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Local Walton girl makes good: Community celebrity appearances by Julie Andrews as covered by The Surrey Herald in 1952.

Sources:

‘Local celebrity opens school fete’, The Surrey Herald, 4 July 1952: 5.

‘People and Places.’ The Surrey Herald, 18 July 1952: 6.

#julie andrews #walton-on-thames #surrey #england #1952 #the surrey times #celebrity

From the Archives: ‘Shall I be Mum?’ Julie Andrews having tea with mother, Barbara, in the family home on the young star’s return from New York, 1 October 1955.

In his classic treatise on photography, La chambre claire / Camera Lucida, Roland Barthes (1980) argues that the elemental power of a photograph, its ‘special genius’, lies in its unique combination of ontology and subjectivity. The mechanical nature of photographic reproduction endows photos with a ‘having-been-there’ quality, a frozen moment of time and space, that sustains both cognitive curiosity and emotional poignancy. Barthes calls the former dimension the studium, the historical and cultural ‘infra-knowledge’ that a photograph provides, its capacity to render richly descriptive details of time and place. The second dimension is more intimate in nature and it is what Barthes calls the punctum, a Latin word meaning wound, sting or cut (the same root for English words like puncture and punctuation). It is the aspect of a photo that affects us emotionally and moves us in ways that can be deeply personal, even idiosyncratic. The punctum, writes Barthes, is the ‘element which rises from the scene, shoots out of it like an arrow, and pierces me’ (26).

This 1955 press photo of Julie Andrews and her mother is a compelling evocation of both Barthesian axes of photographic allure: observational studium and affective punctum. In terms of the former, much of the immediate interest of the image comes from the glimpse it provides of celebrity home-life. An example of the popular photographic genre of ‘stars-at-home’, the image trades openly on the voyeuristic lure of peering into the private world of a public figure. In this case, Julie had just returned to England after her triumphant star-making year in The Boy Friend on Broadway, and the image accentuates the interplay between the extraordinariness of her newly-minted international celebrity -- all radiant cosmetic smiles and neatly-tailored tweed suits -- with the disarming ordinariness of the surrounding domestic mise-en-scène.

Indeed, decades later, the photo is significant for the added historical insight it offers into Julie’s beloved childhood home, the Old Meuse. Between the cottage ware teapot, floral chintz armchair, and Axminster rug, the photo is a veritable compendium of mid-century English suburban style. The rows of neatly-lined leather-bound books, silverware ornaments, and vase of cut flowers in the background add a further touch of aspirational petit-bourgeois respectability. And, zooming in to the plate of sweet biscuits on the tea tray, it looks as if Barbara even broke open a box of Huntley and Palmers Assorted Creams for the occasion!

But what possibly engages most in the photograph -- and what pushes the image squarely into the affective realm of the punctum, at least for this viewer-- is its weighted staging of mother-daughter relationality. Other than a homecoming, it was Julie’s 20th birthday and the shot fairly pulsates with the poignant ambivalence of generational succession. Hovering behind and above Julie, Barbara recedes into the background, one hand seeming to urge her star daughter forward, while the other appears to hold on to her. Then, as if in a chiaroscuro expressionist film, Barbara’s shadow is projected larger-than-life on to the wall of the Old Meuse.

Julie has commented widely on the close but complicated relationship she had with her mother. ‘My mother was terribly important to me,’ she writes in her 2008 memoir, ‘and I know how much I yearned for her in my youth, but I don’t think I truly trusted her’ (18). Taken almost 67 years ago, this photo speaks poignantly to those conflicted dynamics, if not to the knotty emotional interplay at the heart of all parent-child relationships.

Sources:

Andrews, Julie (2008) Home: A Memoir of My Early Years. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson.

Barthes, Roland (1980) Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography. Translated by R. Howard. New York: Hill and Wang.

#julie andrews #barbara andrews #walton-on-thames #hersham #old meuse #1955 #tea #star #the parallel julieverse #united kingdom

“There's a sound of galloping over the hill...”

Julie Andrews, photographed with a collection of china horses in her childhood bedroom, Walton-on-Thames, c.1952

“I love riding,” declared Julie enthusiastically, “I’ve even made a corner of my bedroom into a horsy corner. On the wall I’ve hung riding crops and bright horse brasses. A pair of book-ends are a mother and foal. Galloping across my dressing table is a hunting scene––with every figure made of china. My pet piece is a china stallion. They’re not valuable,” confessed Julie, “but I like to collect extra pieces when I go to different places.”

Parsons, Richard. “She Sings With Her Heart.” Home Notes. 11 July 1952: p. 9.

#julie andrews #childhood #1952 #united kingdom #walton-on-thames #british stars #tally ho

When Julie Andrews returned to England in April 1958 to prepare for the London opening of My Fair Lady, she flew into the eye of a veritable media storm. The phenomenal success of My Fair Lady in America had generated intense public interest and acclaim, and the return of the show’s British stars was greeted as nothing short of a triumphant national homecoming.

While Rex Harrison and, to a lesser extent, Stanley Holloway garnered their share of attention, notably in the more ‘serious’ male-oriented press (Smith, 12), it was Julie who received the overwhelming bulk of popular media exposure. Her status as “local girl turned big star” was the stuff of cultural legend and the mainstream press was eager to mine its fairytale appeal. As discussed in a previous post, Woman magazine, the biggest-selling British periodical of the era, devoted a lavish five-issue celebrity profile to Julie to mark the opening of My Fair Lady where she was explicitly fêted as a real-life Cinderella: “a rather plain little girl…from an English village”, “a dreamy little girl who has made her dreams come true” and found “dazzling fame and fortune” as “The Golden Girl of Broadway” (Reeder, 29).

When the “Golden Girl” touched down at Heathrow on April 6, “so great was the crush around Julie” that her family had to wait over twenty minutes before they could greet her (Wilcox, 1). Scores of cameramen scrambled to get near her and even the most sober Fleet Street reporters grasped for superlatives. “Julie Andrews, the British actress who went to Broadway to make her name, came back to England yesterday–a STAR,” trumpeted the front page of the Daily Mirror (Wilcox, 1).

But alongside the breathless allusions to jet-setting celebrity and fabulous wealth––“Julie [is] reported to earn £1,000 a week,” gasped the Daily Mail–– there was a marked emphasis on the untarnished naturalness of “our Julie” and how she remained "just an ordinary girl…who adores her home, her family and the neighbours” (Reeder: 29). Almost to a person, reporters highlighted her guileless simplicity and girlish nervousness––“’I’m terrified of the opening night at Drury Lane,’ she confessed” (Wilcox, 1)––and profiled her interest in such homespun concerns as childhood sweethearts––"I love him! I love him! I love him!”–– “brothers, aunts and uncles,” and, even, her pet canary:

“It would be an understatement to say that she remains unspoilt by success. This adorably freckle-faced young lady, as simply dressed as the girl next door, made me feel as if we had known each other all our lives and it was hard to believe she had ever moved more than ten miles from home at Walton-on-Thames” (Johns, 35).

Following the airport media call, Julie was indeed whisked home to Walton-on-Thames for a neighbourhood reunion, a pack of camera-clicking newshounds in eager tow. As befitting this most homely of Home Counties stars, the party was a decidedly domesticated affair: fizzy drinks and ale, LPs on a portable player, and a Dolly Varden cake! Julie was even photographed perched on the floral chintz single bed of her childhood:

“Julie Andrews, honey-haired star of My Fair Lady and the toast of Broadway was the toast of Walton-on-Thames, her home town, last night. Nearly a hundred friends and relatives were there at her parents’ home to welcome back the girl who knocked New York sideways…Julie was so busy shaking hands and kissing old friends that she did not have time to change out of the white jersey frock she arrived in. Amid cries of ‘Julie, Julie, you haven’t changed a bit,’ her mother shouted, ‘Telephone, Julie. Quickly now, dear.’ And, as Julie rushed to the phone Mrs. Barbara Andrews explained proudly, ‘Some of the people here tonight were actually at Julie’s christening’” (”Toast of the Town,” 8).

For over half a century, these unashamedly sentimental themes of nostalgic domesticity and familial warmth have continued to define the Julie Andrews star image, cemented with abiding force in her iconic screen persona as the world’s favourite super-nanny and played out since in various forms of repetition, revision and refusal––on-screen and off. It was perhaps inevitable then that when the star herself came to publish her own memoirs in 2008, she would give the book the simple one-word title: Home.

“I am told that the first comprehensible word I uttered as a child was ‘home.’ My father was driving his secondhand Austin 7; my mother was in the passenger seat beside him holding me on her lap. As we approached our modest house, Dad braked the car to turn onto the pocket-handkerchief square of concrete by the gate and apparently I quietly, tentatively, said the word. ‘Home.’ My mother told me there was a slight upward inflection in my voice, not a question so much as a trying of the word on the tongue, with perhaps the delicious discovery of connection . . . the word to the place. My parents wanted to be sure they had heard me correctly, so Dad drove around the lanes once again, and as we returned, it seems I repeated the word. My mother must have said it more than once upon arrival at our house—perhaps with satisfaction? Or relief? Or maybe to instill in her young daughter a sense of comfort and safety. The word has carried enormous resonance for me ever since. Home.” (Andrews, 1)

Sources:

Andrews, Julie. Home: A Memoir of My Early Years. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2008.

John, Eric. “My Freckled Lady.” Theatre World. Vol. 54. No. 401, June 1958: 35-36.

Reeder, Joan. “Introducing Julie Andrews’ Own Story.” Woman. 26 April 1958: 29.

Smith, Godfrey. "Fair Lady's Man." Sunday Times. 13 Apr. 1958: 12.

“Toast of the Town is ‘My Fair Lady’.” Daily Mail. 7 April, 1958: 8.

Wilcox, Desmond. “I Love Him! I Love Him! I Love Him! Says Julie Andrews.” Daily Mirror. 7 April, 1958: 1

#julie andrews #my fair lady #Theatre Royal Drury Lane #mfl60 #lerner and loewe #musical theatre #london #west end #walton-on-thames #home

Sophie, Duchess of Edinburgh walks into the woodland area to plant some seeds, plant a tree with the tree Wardens and meet children from the Forest School by a camp fire during her visit to Community Projects at Burwell Hall on January 18, 2024 in Walton-on-Thames, England.

#Sophie Duchess of Edinburgh #The Royal Family #Duchess of Edinburgh #January 18th 2024 #Walton-on-Thames #England #The British Royal Family #British Royal Family

Happy 81st Birthday Dame Julie!

In June, I made a pilgrimage to Julie’s birthplace, the town of Walton-on-Thames. As much as I hate quoting song lyrics in sentences, I had to “start at the very beginning/ A very good place to start.” Walton is a very small town so it didn’t take long to track down the approximate location (according to Google Maps) of Rodney House, the town’s maternity hospital where Julie was born in 1935. Approximate because I didn’t see a sign indicating Rodney House while on Rodney Road. According to the community web forum, the maternity hospital was demolished a few decades ago.

Because I’m paranoid af about my artwork getting destroyed (idk because no one would think to save it?) and I knew I would be visiting two of my subjects’ hometowns (the other one was Edinburgh, but doesn’t relate to this blog) I brought my portfolio with me to the UK. I set it quite awkwardly against the local landmark, Walton Bridge. I might recolour the portrait, since the pencil pastel I used seems to have brushed off quite a bit.

More posts coming as I track some of the locations that are associated with Dame Julie.