart people — have been saying for years that she should have won it already.”

“Also,” one senior White House official added, “she’s never once started a trade war or threatened a major shipping lane. Frankly, that helped.”

When asked whether she would accept the honour, Dame Julie Andrews replied with crisply enunciated candour:

“Darn tooting, I will!" “I’m tired of standing with the egregiously overlooked. And, just quietly, I’m certainly more deserving of the award than Donald.”

Dame Julie went on to note that her career has involved decades of morale-boosting work, including but not limited to:

Singing through geopolitical uncertainty

Defeating forces of villainy with show tunes

Renovating the patriarchy with a choice high C

Demonstrating that firmness, kindness, and Home Counties diction remain highly effective tools of international diplomacy

The framed medal, presented during a brief Oval Office ceremony, will reportedly be displayed alongside Dame Julie’s other major honours in her Sag Harbor home. Sources confirm, however, that she has declined to install a gold toilet anywhere on the premises.

The President later reiterated that the decision was “a tremendous honor for Dame Julie — really tremendous — and frankly something she should thank me for.”

Asked whether this decision sets a precedent for future Nobel Prize reallocations, the President replied:

“Only if they’re really, really good. The best people. Really the best. You don’t want to cheapen the Prize.”

The Nobel Committee has declined to comment but is understood to be “reviewing several aspects of the situation, including whether this has, in fact, happened.”

—

Office of Strategic Reconsideration The White House

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Cinematographer Alex Thomson BSC takes a light reading from Julie Andrews on the set of Duet for One Elstree Studios, Hertfordshire, March 1986

Born in London in 1929, Thomson rose through the traditional apprenticeship system of the British film industry to become one of the most accomplished cinematographers of his generation. He earned an Academy Award nomination for Excalibur (1981) and later served as president of the British Society of Cinematographers (Thomson 2005).

While Duet for One was not among his most commercially prominent projects, critics consistently noted the expressive quality of Thomson’s work. Judy Stone of the San Francisco Chronicle wrote that “cinematographer Alex Thomson’s lighting eloquently complements the mood of the work” (1987, p. 83). Similarly, James Adams of the Edmonton Journal observed that Duet for One was “beautifully photographed by Alex Thomson” (1987, p. D2).

For his part, Thomson recalled the technical demands of the production, including an extensive lighting setup at the Royal Albert Hall, where he and a crew of thirty began work at 4 a.m. to prepare for filming later that morning (Cannon 1986, p. 16). By contrast, exterior scenes were shot almost entirely in natural conditions — an approach Thomson had adopted early in his career when working as an assistant to Nicolas Roeg. The image here offers a rare glimpse of Thomson at work, helping to shape the film’s intimate visual style — a brief moment where lighting, camera, and performance align.

Sources

Adams, James (1987, 19 June). Sex and violins abound but sense of tragedy is missing. The Edmonton Journal, p. D2.

Cannon Group, Inc. (1986). Duet for One Production Notes. Los Angeles: Cannon Publicity Department.

Stone, Judy (1987, 13 February). Tour de force for Julie Andrews. San Francisco Chronicle, p. 83.

Thomson, Alex (ed.) (2005). A Collection of Outstanding Stills. London: The British Society of Cinematographers.

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Canonised in Colour: Julie Andrews on the Cover of LIFE, March 1956

On 26 March 1956 — seventy years ago this month — readers of LIFE opened their weekly issue to find a young Cockney flower girl smiling out from the cover. The hat sits slightly askew. The bodice is patched. A clutch of yellow daffodils spills across the foreground. The headline is brisk and understated: “Julie Andrews — She sings on Broadway in major new musical.”

At mid-century, LIFE was the most widely circulated magazine in the United States, selling nearly four million copies each week (di Folco 2005: 207). For Broadway producers and promoters, a spread in its pages represented more than publicity. As Richard Maney, press agent for My Fair Lady, reflected, “The goal of every press agent is a picture spread in LIFE… They authenticate the hit status of the play or musical cited, since LIFE’s editors rarely memorialize a work that isn’t selling out or assured of a long run” (Maney 1957: 222). A cover went further still. It conferred what Maney called treatment that “borders on canonization” (ibid.: 226) — translating theatrical success into national recognition.

Today, the 1956 Julie Andrews LIFE cover is inseparable from the mythology of My Fair Lady and Andrews’s stardom alike. Yet when it appeared, the show had been on Broadway for barely ten days, its long-term future far from guaranteed. That it should have received cover-story treatment so early in its run was remarkable. In full colour on the nation’s most influential weekly, Andrews as Eliza Doolittle ceased to be merely a stage performance. She became a circulating image — reproduced, consumed, and inscribed in the public imagination.

As Maney recounts in his 1957 memoir Fanfare (226-28), the cover that now seems inevitable emerged from weeks of negotiation and uncertainty. In January 1956, while My Fair Lady was still in rehearsals, Tom Prideaux — LIFE’s Associate Editor — informed Maney that Andrews was under consideration for a cover. The exhilaration was immediate; the complications quickly followed. But in which costume should she appear?

Prideaux favoured the white ballroom gown. Maney objected. In white satin, he reasoned, Julie might look like any elegant ingénue. In the Cockney flower-girl costume — Maney's recommendation — she was unmistakably Eliza Doolittle. The argument was aesthetic, but also strategic: the cover needed to sell a character, not merely a performer. Prideaux was unswayed.

What followed, as Maney recounts in exasperated (if humorous) detail, was a minor saga of hurried fittings and frustrated sittings. The ballroom gown was rushed to completion. Trunks were briefly held back from shipment to New Haven for the start of the show's out-of-town tryouts. A dresser and hairstylist were dispatched. When LIFE’s assigned photographer — delayed en route from North Carolina — finally arrived, Julie posed for three exhausting hours.

Prideaux assessed the proofs and was dissatisfied. He ordered a re-shoot.

A further session was arranged as the company moved from New Haven to Philadelphia. Again, Prideaux insisted on the white ball gown. Again, disappointment.

It was only at the third attempt, during the Philadelphia engagement, that the editor finally relented. A small ballroom in the Warwick Hotel was secured for another sitting. This time Julie arrived not in satin but in patched bodice and battered straw hat. This time, LIFE sent a different photographer, Leonard McCombe, who exposed fifty frames. One — shot on the hotel's terrace, poised between candour and composition — became the cover.

In retrospect, the choice seems inevitable. In the flower-girl costume, Andrews is not simply a rising Broadway actress. She is Eliza — vivid, specific, already legible. The daffodils echo Covent Garden; the stone paving her "guttersnipe" origins; the soft palette lifts stage realism into magazine luminosity. Theatre becomes image; performance becomes print.

If the cover conferred consecration, the interior spread enacted a broader framing. Across six pages, LIFE embedded Andrews within the production, presenting My Fair Lady as a realised theatrical world: comic, opulent, and assured.

The opening headline — “‘Pygmalion’ makes fine musical shining with Shaw’s wit” — situates the show within literary inheritance as much as Broadway commerce. The photographs move between registers: Rex Harrison’s sardonic authority; Stanley Holloway’s exuberant disorder; the charged stillness of Eliza’s ball gown entrance; the comic lift of Doolittle borne aloft; the fiery battle of wills at show’s end. High society and Covent Garden, satire and romance — the musical appears both refined and popular.

Throughout, Andrews remains the fulcrum, but she is never abstracted into a static icon. She appears in transformation, in tension, in poise. In the Ascot image, encased in Cecil Beaton’s controlled palette, she is all surface and discipline; in the later scenes, she radiates emotional force. The spread allows readers to see not merely a star, but a performance operating within a carefully calibrated ensemble.

McCombe’s eye is attentive to theatrical geometry — staircases, balconies, crowd formations — yet repeatedly returns to faces at moments of inflection. Readers of this blog may recall his later 1962 LIFE session with Andrews for The Broadway of Lerner and Loewe; already in 1956, one senses that instinct for locating a performer at the precise point where role and self briefly coincide.

If the cover canonised Julie qua Eliza in colour, the interior pages canonised the production as event — a musical that could withstand the scrutiny of LIFE’s national gaze and emerge not as experiment, but as achievement. In capturing the moment in print, the magazine marked the intertwined ascent of two theatrical legends: My Fair Lady and Julie Andrews. Sources di Folco, J. (2005). “Life magazine.” History of Photography, 29(2), 207–208. “G.B.S. in NY, a musical hit.” (1956) LIFE, 40:(13), 26 March, 58–66. Maney, R. (1957) Fanfare: The confessions of a press agent. New York, NY: David McKay Company. Photo credit: Leonard McCombe, Time-Life Inc.

© 2026, Brett Farmer. All Rights Reserved.

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"Close to musical comedy perfection..." My Fair Lady's out-of-town try-outs, 4 February-10 March 1956

My Fair Lady now occupies a place so secure in the musical theatre canon that it can be difficult to imagine it ever not working. Yet seventy years ago this week, the show made its first steps onto the world stage not as a fully formed triumph, but as an uncertain work in progress: overlong, technically unstable, and still being polished.

That uncertainty was not incidental. During its long gestation, My Fair Lady was widely regarded as an audacious risk. The very idea of adapting Shaw’s Pygmalion into a musical seemed implausible to many: too literary, too talkative, insufficiently romantic. Several major composers declined the project on precisely those grounds, judging that it “would just never work as a musical” (Lunden 2000). Even its eventual creators, Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe, abandoned the idea for a time, convinced that “no matter how hard we tried, we did not seem able to allow the play to unfold in a setting and atmosphere that suggested music” (Lerner 1978, p. 36).

The show’s publicist, Richard Maney (1959), later remarked: “For a long time it took an act of faith to believe that My Fair Lady would ever reach the stage at all. Four years of confusion, false starts and frustration lay behind its first performance” (p. 112).

By the winter of 1955–56, however, the show had taken provisional shape and was ready to be tested in the only way Broadway musicals then could be: before a paying public, away from New York, across five weeks of out-of-town try-outs.*

The try-out as laboratory

As Laura Macdonald (2017) observes, while Broadway has long been understood as “the site where American musicals are made,” for much of the twentieth century “a key portion of the development process … involved writing, rehearsals, and performances beyond Times Square” in the out-of-town try-out (p. 216). These engagements were not ceremonial previews or marketing exercises but working laboratories, in which shows were subjected to the diagnostic pressures of live performance before the irrevocability of a New York opening.

At these work-in-progress stagings, the audience functioned not merely as witness but as an active metric instrument. In response to audience reception and other in situ indicators, scenes were trimmed, songs cut, running times reduced, and performances recalibrated night by night.

Today, that ecology has largely disappeared, replaced by workshops, readings, and developmental runs. In 1956, however, My Fair Lady went out into the world unfinished — learning what it was through the pressures of live performance.

New Haven: Broadway’s proving ground

In mid-century Broadway practice, try-out venues were typically close to New York — in regional cities such as Boston, Philadelphia, and New Haven — where geographic proximity allowed producers to transport creative teams, orchestras, and sets, while maintaining critical distance from Broadway’s verdict.

The most esteemed of these venues was the Shubert Theatre in New Haven. Barely ninety minutes by direct train from Manhattan, the Shubert combined convenient access with technical sophistication, an informed and demanding local audience, and a critical culture attuned to try-outs as unfinished business. During its heyday, the Shubert hosted more than 600 pre-Broadway engagements, including landmark musical successes such as Oklahoma!, Carousel, South Pacific, and The King and I, earning it the sobriquet “the birthplace of the nation’s greatest hits” (Hamilton 2008; Shubert Theatre 2026).

Seeking to follow that pedigree, My Fair Lady’s producer Herman Levin secured the Shubert in September 1955 as the show’s first out-of-town engagement, scheduled for 4–11 February 1956. A subsequent booking at the affiliated Shubert Theatre in Boston was planned as a longer second try-out, but this contract was replaced with a four-week engagement at the Erlanger Theatre in Philadelphia from mid-February to 10 March (McHugh 2012, p. 39).

Opening night at the Shubert

After spending much of January rehearsing in New York, the company decamped to New Haven, continuing work at the local Jewish Community Center, then moving into the Shubert on 2 February for final technical rehearsals ahead of opening night (McHugh 2012, p. 46).

Much has been written about the fraught final lead-up to the show’s New Haven premiere — so much so that it has become part of theatrical lore and scarcely needs retelling. Suffice it to say, it was far from smooth sailing. The show’s ambitious turntable sets misbehaved; star Rex Harrison suffered a last-minute crisis and refused to go on; the opening-night performance was briefly cancelled and then reinstated; and, to compound matters, a severe blizzard swept through Connecticut (Andrews 2008; Garebian 1993; Lerner 1978).

With audiences arriving through snow and wind, pressure mounted. Just before curtain time, Moss Hart stepped out to address the sell-out house, framing the evening candidly as something closer to a rehearsal than a finished performance, and closing with Blanche DuBois’s famous line: “We have always depended on the kindness of strangers” (quoted in Rizzo 2018).

That kindness, it turned out, was abundant. Despite technical hiccups and an overlong running time — the final curtain fell at 11:40 p.m. — the audience responded rapturously. By the end of “The Rain in Spain,” applause stopped the show; one eyewitness recalled that spectators “leapt to their feet and refused to stop applauding” (Rizzo 2018).

Local critics echoed that response. The Hartford Courant hailed “a new sensation… a brilliantly hilarious show, staged with splendour and wonderfully acted” (T.H.P. 1956, p. 10). The Connecticut Post described it as a “gilt-edged… new musical” that “quickly caught the fancy of the capacity audience” (Russell 1956, p. 19). The Meriden Record called the show “a triumph” and predicted that “it will pack them in for many a month to come” (B.H.S. 1956, p. 13).

Julie Andrews, in particular, emerged as the evening’s indisputable centre of gravity:

“Andrews is completely enchanting… deliciously droll, deliciously beguiling — and her voice is haunting in its delicacy” (T.H.P. 1956, p. 10). “Miss Andrews’ singing is divine and her acting so natural as to be deceptively effortless” (B.H.S. 1956, p. 13). “Miss Andrews makes the metamorphosis from a Cockney guttersnipe flower girl to a polished lady in a convincing manner… In addition to being a charming actress, she also sings entrancingly” (Russell 1956, p. 19).

After the applause

Despite the euphoric reception, the creative team quickly recognised that the show still faced serious structural problems. Within days of opening, work began on reducing and reshaping the material: large-scale sequences were reassessed, songs reconsidered, and the balance between spectacle and narrative was recalibrated.

The most significant changes concerned the first-act finale. In its original form, Act I concluded with an extended sequence leading into Eliza’s embassy ball debut, comprising Higgins’s solo “Come to the Ball,” a transformation dream ballet (“Decorating Eliza”), and a further solo for Eliza, “Say a Prayer for Me Tonight.” As revisions gathered pace, this entire twenty-minute sequence was abandoned (Lerner 1978; McHugh 2012).

In its stead, Lerner drafted a new, spare book scene — one of the briefest in the show — which, as McCann (2018) observes, reveals him “at his most brilliant and imaginative” (p. 84). Where the earlier version relied on musical elaboration and spectacle, the revised scene depended on stillness, timing, and dramatic concentration: Higgins and Pickering waiting; Eliza’s entrance framed by silence; her slow descent of the stairs in the ball gown.

Andrews later recalled that this substitution was “inspirational,” becoming “the defining moment of Eliza’s transformation” (Andrews 2008, p. 201). In place of excess came economy; in place of effort, authority.

Philadelphia and polish

After a sell-out week in New Haven, the company moved to the Erlanger Theatre in Philadelphia for a four-week run beginning on 15 February, delayed one day from the originally announced 14 February opening. Here, the work became more granular than structural: “polishing the performances, sharpening a line here, an exit there, making the technical production flow efficiently, and completing the lighting” (Lerner 1978, p. 108).

The show’s reception in Philadelphia was no less emphatic. The Philadelphia Inquirer declared it “one of the top musicals… that comes about as close to musical perfection as one can expect,” praising Andrews as “a triumph… both as actress and singer,” with her rendition of “I Could Have Danced All Night” singled out as “one to cherish” (Murdock 1956, p. 13). As in New Haven, the Philadelphia run quickly sold out, prompting Maney to predict — modestly, as it turned out — that when it reached Broadway the show would “stay at the Hellinger for two years or more” (McHarry 1956, p. 15C; Maney 1959, p. 114).

By this point, the production was also settling into the civic and social rhythms of a commercial theatrical run. During the Philadelphia engagement, My Fair Lady played at least two benefit performances: one on 21 February in aid of the World Affairs Council, and another on 29 February for the Wilson College Alumnae Association ('Benefit' 1956; 'Calendar' 1956). Such events signalled that the show was no longer merely being tested, but already functioning as a cultural and philanthropic asset.

Finding the show

By the time My Fair Lady played its final try-out performance in Philadelphia on 10 March, it was not yet a legend, but it was recognisably itself. The shape had clarified. The excess had fallen away. What remained was a work of extraordinary balance — music, book, performance, and design welded together not by inevitability, but by pressure, revision, and trust.

The following week, My Fair Lady made its official Broadway debut at the Mark Hellinger Theatre on 15 March. The response was immediate and overwhelming. Critics raved, with Brooks Atkinson of The New York Times famously hailing it as “the best musical of the century,” and the production would go on to enjoy a record-breaking run, becoming the most successful Broadway musical of its time.

Seventy years on, it is tempting to read the show’s success backwards, to imagine it arriving fully formed. The out-of-town try-outs tell a different story. They remind us that even the most canonical works begin as provisional, fragile things — tested in snowstorms, reshaped in rehearsal halls, and carried forward by artists learning, night by night, what the work demanded of them.

______________________

Endnotes

* Even the show’s newspaper advertising for New Haven and Philadelphia reflected this provisional state. Press agent Richard Maney recalled that final costumes were not yet available and Harrison’s hairpiece was still in customs, forcing the production to improvise its earliest public images (Maney 1957, pp. 219–220). For a discussion of these early publicity portraits, see the preceding post: “Becoming Eliza: early character publicity for My Fair Lady, January 1956.”

______________________

Sources

Andrews, J. (2008). Home: A memoir of my early years. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson.

Benefit for College. (1956, February 19). The Philadelphia Inquirer, p. SO-8.

B.H.S. (1956, February 8). Have you seen… My Fair Lady. The Meriden Record, p. 13.

Calendar of social events in Philadelphia. and suburban areas. (1956, February 19). The Philadelphia Inquirer, p. SO-16.

Garebian, K. (1993). The making of My Fair Lady. Toronto: ECW Press.

Hamilton, S. (2008, July 31). At this theatre: Shubert Theatre, New Haven, CT. Playbill. https://www.playbill.com/article/at-this-theatre-shubert-theatre-new-haven-ct-com-151760

Lerner, A. J. (1978). The street where I live. New York: W. W. Norton.

Lunden, J. (2000, July 15). NPR’s 100: My Fair Lady. National Public Radio. https://www.npr.org/2000/07/15/1079541/nprs-100-my-fair-lady

Macdonald, L. (2017). Off, off, off, off Broadway: Musical development out of town and regionally. In E. L. Wollman (Ed.), A critical companion to the American stage musical (pp. 214–224). New York: Methuen Drama.

Maney, R. (1957). Fanfare: The confessions of a press agent. New York, NY: David McKay Company.

Maney, R. (1959). My Very Fair Lady. Saturday Evening Post, 231(44), pp. 34–114.

McHarry, C. (1956, February 15). Can Shaw duck hex? Amish sore. Daily News, p. 15C.

McHugh, D. (2012). Loverly: The life and times of My Fair Lady. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

McHugh, D. (Ed.). (2014). Alan Jay Lerner: A lyricist’s letters. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Murdock, H. T. (1956, February 16). Erlanger offers My Fair Lady. The Philadelphia Inquirer, p. 13.

My Fair Lady is sell-out for entire week. (1956, February 4). The Meriden Record, p. 8.

Musical delays opening date. (1956, February 7). The Philadelphia Inquirer, p. 12.

Rizzo, F. (2018, April 13). At first performance of My Fair Lady, the drama was offstage. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/13/theater/my-fair-lady-new-haven-rex-harrison-julie-andrews.html

Russell, F. (1956, February 7). Passing show: New musical pleases audience. The Connecticut Post, p. 19.

Shaw set to music. (1956, February 12). Today: The Philadelphia Inquirer Magazine, p. 24.

Shubert Theatre. (2026). History of the Shubert Theatre, New Haven. https://www.shubert.com/about-us/history/

T.H.P. (1956, February 8). New show at Shubert brilliant. The Hartford Courant, p. 10.

© 2026, Brett Farmer. All Rights Reserved.

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“Your face with a lustre that puts gold to shame...” Publicity portraits of Julie Andrews as Guenevere in Camelot

These three portraits were taken as part of the publicity campaign for the 1962 television special The Broadway of Lerner and Loewe, filmed in December 1961 and broadcast in February 1962. Here Julie appears in the gold brocade gown designed by Tony Duquette, based on concept designs by Adrian, for the Grand Hall investiture scene closing Act I of Camelot. The scene was recreated in its entirety for the television programme by Julie, Richard Burton, Robert Goulet, and the Camelot ensemble. Photo credit: Alfred Productions, Lerner & Loewe Enterprises, 1962.

© 2026, Brett Farmer. All Rights Reserved.

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Becoming Eliza: early character publicity for My Fair Lady, January 1956

By the time My Fair Lady reached Broadway in March 1956, its visual world appeared fully formed: Cecil Beaton’s costumes, Oliver Smith’s sets, and Julie Andrews’s carefully calibrated transformation from Covent Garden flower girl to Ascot spectacle. The publicity portraits taken during rehearsals two months earlier tell a more provisional story — one of adjustment, exploration, and discovery — captured just weeks before the show encountered its first audiences.

Produced during January rehearsals in New York, these images formed part of the show’s early publicity campaign overseen by press agent Richard Maney (Maney 1957, pp. 219-220). Formally engaged by producer Herman Levin in late November and active from early January 1956, Maney would remain a constant presence throughout My Fair Lady’s Broadway run (McHugh 2012, p. 42). From the outset his task was paradoxical: to circulate press images that projected confidence and coherence even as the production’s visual identity was still being worked out.*

That tension — between fixity and experimentation — is visible across these character portraits. By this point, Beaton’s costumes were largely settled. Indeed, as profiled in an earlier post, Beaton had already staged a very early costume shoot with Andrews and Rex Harrison at Covent Garden in December 1955, before either star had even departed for New York. What remained fluid were the elements that would animate those costumes onstage: gesture, expression, lighting — and, most conspicuously, hair. Across the portraits, Andrews’s Eliza appears in subtly different guises, with hair carrying much of the expressive work. In some images her hair is lighter, longer, and framed by pronounced side curls; in others the tone deepens, the silhouette tightens, and the look becomes more graphic. These variations register an ongoing negotiation about how Eliza should read visually — not only as a figure of transformation, but as a character legible at a glance. Levin himself suggested shifting Andrews’s hair toward “an auburn shade,” remarking that her natural colour seemed “rather drab” (quoted in McHugh 2012, p. 43). The creative team, meanwhile, continued to refine and “brighten” the tone, testing how hair, costume, and lighting registered together under stage conditions.**

The labour behind these refinements was substantial. Ernest Adler — signed in December to oversee “all hair stylings and coiffures” (McHugh 2012, p. 42) — assumed responsibility for one of the production’s most intricate, if frequently overlooked, design elements. Hair functioned not as ornament but as structure, shaping Eliza’s visual progression from street seller to society spectacle and requiring meticulous rehearsal at every stage.

Presiding over a complex system of wigs, falls, and hairpieces that demanded precision, speed, and constant adjustment, Adler regarded his work on My Fair Lady as his “greatest” achievement. He later recalled that the production spent thousands of dollars on hair alone, with entire ensembles — most famously in the 'Ascot Gavotte' — wearing custom-built coiffures integrated directly into their hats (Battelle 1957; Danzig 1957). Adler took particular pride in Andrews’s coiffures for Eliza, noting that they were subsequently adopted by salons as everyday fashion. “She had eleven coiffures in that show,” he explained, “because each one had to progress as she became more and more like a lady” (Holmes 1961, p. 44). In her memoirs, Andrews vividly recalled the labour this progression entailed:

My own hair was long, and pieces were added to it throughout the show as necessary. My first costume called for long, straggly curls beneath my shabby straw hat. Once Eliza was accepted into the Higgins household, I wore a long “fall” at the back of my head, attached with a velvet bow, followed later by a beautiful twisted chignon for the ballroom scene. I not only had costume changes, quick changes, the underdressing, but also hairpiece and hat changes, too (Andrews 2008, p. 199).

Julie was not the only performer negotiating hair-related contingencies. Rex Harrison, balding and long reliant on hairpieces, found himself temporarily without one upon his arrival in New York (Maney 1957, pp. 219-220). As Walter Winchell reported with relish in his syndicated gossip column, Harrison spent his first two weeks of rehearsals being photographed for publicity “indoors and out” wearing a hat, having informed Maney that his hairpiece had been delayed “in customs” (Winchell 1956).

Seen now, these rehearsal-era publicity portraits capture My Fair Lady in a state of becoming: images designed to stabilise an identity that was still being formed. They remind us that the show’s eventual visual coherence was not inevitable, but carefully constructed — strand by strand, image by image — under the pressures of rehearsal, publicity, and expectation. ____________

Endnotes:

* Some of Maney's publicity images captured material that would soon vanish. A New York Times photograph published on January 1, for example, showed dancers rehearsing with choreographer Hanya Holm — almost certainly documenting the elaborate first-act transformation ballet that would be cut during the show's out-of-town try-out (McHugh 2014, p. 64).

** It is worth noting that the publicity portraits circulated at this stage present Eliza exclusively in her Act I, pre-transformation guise. The absence of her later Ascot and ballroom looks appears deliberate, preserving the visual impact of her metamorphosis for the theatre rather than the press. ______________

Sources

Andrews, J. (2008). Home: A memoir of my early years. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson.

Battelle, P. (1957, September 26). Ernest Adler does a wave in short time. The Cedar Rapids Gazette, p. 10.

Danzig, F. (1957, December 19). Ernest Adler can stake claim to Yankee Clipper. Daily News, p. 6.

Garebian, K. (1993). The making of My Fair Lady. Toronto: ECW Press.

Holmes, M. B. (1961, October 9). Hair stylist’s role important to a play. The New York Times, p. L-44.

Maney, R. (1957). Fanfare: The confessions of a press agent. New York, NY: David McKay Company

McHugh, D. (2012). Loverly: The life and times of My Fair Lady. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

McHugh, D. (Ed.). (2014). Alan Jay Lerner: A lyricist’s letters. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Winchell, W. (1956, February 20). On Broadway. News Journal, p. 14.

© 2026, Brett Farmer. All Rights Reserved.

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This Day in Julie-history: Rehearsals begin for My Fair Lady (3 January 1956)

Seventy years ago today, the ensemble of My Fair Lady gathered for the first time in the rehearsal rooms of the New Amsterdam Theatre on West 42nd Street. It marked the start of a four-week rehearsal period for what would become one of Broadway’s defining musicals.

These rehearsal photographs capture that first, quietly momentous gathering — before opening night, the acclaim, and the legend.

Sources 

Andrews, J. (2008). Home: A memoir of my early years. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson.

McHugh, D. (2012). Loverly: The life and times of My Fair Lady. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

[paralleljulieverse]

I'm a star in New York, I'm a star in L.A Fan photographs of Julie Andrews by John Verzi, New York (1961) and Los Angeles (1963)

These two candid photographs of Julie Andrews, taken in 1961 and 1963 by John Verzi, come from a remarkable body of work that was never intended for publication.

Verzi was not a press photographer, nor a paparazzo in the modern sense, but a devoted fan who spent decades quietly photographing actors, musicians and performers at premieres, theatre doors, restaurants, and the spaces in between. A Los Angeles postal worker by day, he pursued celebrity photography with extraordinary zeal, amassing a personal collection of more than 12,000 images between 1960 and 1990. Despite its scale, the collection was never monetised or circulated; Verzi kept the photographs entirely to himself (Fleishman, 2023).

After his death in 2018, Verzi’s vast slide archive was acquired by the Los Angeles Public Library, where it now forms part of their historical photographic holdings. The Library recognised that the collection’s unique value lies in its fan’s-eye perspective. Verzi’s photographs are not studio portraits or publicity stills, but brief encounters: moments of attentiveness, openness, or mild distraction, captured without spectacle (LA This Week, 2023).

In Julie’s case, these photographs capture her at a pivotal point in her career, between Broadway acclaim and global film stardom. Taken together, they quietly map a shift in geography, context, and scale.

In the first image, Julie stands at the stage door of the Majestic Theatre in December 1961, just after a performance of Camelot. Wrapped against the cold and partially shadowed, with little evidence of theatrical glamour beyond what the evening requires, she appears alert but contained — a working theatre actress at the end of a night’s labour, caught in the narrow, functional space where performers and audience briefly intersect.

The second image, taken just fifteen months later, shows Julie in Los Angeles in March 1963, where she was making her very first film, Mary Poppins, at the Disney Studios. Here, she is dressed for an evening out at the Cocoanut Grove, attending Donald O’Connor’s show.* Her hair and make-up are more carefully styled, the look subtly more glamorous, suggesting a shift into a Hollywood frame. The lighting is brighter, the smile more outward-facing, the encounter looser and more social — and the world around her palpably larger. Yet even in this context, Julie is neither performing nor posing for publicity, but simply present — moving between professional worlds, captured in passing rather than on display.

Candid fan photography like this preserves something official images often smooth away: scale, proximity, and human presence. Modest in composition but rich in atmosphere, these photographs remind us that celebrity history is not only written by studios and publicists, but also quietly assembled by individuals who showed up, waited patiently, and paid attention.

_______________________ * As a side note: Donald O’Connor’s show at the Cocoanut Grove was introduced by Carol Burnett, which may explain Julie’s presence that evening (Hopper, 1963).

Sources 

Hopper, H. (1963, March 23). O'Connor's Grove opening gala event. Los Angeles Times, Part II, p. 6.

Fleishman, J. (2023, August 30). The weird and wonderful life of L.A.’s most bizarre celebrity photographer. Los Angeles Times. pp. A1, A6-7.

LA This Week. (2023, October 26). John Verzi Collection at LA Central Library [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4rHptyAc_o4

Los Angeles Public Library. (n.d.). John Verzi Collection. TESSA Digital Archive. https://tessa2.lapl.org/digital/collection/photos/search/searchterm/John%20Verzi%20Collection/field/collec/mode/exact/conn/and.

© 2026, Brett Farmer. All Rights Reserved.

[paralleljulieverse]

Where It All Began: Julie Andrews at the Walton Playhouse

This year marks the centenary of the Walton Playhouse, a small community arts centre in Walton-on-Thames, Surrey. Originally part of the Cecil Hepworth film studios, the building was converted into a theatre in 1925, with its foundation stone laid by Dame Ellen Terry and the venue officially opened later that year by Sir Philip and Lady Richardson (Ellis 2002, p. 83; Hughes 2003, p. 96).

Like many such venues across Britain, the Walton Playhouse has long functioned as a site of amateur performance, arts education, and cultural participation for the local community. Yet it also holds a more intimate historical significance. It was here that a local child and future star, Julie Andrews, made her very first theatrical appearances.

As Julie recounts in the first volume of her autobiography (2008), performance was embedded in the fabric of her family life. Her mother, Barbara, was a trained pianist and her aunt Joan an accomplished dancer and percussionist. Together, the sisters earned their living in the Walton area through local concerts, teaching, radio work, and community events (Andrews 2008). By the time Julie came along, Aunt Joan was already well established as a dance teacher, running her own school and troupe: the Joan Morris Juveniles.

The Walton Playhouse became a natural focal point for this extended family enterprise. Each year, Joan staged an annual revue and showcase for her pupils there. These were not merely community events but thoroughly familial affairs. Barbara supplied the music; Julie’s father, Ted Wells, built scenery by hand; costumes were designed, sets painted, props engineered, and backstage labour shared among relatives and friends (Andrews 2008, pp. 19–20).

It was within this environment that Julie made her 'unofficial' stage debut. Her first billed appearance came in one of Aunt Joan's Playhouse revues in May 1939. At the age of three-and-a-half, she performed in a routine based on the nursery rhyme “Wynken, Blynken and Nod.” A rare surviving programme from this performance — reproduced here — lists her under her birth name, Julia Wells.

In one oft-recalled moment from that performance, when a fellow performer’s hat slipped over her eyes mid-dance, Julie quietly guided the hapless child safely across the stage — an early, almost comic illustration of the communal ethic she had already absorbed. As she later reflected, she seemed instinctively to understand that “the show must go on” (Andrews 2008, p. 20).

Julie performed regularly at the Playhouse throughout her childhood and adolescence. As another programme featured here indicates, by 1943 — at the age of eight — she had graduated to a solo spot, singing the Judy Garland classic “I’m Just an In-Between.”

Even after attaining professional status as a juvenile star, Julie continued to lend her name and presence to Joan’s revues at the Playhouse. Her youngest brother, Christopher, also appeared in some of them, extending the collective family enterprise.

What Julie’s early experience at the Walton Playhouse reveals is something theatre historian Michael Mangan has argued more broadly: that amateur and community theatres are not marginal to British cultural life, but central to it. Such spaces sustain what Mangan describes as a deeply “dramatised” national culture, in which performance is embedded in everyday social relations rather than confined to professional or metropolitan stages. Their value lies not in polish or prestige, but in participation, sociability, and cultural continuity (Mangan 2010, pp. 157 ff.).

Seen in this light, the Walton Playhouse was not merely the backdrop to the beginnings of an extraordinary career; it exemplifies the cultural ecology that makes such careers possible. As amateur theatres across Britain and elsewhere face increasing pressure and closure, the Playhouse’s centenary offers a timely reminder that community performance spaces do not simply preserve local culture — they nurture the habits, values, and collective labour from which future creative artists emerge.

Sources 

Andrews, J. (2008). Home: A memoir of my early years. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson.

Ellis, B. (2002). Walton Past. Chichester: Phillimore & Co.

Hughes, W. (2003). Images of England: Walton-on-Thames. Stroud: Tempus Publishing.

Mangan, M. (2010). Theatre in modern British culture. In F. Smith, J. Higgins, & J. Storey (Eds.), The Cambridge companion to modern British culture (pp. 154–171). London: Cambridge University Press.

Stirling, R. (2007). Julie Andrews: An intimate biography. London: Portrait.

© 2025, Brett Farmer. All Rights Reserved.

[paralleljulieverse]

'For we need a little Christmas...' Julie Andrews’ Royal Albert Hall Christmas Concert, 4 December 1973

Recently, the Parallel Julieverse was invited to write the liner notes for Stage Door Records’ new CD release of Julie Andrews’ 1973 Royal Albert Hall concert of Christmas carols.

With only 100 copies produced, the limited edition sold out within minutes. For those who missed out, the full notes appear below, along with a selection of images from this remarkable performance.

Few singers are more closely bound to the spirit of Christmas than Julie Andrews. From the outset, her pure, bell-like soprano, paired with a warmly nostalgic image — “Christmas carols in the snow,” as Time magazine once put it — seemed destined for the music of the season. Hers is a voice that evokes candlelight and frosted windows, hearth and home, and over time she has become as familiar a part of the festive landscape as holly and mistletoe. Part of what makes Andrews so inseparable from Christmas is the natural affinity between her artistry and the season’s themes of reverence and sentiment. Her distinctive vocal style — with its blend of classically trained precision and the lyric-centred delivery of musical theatre — is tailor-made for carols, where purity of tone and clarity of meaning are paramount. Beyond technique lies an expressive warmth: her singing can be both intimate and majestic, carrying the hush of a fireside lullaby one moment and the grandeur of a cathedral service the next. Coupled with a star persona that blends quintessential Englishness, maternal care, and a glimmer of fairy-tale magic, Andrews all but embodies the yuletide ideals of family, tradition, and wonder. This bond found lasting expression in a body of work that made Christmas a recurring motif throughout her career. Andrews recorded three Christmas albums across three decades, which remain among her most enduring and best-selling releases. Holiday television appearances, from variety shows to lavish specials, deepened the connection, while her most famous films — Mary Poppins and The Sound of Music — became staples of Christmastime broadcasting. By the early 1970s, audiences on both sides of the Atlantic had come to expect Andrews as part of their holiday traditions, her voice woven into the cultural fabric of the season. It is little wonder, then, that news of the star’s 1973 return to the London stage — after more than a decade away — for a Christmas concert at the Royal Albert Hall sparked a clamour for tickets. At her side was André Previn, close friend and collaborator, who had helmed her first holiday album A Christmas Treasure seven years earlier and now conducted the London Symphony Orchestra. It was Previn who persuaded Andrews to perform, and together they curated an evening of sacred carols and festive favourites, majestic yet familiar, evoking the spirit and joy that had come to define her place in the holiday tradition. Though conceived as a one-off event, the concert was fortunately preserved by the BBC’s international transcription service for overseas broadcast. In subsequent years it reached radio audiences as far afield as Australia, Sweden, Canada, and even Papua New Guinea. Outside these fleeting broadcasts, however, the performance has remained largely unheard — until now. This newly remastered release brings the Royal Albert Hall concert back to the attention it so richly deserves. Showcasing Julie Andrews at the height of her vocal powers, it conveys not only the crystalline beauty of her singing but also the warmth of her presence, the grandeur of the London Symphony Orchestra under Previn’s baton, and the electric atmosphere of a sold-out hall. More than fifty years on, the recording stands both as a historical document and a living experience: a chance to hear one of the great voices of the twentieth century in a programme where song, spirit, and season unite in a harmony that is –– well –– practically perfect in every way.

© 2025, Brett Farmer. All Rights Reserved.

[paralleljulieverse]

Vale, Alice and Ellen Kessler (1936-2025)

Farewell to the Kessler Twins — Alice and Ellen — who left the world exactly as they lived in it: fiercely independent and entirely on their own terms.

Curious and captivating figures of 20th-century entertainment, they emerged from the post-war revue and variety circuit to become pan-European stars, celebrated especially in Italy, where their elegance, precision dancing, and twin-act novelty made them household names for decades.

Though little remembered outside Europe, Julie fans will always treasure one small delight: their charming Italian-language cover of the Star! theme song, a sparkling footnote in the Julieverse, and a reminder of the wonderfully eclectic world the Kesslers inhabited.

Rest well, Alice and Ellen.

[paralleljulieverse]

From the Archives: Key to the door – Julie Andrews’ 21st Birthday in New York, October 1956

Next week on October 1, Dame Julie Andrews will celebrate her 90th birthday — an extraordinary milestone set to be marked by tributes and festivities both public and private.

But Julie is no stranger to attention on her birthdays. From her earliest years as a child prodigy in post-war Britain, the press eagerly chronicled each birthday milestone, reporting not just her professional triumphs but also the personal celebrations that traced her rise to adult stardom.

By the time of her 21st birthday in 1956, Julie had left Britain for the brighter lights of America and was well on her way to international renown. Her 1954 Broadway debut in The Boy Friend made her an instant sensation, and her follow-up role as Eliza Doolittle in My Fair Lady catapulted her to global fame.

Dubbed "the musical of the century," My Fair Lady was a bona fide cultural phenomenon of the late 1950s. Audiences couldn’t get enough of the show or its stars, and every detail of Julie’s life — on and off the stage — became fodder for eager journalists.

That curiosity even extended to Julie's family and circle of friends. Among them was Susan Barker, a childhood companion from Walton-on-Thames whose bond with Julie dated back to their earliest years. Their mothers were old friends, and the girls themselves formed a close connection that has endured to the present day (Andrews, 2008).

In the summer of 1956, the Marylebone Mercury reported that Susan had promised to join Julie in New York for her milestone 21st birthday, sketching both the hurdles she faced in making the trip and her own budding ambitions in television. Even before she crossed the Atlantic, Susan was being pulled into Julie’s media spotlight. That dynamic soon became reality, as her journey turned out to be both personal and journalistic. ('Susan will see...,' 1956).

Once she arrived in New York, Susan herself became a chronicler of events for the popular press. Writing for the Daily Mail, she offered readers a vivid first-hand glimpse of Julie’s life at this moment of great transition. Accompanied by a series of press shots of the two girls in Julie’s flat, the coverage charms with its blend of staged celebrity glamour and everyday homeliness (Barker, 1956).

As Susan recounts, the birthday unfolded as a two-day affair. On Monday, October 1 — conveniently a show-free day from My Fair Lady — Julie gathered a close circle of intimates: her mother Barbara and manager Charlie Tucker, both flown in from London; Susan and another childhood friend, Patricia “Trish” Waters; and her boyfriend, later first husband, Tony Walton.

The evening glittered with cocktails at the Waldorf Astoria, dinner beneath “twinkling crystal chandeliers” on Park Avenue, and dancing to an orchestra playing selections from My Fair Lady. At midnight Julie — “radiant” in white lace over pale pink silk — was serenaded with “Happy Birthday” before the party carried on into the early hours.

The following morning brought a gentler, more homely scene. While Julie sorted through “mountains of parcels, cards, telegrams, and flowers,” Susan and Trish prepared boiled eggs and toast for breakfast. Later, Julie and her mother slipped away to choose a fur coat — a birthday gift from Tucker — before returning to the theatre. That evening, Julie performed once again in My Fair Lady, receiving six curtain calls and being serenaded, alongside co-star Stanley Holloway (who shared her October 1 birthday), with a rousing chorus of “Happy Birthday.” Afterward, Tucker hosted a supper at the fabled 21 Club, rounding off the celebrations in high style.

Yet the celebrations were not without shadows. Many years later, in her 2008 memoirs, Julie would recall that her mother was in “a foul mood” throughout the evening at the 21 Club, drinking heavily and cutting her down with icy remarks that made the night “an absolute misery” (Andrews, 2008, p. 220). Worse still, her manager Charlie Tucker pressed her to sign a new contract, surreptitiously increasing his already hefty commission. “I felt betrayed,” Julie admitted, noting how the incident forever changed their relationship (p. 221).

What the press hailed as a joyous milestone was, for Julie, clouded by pain and disappointment — a reminder of the stark gap between the public glow of stardom and the private struggles it often conceals.

Between those two narratives is Susan Barker, a childhood friend from Walton who shows up in photos from that week: laughing with Julie on the sofa, unwrapping parcels, and sharing small, domestic rhythms untouched by fame. Her presence offers a comforting continuity amid the turbulence of celebrity and a reminder of the enduring force of friendship.

Sources

Andrews, J. (2008). Home: A memoir of my early years. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson.

Barker, S. (1956) ‘It’s fun to be in New York when your pal is Julie’, Daily Mail, 4 October, p. 8.

‘Party flight’ (1956) Evening News, 13 September, p. 2D.

‘Susan will see her childhood pal on Broadway’ (1956) Marylebone Mercury, 31 August, p. 3.

© 2025, Brett Farmer. All Rights Reserved.

[paralleljulieverse]

FROM THE ARCHIVES: STRIKE A POSE Julie Andrews photographed by Henry Clarke for 'Vogue France', December 1958

By 1958, the world was firmly in the grip of "My Fair Lady-mania". The smash-hit Broadway musical had become a global cultural phenomenon, influencing not only theatre and music, but also travel, lifestyle — and, most notably, fashion

As explored in previous PJV posts, My Fair Lady helped define late-1950s style, inspiring designers, shaping seasonal collections, and generating a flood of editorial spreads, lifestyle features, and advertising campaigns. Its cultural impact was so pronounced that the international press dubbed it “The Show That Changed America’s Fashions” (Garland, pp. 10–11), while others hailed a full-blown “fashion revolution” that had “influenced designers in Italy, Paris, New York and London” (New Fair Ladies, p. 101).

Amid this wave of sartorial enthusiasm, Julie Andrews quickly became a sought-after subject for fashion magazines eager to leverage her rising star power. One striking example is this editorial from the December 1958 issue of Vogue France — arguably the era’s definitive "fashion bible" (Sweet, 2023). While Andrews had already graced the pages of American Vogue, this shoot marked her debut in the French edition.

The star appeared as part of a six-page celebrity fashion feature titled Chez Elles: une histoire en six pages qui va de Versailles à Paris en passant par Londres (“At Home with Her: A Story in Six Pages from Versailles to Paris via London”). Alongside Julie were other notables of the day — including Princess Maria-Pia of Yugoslavia and dancers Claude Bessy and Noëlle Adam — each modelling the latest haute couture in the intimacy of her own home.

In Julie's case, she was photographed in the front sitting room of her London flat in Eaton Square. Bedecked in designer finery as she lounges on a chintz-covered settee, the image distils the article’s central theme: the interplay between public glamour and private domesticity. The accompanying copy reads:

Cinderella-Princess of legend, come to enchant Pygmalion, Julie Andrews performs every evening in London in My Fair Lady, the musical comedy adapted from Bernard Shaw’s famous play. In it, she takes on the role of Eliza, a part she had already made a triumph during a long and celebrated run in New York. Like all actresses mindful of maintaining their form, the demands of this hectic professional life must be balanced by periods of calm—long hours of restorative time at home. These moments of repose are so essential that they shape the rhythm of an actress’s life—which is, in truth, much calmer than those outside the theatre world often imagine. That is why, in private, elegant stage costumes give way to refined, comfortable loungewear. At home, Julie Andrews wears a luxurious Lanvin Castillo robe in pale blue silk taffeta by Guillemin, with an Empire waist and wide puffed sleeves. This delicate shade harmonises particularly well with the freshness of her face and the blue of her eyes (Charles-Roux, 1958, p. 56, trans.).

The editorial images are by Henry Clarke, an influential force in postwar fashion photography. The celebrated photographer launched his career in 1940s New York, bringing the spontaneity of photojournalism into the artificial conventions of studio fashion shoots. Favouring compact, adaptable cameras like the twin-lens Rolleiflex, Clarke developed a signature style that was both dynamic and meticulously crafted — balancing elegance with a sense of immediacy (Join-Diéterle, 2002).

Relocating to France in 1949, Clarke quickly secured work with leading publications such as Femina, L’Album de Figaro, and Harper’s Bazaar. By the mid-1950s, he was working exclusively for Vogue, creating many of the magazine’s most iconic and lavish editorials. His lens chronicled the postwar renaissance of French fashion, from Dior’s “New Look” to the mod passions of the 1960s (Schönauer, 2003, p. 52).

Within this orbit, Clarke photographed not only fashion models but also many of the era’s most celebrated women, including Coco Chanel, Maria Callas, the Duchess of Windsor, and the Queen of Thailand. In December 1958, that illustrious company was joined by the Fair Lady herself: Julie Andrews.

Though others may exist, this remains the only published image from Clarke’s shoot with Julie — and it bears all the hallmarks of the photographer's late-1950s style. In full-page splendour, the photograph stages Julie in a moment of poised repose — half-prepared for society, half-surrendered to private ease. Reclining gently, she casually toys with a pearl-crested bijou between her fingers, her gaze softly direct. The sheen of the silk robe, draped in generous folds, catches the light with theatrical elegance, while the plush cushions behind envelop her in a tableau of domestic comfort.

Yet the scene is steeped in intentional artifice: not a candid glimpse of domestic life, but a carefully composed fantasy of modern femininity. Paired with the smaller inset image of Julie as Eliza the flower seller, the composition underscores the Cinderella arc at the heart of My Fair Lady — and, indeed, of fashion itself — a transformation not merely of costume, but of social identity. Clarke’s lens captures both illusion and paradox: a performance of self at once intimate and staged, presenting Julie Andrews as star and subject, actress and icon.

Sources:

Charles-Roux, E. (Ed.). (1958, December). Chez elles: Une histoire en six pages qui va de Versailles à Paris en passant par Londres. Vogue français, 52-58.

Garland, A. (1956, October 6). The show that changed America’s fashions. Daily Mirror, pp. 10–11.

Join-Diéterle, C. (2002). Henry Clarke: Photographe de mode. Somogy & Paris Musées.

The New Fair ladies. (1958, May 11). The Sun-Herald, p. 101.

Schönauer, D. (2003, November–December). Henry Clarke. American Photo, 14(6), 50–52.

Sweet, H. (2023, September 27). “The fashion bible”: A history of Vogue magazine. Bbys Magazine. https://www.barnebys.com/blog/the-fashion-bible-a-history-of-vogue-magazine

© 2025, Brett Farmer. All Rights Reserved.

[paralleljulieverse]

From the Archives: Introducing 'Little Miss Julia Wells' (1939)

In what may be the earliest known press mention of Julie Andrews, The Parallel Julieverse has unearthed a charming newspaper article from the Surrey Advertiser and County Times, dated 24 June 1939.

Nestled deep in a society column describing a fundraising garden fête in Walton-on-Thames, one brief line stands out:

“Miss Burke commended the object of the fete, and was afterwards handed a bouquet by little Miss Julia Wells, who also handed another to Mrs Miskin.”

At just three years and nine months old, “Julia Wells”—as Julie was then known—was living in the Walton area with her parents, Ted and Barbara Wells. The family had deep roots in the community, and performance was already woven into their daily lives.

As Julie later recalled in her memoir Home (2008, p. 10ff), her mother Barbara, an accomplished pianist, and her aunt Joan Morris, a dancer and percussionist, often performed together at local events. By the late 1930s, Joan had established a thriving dance troupe for local juveniles, and both sisters were key figures on the Walton–Hersham amateur circuit. Julie’s father, Ted, was also regularly roped in to help behind the scenes, crafting scenery and props (ibid., p. 19ff).

On this occasion, Joan’s troupe was among the featured performers at the garden fete. While there is no record of Julie performing that day, she was given a small ceremonial role: presenting flowers to the fête’s guest of honour, actress Patricia Burke, and to the hostess, Mrs Miskin. It was certainly among the earliest occasions on which young Julia was enlisted in one of Aunt Joan’s productions — a pattern that would repeat in various forms throughout her childhood.

In a serendipitous twist, Patricia Burke would cross paths with Julie again in 1950. By then, the 15-year-old Andrews was a rising star, honoured at a publicity event hosted by impresario Lawrence Wright. Burke was among the older female performers present to toast the young star. One wonders: did she recognise the poised teenage Julie Andrews as the same little girl who had once shyly handed her flowers at a Walton garden fête in the summer of 1939?

Sources:

Andrews, J. (2008). Home: A memoir of my early years. Weidenfeld & Nicolson.

Women legionnaires hold fete. (1939, June 24). Surrey Advertiser and County Times, p. 7.

© 2025, Brett Farmer. All Rights Reserved.

[paralleljulieverse]

FROM THE ARCHIVES: JUST LIKE RIDING A BIKE Press photos of Julie Andrews, aged 12, at the family home, the Old Meuse, in Walton-on-Thames, 25 October 1947

In 1947, fresh from her star-making turn in Starlight Roof, 12-year-old Julie Andrews was widely feted in the British press as a singing child phenomenon. Her nightly performance of the difficult coloratura showpiece “Polonaise” from Mignon — complete with florid runs, agile cadenzas, and a stratospheric F above top C — left audiences stunned and critics reaching for superlatives. The press dubbed her everything from the “Prima Donna in Pigtails” and "Infant Prodigy of Trills" to “Britain’s Youngest Singing Star” (Farmer, 2022, p. 136).

At the same time, media profiles anchored her emerging child star image in the normalising discourse of British domesticity. Articles reassured readers that, behind the exceptional talent, Julie was a simple English girl at heart — one who loved dogs and horses, read the Bible nightly, and helped with household chores (Farmer, 2022, p. 139). This emphasis on ordinariness helped temper potential unease around juvenile prodigiousness, casting Julie not as a precocious oddity but as a national 'every child'.

Publicity photographs of the time brought this ideological narrative to life. They routinely staged the young star in scenes of wholesome suburban girlhood at her family home in Walton-on-Thames: playing with dolls, doing homework by the fireside, and, as in the images featured here, riding her bicycle. These bicycle portraits were among the most widely reproduced of Andrews’s early publicity stills. Even Dame Julie herself later selected one of these images for inclusion in her memoir Home (Andrews, 2008). The appeal is not hard to discern. Despite its unassuming simplicity, the image of a child riding a bicycle is rich with cultural symbolism.

Since its advent in the nineteenth century, the bicycle has carried a complex and evolving social status — shaped by Romantic ideals of bucolic freedom and therapeutic health, as well as modernist associations with progress and egalitarianism (Oosterhuis, 2016). In post-war Britain, it became a potent emblem of both practicality and aspiration: a tool of everyday mobility and a marker of youthful independence, health, and middle-class stability. Amid the material constraints of post-war reconstruction, the bicycle remained an affordable, and valued mode of transport, linked to thrift, duty, and discipline. At the same time, the rise of car culture redefined the bicycle as a vehicle of childhood and leisure — often a prized Christmas or birthday gift — increasingly associated with juvenile innocence, adventure, and coming-of-age (Withers & Shea, 2016).

These networks of cultural meaning find poignant expression in the shoot’s main photograph, where Julie rides mid-motion across the gravel drive of her family home, her right arm raised in a cheerful wave, a wide smile lighting her face. The carefree gesture and easy poise suggest spontaneous joy and expressive action. Yet every detail is carefully curated: her hair neatly plaited, her wool jumper tucked in, her tartan skirt pressed just so. With ankle socks and polished bar shoes completing the look, she embodies an idealised vision of post-war British girlhood.

The image thus frames the young star as both an extraordinary child soprano and an everyday schoolgirl, pedalling through the quiet certainties of suburban petit bourgeois respectability. That duality — between prodigious talent and reassuring normalcy — was precisely what made the young Julie Andrews so captivating in the public imagination of post-war Britain.

Sources:

Andrews, J. (2008). Home: A memoir of my early years. Weidenfeld & Nicolson.

Farmer, B. (2022). ‘Prima donna in pigtails’: Reading the child stardom of Julie Andrews. Celebrity Studies, 14(2), 131–145. https://doi.org/10.1080/19392397.2022.2038531

Oosterhuis, H. (2016). Cycling, modernity and national culture. Social History, 41(3), 233–248. https://doi.org/10.1080/03071022.2016.1180897

Withers, J., & Shea, D. P. (2016). Culture on two wheels: The bicycle in literature and film. University of Nebraska Press.

© 2025, Brett Farmer. All Rights Reserved.

[paralleljulieverse]

FROM THE ARCHIVES: Julie Andrews with her pet dog, Humpty, in the front garden of her family home in Walton-on-Thames, 4 August 1954 (UP Photo)

In the weeks leading up to her departure for New York to star in The Boy Friend on Broadway, 18-year-old Julie Andrews became the subject of intense media interest. Much of the coverage leaned into a familiar narrative that had long shaped her public star image: the ordinary English girl with an extraordinary talent, destined for fame (Farmer, 2022).

A recurring visual motif in this portrayal was to photograph Julie with her pets. As explored in a previous blog post, such images were rich in cultural symbolism — evoking, inter alia, British national identity, middle-class domesticity, familial warmth, and nurturing femininity — all core components of Julie's evolving star persona.

This particular photo from 1954 carries added resonance as it features Julie’s beloved childhood pet, 'Humpty'. A Welsh corgi acquired in 1948 when she was just 13 — and named after the character she played in her first West End pantomime — Humpty quite literally grew up alongside her, from child prodigy to young adult star. Decades later, Julie would still remember him fondly as “one of the dearest pets I owned” (Christy, 1966, p. 28).

There is, thus, a quiet poignancy in this image of Julie cradling her now white-muzzled companion, captured on the cusp of her departure from the familiar comforts of suburban Walton-on-Thames — and, though she couldn’t yet know it, her transformation into a global icon. Sources Christy, G. (1966, March). Julie Andrews: All the things I love most. Good Housekeeping, 26ff. Farmer, B. (2022). ‘Prima donna in pigtails’: Reading the child stardom of Julie Andrews. Celebrity Studies, 14(2), 131–145. https://doi.org/10.1080/19392397.2022.2038531 © 2025, Brett Farmer. All Rights Reserved.

[paralleljulieverse]

From the Archives: Julie Andrews with Petula Clark and Robert Beatty at BBC Studios for Music, Music, Music! (29 May 1954)

In the summer of 1954, 18-year-old Julie Andrews found herself biding time. Her first — and only — attempt at “straight” theatre, Mountain Fire, had been cancelled during its out-of-town tryout, but the young star had already signed on to sail for America to headline the Broadway production of The Boy Friend — and with it, a whole new world of opportunity.

Julie didn’t, however, spend the summer idle. Instead, she took on a string of radio and television appearances, including the one captured here.

Described as “a musical battle of wits,” Music, Music, Music! was the first of eight TV game show pilots the BBC trialled that summer, with the aim of selecting one for a regular run (The Scanners, 1954, p. 16). The program pitted two teams of celebrities — captained by Julie and Petula Clark respectively — against each other in a series of novelty musical questions and games.

By most accounts, it was not a success. Reported the Daily Herald:

Angry viewers telephoned the BBC last night to complain about TV’s new parlour game, “Music, Music, Music.” I don’t blame them. For a few moments during this 30-minute show there was chaos. The rest of the time was only near-chaos. Chaos came when a tuba, a motor-horn, a drum and a celeste were all played together with the panel members… shrieking and the chairman, David Jacobs, shouting for order… Heaven help us (Phillips, 1954, p. 3).

“Abysmal,” scowled the critic for the News Chronicle, though he did offer some grace to Julie:

My Bouquet... of the Week would go to Miss Julie Andrews – for knowing nothing so nicely. Just go on being your own charming self, Miss Andrews, and don't worry. There was nothing in “Music, Music, Music” worth knowing, anyway (Brittenden, 1954, p. 6).

Not surprisingly, Music, Music, Music! didn’t make the cut, and the BBC opted to greenlight one of the other game show pilots, Tall Story Club (Aynsley, 1954, p. 3). But for fans of Julie’s early career, this fleeting and chaotic TV experiment remains a fascinating curio — a reminder that real talent shines through, even in the noisiest of settings.

Sources:

Aynsley, C. (1954, 28 August). TV chooses new panel game. Daily Express, p. 3.

Brittenden, A. (1954, 2 July). This week it's all games and military might. News Chronicle, p. 6.

Phillips, P. (1954, 30 June). They're annoyed with the BBC. Daily Herald, p. 3.

The Scanners (1954, 25 June). Parade of parlour games. Radio Times, p. 15.

© 2025, Brett Farmer. All Rights Reserved.