November 28, 2019 • 45 mins
The pod is alive with the sound of music! That’s right, for this very special episode of Next Question, Katie sits down with the one and only Julie Andrews. In this funny, fascinating, and often moving conversation, she opens up to Katie about her six decade career on both stage and screen, her marriage to the late, great Blake Edwards, her friendships with legends like Carol Burnett and Elizabeth Taylor, and how she never gets tired of talking about The Sound of Music (lucky us!). Make sure to listen to the very end when Katie plays matchmaker and arranges a surprise phone call with Julie and one of her biggest fans (hint - she also happens to be a previous Next Question guest!)
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Next Question with Katie Kuric is a production of I
Heart Radio and Katie Kuric Media. Hi everyone, I'm Katie
Curic and welcome to Next Question, where we try to
understand the complicated world we're living in and the crazy
things that are happening by asking questions and by listening
to people who really know what they're talking about. At times,
(00:22):
it may lead to some pretty uncomfortable conversations, but stick
with me, everyone, let's all learn together. When I told
people about my plans to interview my next guest, the
response was overwhelming. Everyone I talked to, regardless of their age,
pretty much lost it. In fact, my twenty two year
old assistant, Adriana, started crying when he heard the news.
(00:45):
Not that I blame her. My inner seven year old
was also freaking out about the chance to interview someone who,
even after more than six decades, continues to delight kids
of all ages through some of the most iconic characters
to ever grace the big screen, like Mary Poppins it's superfragilistic,
it's the alidosis, even though the sound of it is
(01:08):
something quite a fruit, or my personal favorite, Maria the
nun in training turned governess who captures the heart of
one Captain von Trapp in pre World War two Austria,
A love with the song of Musing. That's right. I
got to sit down with the one and only Julie Andrews,
(01:30):
who recently published memoir number two about her life in Hollywood, motherhood,
and her marriage to the late Blake Edwards. Yeah, he's
one cool cat too. He directed all those Pink Panther movies,
among others. But back to Julie's book, which she co
authored with daughter Emma Walton Hamilton's. It's called Homework, and
(01:54):
it's a funny, moving, surprisingly relatable account of a woman
figuring out her ace in the world, aren't we all.
We talked about memoir writing, how therapy can change your life,
supporting a spouse, battling addiction, and her friendships with legends
like Carol Burnett and Elizabeth Taylor, all in an effort
to answer my next question, When and how did Julie
(02:17):
Andrews become the icon she is today. Julie, I'm so
excited to have you here, to be with you, and
I cannot tell you how many people were even more
excited than I am right now looking forward to seeing
you all day. You have legions of fans, and what
(02:39):
I found so striking is everyone from your contemporary and
my contemporaries to two young kids that only remember the
Princess Diaries. Well, no, who live for the sound of music.
My assistant Adrianna has thirteen copies of the Sound of
Music and went to the Sound of Music sing along
(03:02):
for her birthday. Everyone in my office was so pumped
that I was doing this, so thank you. It's a
great pleasure. Let's talk about this memoir. Your first one
came out in two thousand and eight, so it's been
eleven years. Why did you decide to publish the second
installment now? And is there a time frame you had
(03:22):
in mind or is this just how long it took. Well, no,
it didn't quite take a living but to take about
three The publishers were patiently waiting for it and postponing
for me when a day job got in the way
of writing. Right. But I couldn't have written it without
my lovely daughter Emma, who actually helped me with the
first memoir as well, and she's the most wonderful collaborator.
(03:45):
We've written about thirty books together. I know thirty of
those children books, right, and two of these memoirs, and
she's the nuts and bolts and I'm all the sort
of flights of fancies and chapter endings, and of course
it's a story, worry about my life. And she a
lot of interviewing, and we referred to the journals that
(04:05):
I kept over the years, and look, thank god for
stuff online that was over there on the internet. Yes,
you have been journaling for a very long time, quite
a long time. I'm curious. I'm writing a memoir right now.
It's a fascinating experience because it's like therapy, but you're
the therapist and the patient, I know. And what keeping
(04:26):
what not include? Do you get him? You know? What
attitude should it be right? The voice should it have right?
And and also I think it's it's emotional because you're
reliving some very happy times since some very difficult times
with you more And somebody said to me that writing
a memoir is like living your life all over again, right,
(04:48):
And did you keep journals? I didn't. I remember when
I got my job on the Today Show, Jane Chalott,
who I adored, said listen, I've got one piece of advice,
keep a journal. And I said, that's great advice, Gene,
and then I never did I wish I had. I
wish I had well the time that I began. It
(05:09):
was a way for me of keeping the good stuff
and writing down my thoughts so that I had room
for others because things were coming at me so fast
and so furiously. And you were really before your time,
because now it's considered so therapeutic. Yes too, And it
was for that reason. I think that I did write
(05:29):
just to get it out of my head and onto
the page so I didn't have to hold it as
much in my head. I know that, as you mentioned,
your daughter, Emma and you are are quite a team.
How does the process work with Emma Julie? Does she
help you? Does she read journal entries and say, oh, mom,
you should really write about this? Or how did how do?
(05:51):
You started with an intensive research and made me a
timeline of about thirty years. Now you can imagine, you know,
what did I do when and where and so on?
And any single thing that she or I could remember
went into that timeline. And then she began to interview
me about certain important pieces, and that would be transcribed
(06:14):
and then we'd cut an edit and paste, and I'd
change what didn't feel right. But also once she got
to the diaries, we decided it would be great to
just excerpt from the diaries, but cut and prune, of course,
but because they were the absolute truth at the time,
so why not use them. And that helped a lot,
and the internet helped a lot, and old clippings and letters,
(06:38):
and we interviewed the family, my family, you know, all
the kids, and just in general patched all the places
in that we couldn't quite remember or but somebody did somewhere,
but thank God for the initial timeline. And then of
course she was this hugely encouraging presence at my side
at all times, and they were very stressed times when
(07:02):
we when we both get kind of tearful and just
somewhat depressed. And she she made a point of she
said to me, Mom, you didn't know it, but I
asked you all the difficult questions in the morning so
that we could end our day a little later in
the day on a high note, so you didn't go
to bed and worry too much. It's so sweet and dear,
that's a lot of mommy and me time. Did you
(07:23):
guys ever, fight? No, not fight. There were huge heated
discussions at times, but we don't actually fight at all.
We finished each other sentences and we laugh a lot.
But we've always felt that we get into an argument
about something and then one of us realizes that the
best idea wins, and we have such mutual respect for
(07:45):
each other that it seems to work out really well. Katie. Well,
you obviously did a wonderful job, And as you say,
I think the excerpts from your journals really provide a
certain and lyricism, right, and um, I'd love you to
read one of them about an experience you had that
(08:08):
really brought back memories of when you were in Vardville.
That's right. I was making a film with my second husband,
Blake Edwards, whom I was married to for like forty
one years and knew him for forty four before he
passed away. But we were making our first film together
and it was in Dublin and there was a scene
(08:28):
that I had to shoot at the Gaiety Theater, which
was one of the great old, beautiful music hall theaters.
And my upbringing from age twelve was in Vaudeville, and
I entered that theater and picked my way over the
film cables that we were going to be using a song,
and this is what I wrote. Suddenly I remembered Monday
(08:49):
mornings and band calls, getting my orchestrations down on stage
in time for rehearsal, placing them to the right of
the banned books already down ahead of mine. That's the
other terms on the bill, And waiting my turn, unpacking
the steamer trunks each week, and climbing endless stairs to
the wardrobe room at the top of the theater in
(09:11):
order to press my theatrical gowns. The halting, uneasy first
performance on Monday nights and the difficult second houses on
Saturday evenings. The smell of paint, turpentine and dust, the
depressing staleness, and the awful pretense of glamor. And that's
(09:33):
the way those early days of touring endlessly around England
really was. And that was from a diary entry, yes,
And I'm so glad I kept it because it brought
it back very vividly for me, and I just decided
to keep it in the book. And the writing is beautiful, Oh,
thank you, thank you. I know you'd write about your
(09:54):
childhood and the first book, but I want to talk
a little bit about that because The title of this
book is homework, and it seems to be a nod
to the incredible amount of work it takes to build
and maintain healthy and happy relationships with your kids, your spouse,
your aging parents, and the work and the work and
the work. I know, family, though, has always been so
(10:17):
incredibly important to you, Jolie, and I wondered, is that
because of your childhood and some of the challenges you
faced when you were a little girl. I think it
definitely comes from all that divorced parents and also difficult
stepfather in my life and missing my brother. We were
split quite early in our lives, and it's just so
(10:39):
many things, learning on my feet how to sing and
learning vocally out of thing I guess um also long
separations at least a week at a time when I
went on the road on my own eventually when I
was about fifteen, and I didn't get educated because I
needed to earn money for the family and so on.
(11:01):
So yes, home meant the most enormous amount to me
getting home, being safe, holding them all together, helping to
hold us all together. You have an incredible maternal instinct. Well,
I think it was so necessary. I didn't want to
go backwards in life either. My parents tried, My mother
and stepfather tried very hard to better our lot. We
(11:22):
were unbelievably poor, but eventually they got a wonderful house,
and we didn't want to lose it, and helping to
make money and contribute to that was essential if we
wanted to stay in that place, and I did. It
had a garden, and I could play in the garden
so often and love to do that. So you held
on to that and said, this is what I want
(11:43):
from my family. Yes, and I want a sense of
permanence and a rooted sense. But also it's to do
with warmth and love and so many things that bind
people together and makes for a gentler kind, a happier world.
And so the first memoir was called Home, and was
(12:06):
much easier in a way, although it was hard to write.
It started from nothing and built to a kind of
big conclusion when I was just about to go to
Hollywood to do Mary Poppins. It went through my afordable
years and my Broadway years. But this book started at
a high and then sort of went right and left
(12:28):
rather than from low to high. And it was a
much more difficult thing to write because there was so
much that I was learning about. I decided eventually that
I would call it homework again, the need to balance
home and the enormous amount of work that it takes
to learn a new craft about filmmaking in this case,
(12:50):
and being in a new place and again being away
from what I felt as home, it became home. Eventually.
You start with this rejectory of going to Hollywood. So
I want to ask you about getting tapped for Mary Poppins.
You were on Broadway, yes, and you were sought out. Well.
(13:12):
I was in Camelot with Richard Burton and Robert Goulay
and a wonderful company Envy sent It's beautiful music, lovely,
lovely musical. The company heard that Walt Disney was in
the audience, and I got word that he'd like to
come back and say hello. And you freaked out. What
(13:34):
did you find out before the performance? Yes, and that
he was there, And I thought, well, how lovely to
be so social and kind. And he came backstage and
my then husband, Tony Walton was with me in the
dressing room. He said he loved the show, and then
he began to talk about this live action animation film
that he was planning based on the books of Mary
(13:57):
Poppins by Peale Travis. Would I be interested did in
coming to Hollywood to learn a little more about what
he planned, and listened to the music and so on,
and I was gobsmacked, said, oh, Mr Disney, I would
love to, but I'm sorry I'm pregnant. And his reply was, well,
that's okay, we'll wait. And I had no idea at
(14:18):
the time that preproduction in a movie takes so long.
And by the time I had had my lovely daughter,
with whom I now right, the film would be ready
to roll. And when she was about two or three
months old, off we went to Hollywood, and I began
this vast new career of which I knew nothing, and
(14:40):
learn on my feet as I went. You had no
experience working. Excuse me, I have to add a ps
to this. Disney, in the dressing room at Camelot, turned
to my then husband Tony and said, and what do
you do, young man? And Tony said, you explained he
was a designer of sets and costumes. Relatively at that
I'm unknown, and Disney said, well, then you bring your
(15:03):
portfolio with you when you come to Hollywood. When he
saw his portfolio. He hired him on the spot to
do the sets, most of the sets and all the
costumes for Mary Poppins, and Tony was nominated for an Oscar,
as was I on that movie. I mean, how extraordinary
(15:23):
is that story? I would call that serendipity on steroids.
I think you're absolutely right, and that, seemingly, without being
too pollyanna ish about it, the story of my life.
One of my mantras is are we lucky or what?
And it's absolutely true. I had to work so fast
(15:45):
and learned so hard and race to catch up at
everything that was happening. But those opportunities were extraordinary. You
had never acted in a movie prior to Mary Carliners
had lots of Broadway experience or some Broadway experience at
the time. Because you were still quite young, Julie, old
were you well? I was, I think about twenty nine
at that point. I felt much younger than that, believe me, Katie,
(16:09):
And so you, I know, looking back on this film,
you notice how self conscious you were. Well, that I
was self conscious, but oddly, looking at what I did
on film, I was surprised that it looked pretty normal
and that I pulled it off. Although I was scared
to death. And the first days of filming, you know,
(16:31):
how does one behave on film? On stage, I had
a fair inkling of what to do, but film is
much more intimate, and there's a camera right on your
head only and there you are on a fast screen
and then it could be a waist shot or it
could be over the shoulder shot and lots of green screens,
(16:51):
so much animation and sodium vapor is what they called
it at the time. Yeah, and Disney had one of
the best screens in Hollywood at the time because all
the animation followed long after we finished the movie, so
we had to pretend and imagine and look at birds
and beyond and you know, Merry go Round, flowers and
(17:12):
butterflies and all of that. It must have been great, fine,
but it must have been a pretty steep learning curve
for you. Huge, absolutely huge, and I lapped it up.
It took several movies before I felt I began to
know what I was doing, and you never do. It's
a new project every time, and it takes a while
(17:34):
to kind of slide into home base, so to speak.
And I worked with giants, I mean, wonderful mentors on
Broadway with people like Moss Heart, who was a great
guy and adorable and kind and who I believe had
been through a great deal himself in his early life
(17:54):
and sensed my nerves, my insecurity, and obviously felt it
was something I could improve on, and worked with me
one on one and made me into Eliza Doolittle and
from then on we was such great friends. When we
(18:16):
come back, Julie opens up about her breakout role on
Broadway and losing that part in the movie adaptation to
Audrey Hepburn Dog I could have done and still big
(18:37):
I could have spend. Before Julie Andrews made the jump
from stage to screen, she first made a name for
herself on Broadway with starring roles in The Boyfriend Camelot
opposite Richard Burton and of course My Fair Lady. You
(19:00):
were in My Fair Lady on Broadway and for about
three and a half years, which is a lot. Was
that exhausting, by the way, day in and day two
years on Broadway and eighteen roughly eighteen months in London,
and yes, eight performances a week. You don't see daylight
on a Wednesday at all because of the two shows,
(19:20):
and then of course on on the Saturday matinee as well,
and I would go in certainly mid morning to prepare
for the matinee, and I wouldn't see daylight for the
rest of the day until I came out and it
was dark at eleven thirty at night, midnight. And I
must say that My Fair Lady is one of the
hardest I think roles for any actress, because you sing,
(19:41):
you scream, and you talk Cockney. You there are tremendous
dramatic scenes. It's a big marathon every every show. And
that show ran three hours. They didn't run as long
these days, not quite as long, unfortunately. And I know
I was angry for you did not kick cast in
the move be because they wanted a bigger name and
(20:02):
you weren't as well known. I wasn't known at all
outside of Broadway, And if you look at it one way,
I was a very small fish in a very big
pond on Broadway and then not known at all in
the in the rest of the world. And in those
days movies were made with big stars, and so Audrey
(20:23):
Hepburn got the role of Eliza in the movie of
My Fair Lady. We became great friends. I just adored
her that her I was so thrilled. Oh my gosh,
she was a UNI CEP. She was, and she came
to the Today Show and she was one of the
most charming, gracious people I had ever met. She walked
(20:44):
around and shook hands with every single person in the studio.
Having said that it did annoy me on your behalf, Julie,
that Martie Nixon provided her voice in My Fair Lady,
and I'm like, come on, man, well listen, it's very
It all worked out hard to be upset when Walt
Disney comes along not that much later and says, would
you like to do Mary Poppins? And in fact, one
(21:06):
of the funny moments in your book is the story
behind your decision to thank Jack Warner at the Golden
Globes for not casting you when he Fair Lady. He
was the head of the studio at Warner Brothers. He
was Warner Brothers for so many years, and I at
the Golden Globes, I did thank him for making it
possible by not casting me in My Fair Lady, to
(21:28):
win the Golden Globe for Mary Poppins. Finally, my thanks
to a man who made a wonderful movie and who
made all this possible in the first place, Mr Jack Warner,
And to his credit, he did get the joke and
he did laugh. I thought my career might be at
an end when I said it, But a year later,
of course, you were in the Sound of Music. The
(21:50):
first three films that I made were not released until
I had finished them, so I was eventually just loving
making movies and learning on my feet and and almost
playing in this delicious sandbox, and nothing had been released,
so I had no idea that they were going to
be as successful as they were. I remember going to
the Sound of Music at the Ontario Theater in Washington,
(22:13):
d C. I was seven years old and my family,
my mom and dad, put us in the station wagon
in our Easter Sunday clothes and we went to a
matinee and afternoon showing of the Sound of Music. And
I was so upset when the Nazis came. I'm not
gonna lie, that was really dramatic for me. But I mean,
(22:33):
just to think of how that movie has endured. I
think it's probably one of the most classic all the
right values, and it was one of the great beautiful
Hollywood movies that were shot so beautifully. The sound is
so great. It was crafted immaculately and directed by master,
(22:57):
directed by Robert Robert Wise, who did West Side Story
and Sand Pebbles and so many other wonderful movies. I
worked with him in two films, and he was a darling.
I know that you were a little lonely when you
were filming that movie. You missed your husband. Yeah, well,
he because of the success of his work in Mary Poppins,
(23:19):
he was in instant demand, and he did phenomenal shows
on Broadway especially, and he did films, but I mean
shows like Chicago and Pippin and will Rogers follies. I
mean phenomenal designs and costumes for and very new and
fresh and original concepts, and then wonderful movies too. He
(23:41):
did the great Bob Fossey movie. What was it called
All That Jazz? Yeah? Wow, I think he won. He
did win the Oscar for that one. Yeah. An extraordinary
career as well. Yes, and he was so busy, so,
of course we were separated a lot, and of eventually
that did take its toll. We'd known each other since
(24:03):
we were twelve and thirst hometown. Yes, we both came
from the same village. On the railway line out of London,
and I met very early and he was my childhood sweetheart.
So I think we allowed for each other to grow
into blossom and didn't take into account, well, neither of
us really could. We needed money and we had to
(24:25):
work and things were happening so rapidly, and it took
a toll, which was that our marriage failed. I'm happy
to say that we are friends to this day, and
of course we share our beautiful daughter, who is the
daughter that helped me write this book. Emma, Emma keeps
popping up. She does, and she she did, and she does.
(24:46):
Thank God. Do you ever tire of talking about the
sound of music? Not really? How much fun though, was
it to perform all those extraordinary Rogers and Hammerstein phenomenal
and well, first of all, singing with the fast orchestra
is magical. My singing teacher once said Katie that singing
(25:08):
with a great orchestra is like being carried aloft in
the most comfortable armchair over the orchestra and the sound,
and she was absolutely right. That was the great joy.
But then to give you my favorite song, I think
it has to be one that I didn't sing, and
that was Edelweiss because again, excuse me, it speaks to
(25:31):
one's homeland, whoever you are. It's not just about Austria,
It's about any place that you call home. You know.
Bless my Homeland Forever is the lyric, and it has
one of the classic Richard Roger's melodies. Think of Oh
what a Beautiful Morning. It's one of those melodies that
simply folds back on itself and it's very simple and
(25:55):
Edelweiss and Oh what a Beautiful Morning, and several others
have that quality, and they're timeless. The melody is so
clear and clean and simple and lends itself to the
most wonderful orchestration. I wish I had the opportunity to
have met Richard Rodgers and ask her hammers just such
(26:15):
brilliant giants. Again, I walked with giants. I know. The
hills were alive with the sound of helicopters. That opening
scene was a bit challenging, wasn't it. You would never
in a million years was the last thing we shot
in the movie too, and and and it was tough.
(26:36):
Tell me about how hard it was. Well, simply the
very very first time that I'm revealed on film is
walking as a very small speck across the field and
making this turn before I begin to sing. That's all
I had to do was walk and make a turn.
And it was shot from a helicopter. I started at
(26:56):
once end of the field, and the helicopter with a
very brave the cameraman strapped at the side of it
through the door that was no longer there. And this
this thing was from the other end of the field,
was coming at me sort of like a giant crab
in a way, sideways, with this wonderful caraman hanging out
the side of it, and the camera strapped his chest,
(27:19):
and I walked toward him, and he helicoptered his way
towards me, and then I made the turn, and then
the helicopter went up and around me to go back
for another take, because either I wasn't on my marks,
or he didn't feel he had gotten the right shot,
or it wasn't. I mean, we had to have a
few in the in the bank in the case of
(27:39):
an accident, and and and focus and so on. And
every time that helicopter went around me to go back
to his end of the field, the down draft from
those helicopter engines just flattened me into the grass. Did
you say the outtakes they have been saved. I've seen
one of them, but I don't know who has it.
(28:01):
I wish, you know, if anybody out there that knows
where they are. I'd love to see it again. I
would love to see I have seen it, though, And
you know, after the third or fourth time, you you
get so angry that you're you know, spitting grass and
some mud and so on, and you I kept signaling
to the helicopter pilot could he make a wider turn?
(28:22):
And I only got a thumbs up? And let's do
another one, you know. Up next, Julie gets candid about
her forty year marriage to the brilliant but complicated Blake
Edwards and reminiscence about some old friends, including Elizabeth Taylor
and Carol Burnett. I want to ask you about Blake Edwards,
(28:51):
who seems like he was the coolest guy he was?
Was he charismatic, wicked sense of humor? I mean wickedly dark?
And and may I say he was? He was? He
was sexy, yes he was, or believe me, he certainly was.
(29:11):
And I miss him dreadfully. But as he'd be the
first to say, what else are you going to say?
Because I'm a darling. Well, you know, I think did
you learn much about balancing your your career and your
marriage because of growing sort of apart from your first husband, Tony?
And what did you learn that allowed you to keep
(29:31):
your marriage to blake intact? I think probably, as is
true with most second marriages, you really, really this time
want to make it work. It does take two people.
You can't just have one wanting it or anything like that,
but it takes two to work at it. And I
think we both wanted to stay together, and I'm so
(29:52):
thrilled that we did. I adored him. He was very complicated, charismatic, complicated,
and had a very depressive personality at times. It wasn't
manic depressive. He was just prone to depression and also
later in his life towards opioids and things like that,
(30:14):
but tried so hard to get off them and get
back to the way he was when we first met.
And you can give anybody for saying sorry and trying
that hard. You write a lot about addiction in your
family with unflinching honesty, and I just thought of it
helped anybody identify and say well, then I can I
(30:35):
can manage that about your stepfather your mother both amusing alcohol. Yeah,
your brother was a drug addict. As you mentioned, Blake
Edwards had become reliant on Painkilly had issues. Certainly, were
you at all hesitant to do that? Yes? And I
hope I showed every side of Blake because it wasn't
(30:58):
just that like borne it if if it had been,
I wanted to show all the humor and the the
laughter that we shared and it was great at times,
and those are the things I cling to and remember,
and I I mean, I still adore him to this day,
(31:18):
no matter what. I know that. You're also very honest
about therapy, because this is something that you started doing
when you were living in Los Angeles in the nineteen sixties,
and you talk about what a positive impact it had
on your life. People didn't talk openly about being in therapy,
and in fact, it's a relatively new phenomenon. Well I
(31:42):
don't know how new it is these days, but I
remember my mother saying, what you know, thinking that you
only went into therapy if you were totally mad or
something like that. In my certainly my hometown in Walden
on Thams, nobody I think at that time talked about therapy,
but I wanted to clear the chaos in my head.
(32:04):
And it made me understand so much more about my
childhood and put it in perspective, and forgive so much
about my family and my parents, and understand people a
lot more. I think I was a better wife and
mother and so many things because of getting rid of
that garbage that you carry around that you don't need
(32:26):
to carry around and staying focused on essentials. You were
racked with self doubt and I know a lot that
you had impostor syndrome really throughout much of your life,
and I don't think that before. Well, it's sort of
not thinking you deserve something and that you don't understand
(32:46):
why you're being came more from not having had an education.
I'd love to have gone to college and and had
a really good education. But that very smart therapist realized
that's what I need, did and eventually decided to help
give me one. And in fact, he really became your
de facto college did he was Merlin. He could tell
(33:08):
me about a very expensive college professor, I might add
worth worth it all read. So you all would talk
about history and art and all kinds of geology and
astrology and just anything. He'd bring it up or I'd
bring it up, and God, I wish I had absorbed
a more, but what I did get was phenomenal. And
(33:29):
did it give you a lot of self confidence then,
feeling that you were more learned at least I could
converse about things a little better. And yes, it did
help enormously. Of course, you mentioned a lot of very
special people in this book, so I thought we could
play a name game. Let's spill the tea, as the
young people say today, I guess that means let's dish um.
(33:53):
Carol Burnett, great chum, godmother to my daughter Emma. We
us such good friends. I think there's something that's very
similar in our childhoods. She also came from an alcoholic family,
and we just bonded instantly, like two kids that discover
they live on the same block. And we've been friends
(34:14):
for years. You played a prank on Mike Nichols that
backfired miserably or hilariously. Hilariously not miserably. Now he won
that one hand. Now, yes, tell us, Okay, that's a
good tease. Get the book. By the book, you talk
about the ultimate Hollywood moment with Betty Davis. It's on
(34:36):
page seventy eight. Do you mind reading now? It's a
very sweet It's not very long. I was talking about
the opening night of Sound of Music in New York,
I think, and I wrote after the screening, during the
crush in the lobby, I suddenly saw Betty Davis approaching me.
I had never met her before, though I was a
(34:58):
huge fan. As we shook hands, she said, you, my dear,
are going to be a very big star. I had
always imagined that she might be crisp or loof, but
her warmth and generosity just bowled me over. That must
have been an incredibly exciting moment for a young actress. Yeah,
(35:18):
and I've I've always been such a fan of hers
and her work. And she was funny and lovely, and
I mean we didn't talk for very long, but what
a generous thing to say. You mentioned Elizabeth Taylor talk
about bold face names. I've always wanted to be you,
Julie Andrews. But you described a scene on boxing day
on vacation of Europe, and you are talking about bold
(35:40):
face names, I mean, nold coward. You mentioned we went
to supper with David Niven and Nol Coward and Richard Burton. Well,
excuse me, well I did. I did. Obviously I knew
Richard and a little bit Elizabeth from from having done
Camelot with Richard and Nol. Coward had come backstage several times,
(36:01):
so I felt I knew him. David Niven was a
good friend of Blake's and had done Panthers, so it
was a good group. Must have been fun. What was
Elizabeth Taylor like? I got to interview her once, By
the way, I'll tell you what she I mean, you
were friends. I just talked to her and she taught
me how to keep lipstick from getting on my teeth.
(36:21):
She said, you take your index finger and you kind
of form an oh with your mouth, and then you
just pull your your finger out of your mouth and
it takes the lipstick off so it doesn't get on
your teeth. WHOA, thank you, Elizabeth, Yes, thank you. We'll try. It.
Was she fun, and I know she was showing off
(36:43):
a diamond, right. She was fun, and she she was
actually a really good gal. She was a good egg,
as they say, I mean she she was down to
earth in a very good way, and she was kind
of racy, right, yeah, And she'd been through it all,
but that Christmas, this was boxing day of the day
(37:03):
after Christmas, and Richard given her this enormous ring and
she just sort of flashed it at us and said,
look at what Richard gave you. It's a bit of
a giggle, isn't it. And Blake said it was enough
to sort of make him a communist instantly, But it was.
She said it with such a smile and a sense
of humor, you couldn't be upset by it. Christopher Plumber,
(37:27):
you write that he was a bit out of pocket
while filming The Sound of Music. Julie, do tell how
does that mean? Did I out of pocket? Um? What
did I mean? Well? I think he was a little
He loved his red wine and sometimes after the day
was over he would drink quite a lot. Is that
what you meant? Yes? Yes, But but my god, he
(37:51):
was the glue that really pulled the Sound of Music together,
because here's a stringent quality, took away so much of
that saccharine that I was worried about. Right, And he
was such a lovely actor to work with. I mean,
he's a great chum. We giggle a lot and remember
each other's birthdays and Christmass and things like that. This
book goes up to the nineteen eighties, so obviously there
(38:15):
is another memoir come because you need to talk about
all the that you went through when you had the
vocal surgery and what that was like, and then seeing
in the Second Princess Diaries and discovering a whole new
life and a somewhat new career in terms of writing
(38:36):
with Emma and so on. Yeah, I guess you're saying
there'll be another book. And if you just asked me
in about a month, when I've recovered from this one,
I'd be thrilled. Well, I think people never never get
tired of hearing from you and the extraordinary stories of
your life. Well, I just know that you know that phrase.
(38:58):
Are we lucky or what? I've really been so blessed.
My mother used to say there are hundreds of people
out there that can do what you do just as well,
so you work hard and and be grateful, and it
was great advice. Well, we're lucky because of it. I
(39:18):
went on a little long and Julie's manager was getting
pretty annoyed with me by this point, but before I
let her go, I had an important favor to ask,
so we were going to do something really fun. You guys,
are you okay with time? We were going to do
to something. Jennifer Garner is such a die hard fan,
and so I arranged to surprise her. I met her
(39:42):
and interviewed her for my podcast. Can you just call
her and say hello? Real quickly? Okay, Hello, Hello? Is
this Jin? Yes, this is Julie Andrew's Jin. Hello. I
(40:02):
want to tell you I'm a huge fan and love
what you do. And Katie was just telling me that
that you were pretty admiring of me too, so I thought, well,
let's just have a chat. Oh my god, how are you?
Why haven't I ever met you, jenn I would love
to and one day I saw you from Afar once
(40:24):
but I couldn't. I couldn't just you know, put it
into words, and I couldn't. I couldn't possibly be normal,
And so I just admired. But I like getting you
in the middle of yours washing up or something like that.
Certainly not miss Andrews. I would pull over and leave
(40:46):
my children on the side of the freeway. Um, it's
Katie there, Yes, she's all the other Okay, So Jennifer
posted watching Sound of Music and totally fan girling and
it was so cute, and so I had wrote on
her Instagram page, I'm interviewing Julie Andrews. Come with and
(41:09):
she said, don't mess with me, Katie, and so so
we planned this, Jen So ask her a question. Chat
for a second, and I'm going to let out you
know what, Julie Andrews, Miss I have just called. Okay, Well, um,
I've read my kids with you and I because I
(41:32):
was raised on you and I as weds everyone you
know in the world. But here's the thing. Your book
I love. I mean, the children's books completely real to me.
I can't wait to read your new book. It's I
cannot wait. It's I can't wait. But proc and the
(41:54):
the last of the really great wing doodles I've read aloud, wife,
and I love it. I'm so pleased you do, because
I loved doing that. It's it's it was. It was
my second book, and it oh gosh, that was such
a thrill to write it and to see it published.
And it's stayed in publication too, stayed in publication. It
(42:18):
is it is an our house. We talk about those
characters and Mandy and the dump truck and that you know,
but especially Mandy and lasted really really great Wang do
we speak about them like their family friends and my kids.
For them to even connect that that you wrote those
(42:39):
is so wonderful because it helps them see that you
can really be a full person, that just because you're
a performer, it doesn't mean that you that that's all
you do. They you know, they love knowing that that
that my fair lady and that um Mary Pop, that
all of them are the same person playing some one
(43:00):
else and also is an author. Well, thank you. What
a great, great compliment, and it's just so lovely, and
I think it means more. Odd Oddly, I don't mean
to be dismaraging to anybody else, but when somebody says
they liked one of my books, it really is a
thrill because it's I'm still learning on my feet about writing,
(43:21):
but but I'm thrilled when somebody says they loved my
book or it was one of their favorites or something.
And I'm here talking to Katie today about this second
book of memories, and so I hope you enjoyed that
one too, for yourself, not for your kids or how
old your kids now they're thirteen, ten and seven. Well,
(43:44):
they get around to it one day, but you can.
I want the I want the two of you to
meet and have lunch at some point um and maybe
I'll join if I'm on the better past, and it
would be so much god my here. Yes, yes, I
feel like I did a little match making. I did
(44:04):
a little Mitz buzz all right, lots of love and
we'll see for lunch, see you again, and I hope
I'll meet you again. Yes, I really do hope so
much love. Thank you. I can't wait to the bye bye.
(44:25):
Thanks so much for listening everyone. If you'd like to
know what's happening every morning and have some original content
in the form of interviews and inspiring stories, please sign
up for our daily morning newsletter called wake Up Call
by going to Katie Couric dot com and follow me,
of course on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter. Next Question with
(44:47):
Katie Curic is a production of I Heart Radio and
Katie Curic Media. The executive producers are Katie Kuric, Lauren
Bright Pacheco, Julie Douglas, and Tyler Klang. Our show producers
are Bethan Macaluso and Courtney Litz. Supervising producer is Dylan Fagin.
Associate producers are Emily Pinto and Derek Clemens. Editing is
by Dylan Fagin, Derek Clements, and Lowell Berlante. Our researcher
(45:10):
is Barbara Keene. For more information on today's episode, go
to Katie currek dot com and follow us on Twitter
and Instagram at Katie curric For more podcasts for my
heart Radio, visit the I heart Radio app, Apple podcast,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows
Next Question with Katie Kuric is a production of I
Heart Radio and Katie Kuric Media. Hi everyone, I'm Katie
Curic and welcome to Next Question, where we try to
understand the complicated world we're living in and the crazy
things that are happening by asking questions and by listening
to people who really know what they're talking about. At times,
(00:22):
it may lead to some pretty uncomfortable conversations, but stick
with me, everyone, let's all learn together. When I told
people about my plans to interview my next guest, the
response was overwhelming. Everyone I talked to, regardless of their age,
pretty much lost it. In fact, my twenty two year
old assistant, Adriana, started crying when he heard the news.
(00:45):
Not that I blame her. My inner seven year old
was also freaking out about the chance to interview someone who,
even after more than six decades, continues to delight kids
of all ages through some of the most iconic characters
to ever grace the big screen, like Mary Poppins it's superfragilistic,
it's the alidosis, even though the sound of it is
(01:08):
something quite a fruit, or my personal favorite, Maria the
nun in training turned governess who captures the heart of
one Captain von Trapp in pre World War two Austria,
A love with the song of Musing. That's right. I
got to sit down with the one and only Julie Andrews,
(01:30):
who recently published memoir number two about her life in Hollywood, motherhood,
and her marriage to the late Blake Edwards. Yeah, he's
one cool cat too. He directed all those Pink Panther movies,
among others. But back to Julie's book, which she co
authored with daughter Emma Walton Hamilton's. It's called Homework, and
(01:54):
it's a funny, moving, surprisingly relatable account of a woman
figuring out her ace in the world, aren't we all.
We talked about memoir writing, how therapy can change your life,
supporting a spouse, battling addiction, and her friendships with legends
like Carol Burnett and Elizabeth Taylor, all in an effort
to answer my next question, When and how did Julie
(02:17):
Andrews become the icon she is today. Julie, I'm so
excited to have you here, to be with you, and
I cannot tell you how many people were even more
excited than I am right now looking forward to seeing
you all day. You have legions of fans, and what
(02:39):
I found so striking is everyone from your contemporary and
my contemporaries to two young kids that only remember the
Princess Diaries. Well, no, who live for the sound of music.
My assistant Adrianna has thirteen copies of the Sound of
Music and went to the Sound of Music sing along
(03:02):
for her birthday. Everyone in my office was so pumped
that I was doing this, so thank you. It's a
great pleasure. Let's talk about this memoir. Your first one
came out in two thousand and eight, so it's been
eleven years. Why did you decide to publish the second
installment now? And is there a time frame you had
(03:22):
in mind or is this just how long it took. Well, no,
it didn't quite take a living but to take about
three The publishers were patiently waiting for it and postponing
for me when a day job got in the way
of writing. Right. But I couldn't have written it without
my lovely daughter Emma, who actually helped me with the
first memoir as well, and she's the most wonderful collaborator.
(03:45):
We've written about thirty books together. I know thirty of
those children books, right, and two of these memoirs, and
she's the nuts and bolts and I'm all the sort
of flights of fancies and chapter endings, and of course
it's a story, worry about my life. And she a
lot of interviewing, and we referred to the journals that
(04:05):
I kept over the years, and look, thank god for
stuff online that was over there on the internet. Yes,
you have been journaling for a very long time, quite
a long time. I'm curious. I'm writing a memoir right now.
It's a fascinating experience because it's like therapy, but you're
the therapist and the patient, I know. And what keeping
(04:26):
what not include? Do you get him? You know? What
attitude should it be right? The voice should it have right?
And and also I think it's it's emotional because you're
reliving some very happy times since some very difficult times
with you more And somebody said to me that writing
a memoir is like living your life all over again, right,
(04:48):
And did you keep journals? I didn't. I remember when
I got my job on the Today Show, Jane Chalott,
who I adored, said listen, I've got one piece of advice,
keep a journal. And I said, that's great advice, Gene,
and then I never did I wish I had. I
wish I had well the time that I began. It
(05:09):
was a way for me of keeping the good stuff
and writing down my thoughts so that I had room
for others because things were coming at me so fast
and so furiously. And you were really before your time,
because now it's considered so therapeutic. Yes too, And it
was for that reason. I think that I did write
(05:29):
just to get it out of my head and onto
the page so I didn't have to hold it as
much in my head. I know that, as you mentioned,
your daughter, Emma and you are are quite a team.
How does the process work with Emma Julie? Does she
help you? Does she read journal entries and say, oh, mom,
you should really write about this? Or how did how do?
(05:51):
You started with an intensive research and made me a
timeline of about thirty years. Now you can imagine, you know,
what did I do when and where and so on?
And any single thing that she or I could remember
went into that timeline. And then she began to interview
me about certain important pieces, and that would be transcribed
(06:14):
and then we'd cut an edit and paste, and I'd
change what didn't feel right. But also once she got
to the diaries, we decided it would be great to
just excerpt from the diaries, but cut and prune, of course,
but because they were the absolute truth at the time,
so why not use them. And that helped a lot,
and the internet helped a lot, and old clippings and letters,
(06:38):
and we interviewed the family, my family, you know, all
the kids, and just in general patched all the places
in that we couldn't quite remember or but somebody did somewhere,
but thank God for the initial timeline. And then of
course she was this hugely encouraging presence at my side
at all times, and they were very stressed times when
(07:02):
we when we both get kind of tearful and just
somewhat depressed. And she she made a point of she
said to me, Mom, you didn't know it, but I
asked you all the difficult questions in the morning so
that we could end our day a little later in
the day on a high note, so you didn't go
to bed and worry too much. It's so sweet and dear,
that's a lot of mommy and me time. Did you
(07:23):
guys ever, fight? No, not fight. There were huge heated
discussions at times, but we don't actually fight at all.
We finished each other sentences and we laugh a lot.
But we've always felt that we get into an argument
about something and then one of us realizes that the
best idea wins, and we have such mutual respect for
(07:45):
each other that it seems to work out really well. Katie. Well,
you obviously did a wonderful job, And as you say,
I think the excerpts from your journals really provide a
certain and lyricism, right, and um, I'd love you to
read one of them about an experience you had that
(08:08):
really brought back memories of when you were in Vardville.
That's right. I was making a film with my second husband,
Blake Edwards, whom I was married to for like forty
one years and knew him for forty four before he
passed away. But we were making our first film together
and it was in Dublin and there was a scene
(08:28):
that I had to shoot at the Gaiety Theater, which
was one of the great old, beautiful music hall theaters.
And my upbringing from age twelve was in Vaudeville, and
I entered that theater and picked my way over the
film cables that we were going to be using a song,
and this is what I wrote. Suddenly I remembered Monday
(08:49):
mornings and band calls, getting my orchestrations down on stage
in time for rehearsal, placing them to the right of
the banned books already down ahead of mine. That's the
other terms on the bill, And waiting my turn, unpacking
the steamer trunks each week, and climbing endless stairs to
the wardrobe room at the top of the theater in
(09:11):
order to press my theatrical gowns. The halting, uneasy first
performance on Monday nights and the difficult second houses on
Saturday evenings. The smell of paint, turpentine and dust, the
depressing staleness, and the awful pretense of glamor. And that's
(09:33):
the way those early days of touring endlessly around England
really was. And that was from a diary entry, yes,
And I'm so glad I kept it because it brought
it back very vividly for me, and I just decided
to keep it in the book. And the writing is beautiful, Oh,
thank you, thank you. I know you'd write about your
(09:54):
childhood and the first book, but I want to talk
a little bit about that because The title of this
book is homework, and it seems to be a nod
to the incredible amount of work it takes to build
and maintain healthy and happy relationships with your kids, your spouse,
your aging parents, and the work and the work and
the work. I know, family, though, has always been so
(10:17):
incredibly important to you, Jolie, and I wondered, is that
because of your childhood and some of the challenges you
faced when you were a little girl. I think it
definitely comes from all that divorced parents and also difficult
stepfather in my life and missing my brother. We were
split quite early in our lives, and it's just so
(10:39):
many things, learning on my feet how to sing and
learning vocally out of thing I guess um also long
separations at least a week at a time when I
went on the road on my own eventually when I
was about fifteen, and I didn't get educated because I
needed to earn money for the family and so on.
(11:01):
So yes, home meant the most enormous amount to me
getting home, being safe, holding them all together, helping to
hold us all together. You have an incredible maternal instinct. Well,
I think it was so necessary. I didn't want to
go backwards in life either. My parents tried, My mother
and stepfather tried very hard to better our lot. We
(11:22):
were unbelievably poor, but eventually they got a wonderful house,
and we didn't want to lose it, and helping to
make money and contribute to that was essential if we
wanted to stay in that place, and I did. It
had a garden, and I could play in the garden
so often and love to do that. So you held
on to that and said, this is what I want
(11:43):
from my family. Yes, and I want a sense of
permanence and a rooted sense. But also it's to do
with warmth and love and so many things that bind
people together and makes for a gentler kind, a happier world.
And so the first memoir was called Home, and was
(12:06):
much easier in a way, although it was hard to write.
It started from nothing and built to a kind of
big conclusion when I was just about to go to
Hollywood to do Mary Poppins. It went through my afordable
years and my Broadway years. But this book started at
a high and then sort of went right and left
(12:28):
rather than from low to high. And it was a
much more difficult thing to write because there was so
much that I was learning about. I decided eventually that
I would call it homework again, the need to balance
home and the enormous amount of work that it takes
to learn a new craft about filmmaking in this case,
(12:50):
and being in a new place and again being away
from what I felt as home, it became home. Eventually.
You start with this rejectory of going to Hollywood. So
I want to ask you about getting tapped for Mary Poppins.
You were on Broadway, yes, and you were sought out. Well.
(13:12):
I was in Camelot with Richard Burton and Robert Goulay
and a wonderful company Envy sent It's beautiful music, lovely,
lovely musical. The company heard that Walt Disney was in
the audience, and I got word that he'd like to
come back and say hello. And you freaked out. What
(13:34):
did you find out before the performance? Yes, and that
he was there, And I thought, well, how lovely to
be so social and kind. And he came backstage and
my then husband, Tony Walton was with me in the
dressing room. He said he loved the show, and then
he began to talk about this live action animation film
that he was planning based on the books of Mary
(13:57):
Poppins by Peale Travis. Would I be interested did in
coming to Hollywood to learn a little more about what
he planned, and listened to the music and so on,
and I was gobsmacked, said, oh, Mr Disney, I would
love to, but I'm sorry I'm pregnant. And his reply was, well,
that's okay, we'll wait. And I had no idea at
(14:18):
the time that preproduction in a movie takes so long.
And by the time I had had my lovely daughter,
with whom I now right, the film would be ready
to roll. And when she was about two or three
months old, off we went to Hollywood, and I began
this vast new career of which I knew nothing, and
(14:40):
learn on my feet as I went. You had no
experience working. Excuse me, I have to add a ps
to this. Disney, in the dressing room at Camelot, turned
to my then husband Tony and said, and what do
you do, young man? And Tony said, you explained he
was a designer of sets and costumes. Relatively at that
I'm unknown, and Disney said, well, then you bring your
(15:03):
portfolio with you when you come to Hollywood. When he
saw his portfolio. He hired him on the spot to
do the sets, most of the sets and all the
costumes for Mary Poppins, and Tony was nominated for an Oscar,
as was I on that movie. I mean, how extraordinary
(15:23):
is that story? I would call that serendipity on steroids.
I think you're absolutely right, and that, seemingly, without being
too pollyanna ish about it, the story of my life.
One of my mantras is are we lucky or what?
And it's absolutely true. I had to work so fast
(15:45):
and learned so hard and race to catch up at
everything that was happening. But those opportunities were extraordinary. You
had never acted in a movie prior to Mary Carliners
had lots of Broadway experience or some Broadway experience at
the time. Because you were still quite young, Julie, old
were you well? I was, I think about twenty nine
at that point. I felt much younger than that, believe me, Katie,
(16:09):
And so you, I know, looking back on this film,
you notice how self conscious you were. Well, that I
was self conscious, but oddly, looking at what I did
on film, I was surprised that it looked pretty normal
and that I pulled it off. Although I was scared
to death. And the first days of filming, you know,
(16:31):
how does one behave on film? On stage, I had
a fair inkling of what to do, but film is
much more intimate, and there's a camera right on your
head only and there you are on a fast screen
and then it could be a waist shot or it
could be over the shoulder shot and lots of green screens,
(16:51):
so much animation and sodium vapor is what they called
it at the time. Yeah, and Disney had one of
the best screens in Hollywood at the time because all
the animation followed long after we finished the movie, so
we had to pretend and imagine and look at birds
and beyond and you know, Merry go Round, flowers and
(17:12):
butterflies and all of that. It must have been great, fine,
but it must have been a pretty steep learning curve
for you. Huge, absolutely huge, and I lapped it up.
It took several movies before I felt I began to
know what I was doing, and you never do. It's
a new project every time, and it takes a while
(17:34):
to kind of slide into home base, so to speak.
And I worked with giants, I mean, wonderful mentors on
Broadway with people like Moss Heart, who was a great
guy and adorable and kind and who I believe had
been through a great deal himself in his early life
(17:54):
and sensed my nerves, my insecurity, and obviously felt it
was something I could improve on, and worked with me
one on one and made me into Eliza Doolittle and
from then on we was such great friends. When we
(18:16):
come back, Julie opens up about her breakout role on
Broadway and losing that part in the movie adaptation to
Audrey Hepburn Dog I could have done and still big
(18:37):
I could have spend. Before Julie Andrews made the jump
from stage to screen, she first made a name for
herself on Broadway with starring roles in The Boyfriend Camelot
opposite Richard Burton and of course My Fair Lady. You
(19:00):
were in My Fair Lady on Broadway and for about
three and a half years, which is a lot. Was
that exhausting, by the way, day in and day two
years on Broadway and eighteen roughly eighteen months in London,
and yes, eight performances a week. You don't see daylight
on a Wednesday at all because of the two shows,
(19:20):
and then of course on on the Saturday matinee as well,
and I would go in certainly mid morning to prepare
for the matinee, and I wouldn't see daylight for the
rest of the day until I came out and it
was dark at eleven thirty at night, midnight. And I
must say that My Fair Lady is one of the
hardest I think roles for any actress, because you sing,
(19:41):
you scream, and you talk Cockney. You there are tremendous
dramatic scenes. It's a big marathon every every show. And
that show ran three hours. They didn't run as long
these days, not quite as long, unfortunately. And I know
I was angry for you did not kick cast in
the move be because they wanted a bigger name and
(20:02):
you weren't as well known. I wasn't known at all
outside of Broadway, And if you look at it one way,
I was a very small fish in a very big
pond on Broadway and then not known at all in
the in the rest of the world. And in those
days movies were made with big stars, and so Audrey
(20:23):
Hepburn got the role of Eliza in the movie of
My Fair Lady. We became great friends. I just adored
her that her I was so thrilled. Oh my gosh,
she was a UNI CEP. She was, and she came
to the Today Show and she was one of the
most charming, gracious people I had ever met. She walked
(20:44):
around and shook hands with every single person in the studio.
Having said that it did annoy me on your behalf, Julie,
that Martie Nixon provided her voice in My Fair Lady,
and I'm like, come on, man, well listen, it's very
It all worked out hard to be upset when Walt
Disney comes along not that much later and says, would
you like to do Mary Poppins? And in fact, one
(21:06):
of the funny moments in your book is the story
behind your decision to thank Jack Warner at the Golden
Globes for not casting you when he Fair Lady. He
was the head of the studio at Warner Brothers. He
was Warner Brothers for so many years, and I at
the Golden Globes, I did thank him for making it
possible by not casting me in My Fair Lady, to
(21:28):
win the Golden Globe for Mary Poppins. Finally, my thanks
to a man who made a wonderful movie and who
made all this possible in the first place, Mr Jack Warner,
And to his credit, he did get the joke and
he did laugh. I thought my career might be at
an end when I said it, But a year later,
of course, you were in the Sound of Music. The
(21:50):
first three films that I made were not released until
I had finished them, so I was eventually just loving
making movies and learning on my feet and and almost
playing in this delicious sandbox, and nothing had been released,
so I had no idea that they were going to
be as successful as they were. I remember going to
the Sound of Music at the Ontario Theater in Washington,
(22:13):
d C. I was seven years old and my family,
my mom and dad, put us in the station wagon
in our Easter Sunday clothes and we went to a
matinee and afternoon showing of the Sound of Music. And
I was so upset when the Nazis came. I'm not
gonna lie, that was really dramatic for me. But I mean,
(22:33):
just to think of how that movie has endured. I
think it's probably one of the most classic all the
right values, and it was one of the great beautiful
Hollywood movies that were shot so beautifully. The sound is
so great. It was crafted immaculately and directed by master,
(22:57):
directed by Robert Robert Wise, who did West Side Story
and Sand Pebbles and so many other wonderful movies. I
worked with him in two films, and he was a darling.
I know that you were a little lonely when you
were filming that movie. You missed your husband. Yeah, well,
he because of the success of his work in Mary Poppins,
(23:19):
he was in instant demand, and he did phenomenal shows
on Broadway especially, and he did films, but I mean
shows like Chicago and Pippin and will Rogers follies. I
mean phenomenal designs and costumes for and very new and
fresh and original concepts, and then wonderful movies too. He
(23:41):
did the great Bob Fossey movie. What was it called
All That Jazz? Yeah? Wow, I think he won. He
did win the Oscar for that one. Yeah. An extraordinary
career as well. Yes, and he was so busy, so,
of course we were separated a lot, and of eventually
that did take its toll. We'd known each other since
(24:03):
we were twelve and thirst hometown. Yes, we both came
from the same village. On the railway line out of London,
and I met very early and he was my childhood sweetheart.
So I think we allowed for each other to grow
into blossom and didn't take into account, well, neither of
us really could. We needed money and we had to
(24:25):
work and things were happening so rapidly, and it took
a toll, which was that our marriage failed. I'm happy
to say that we are friends to this day, and
of course we share our beautiful daughter, who is the
daughter that helped me write this book. Emma, Emma keeps
popping up. She does, and she she did, and she does.
(24:46):
Thank God. Do you ever tire of talking about the
sound of music? Not really? How much fun though, was
it to perform all those extraordinary Rogers and Hammerstein phenomenal
and well, first of all, singing with the fast orchestra
is magical. My singing teacher once said Katie that singing
(25:08):
with a great orchestra is like being carried aloft in
the most comfortable armchair over the orchestra and the sound,
and she was absolutely right. That was the great joy.
But then to give you my favorite song, I think
it has to be one that I didn't sing, and
that was Edelweiss because again, excuse me, it speaks to
(25:31):
one's homeland, whoever you are. It's not just about Austria,
It's about any place that you call home. You know.
Bless my Homeland Forever is the lyric, and it has
one of the classic Richard Roger's melodies. Think of Oh
what a Beautiful Morning. It's one of those melodies that
simply folds back on itself and it's very simple and
(25:55):
Edelweiss and Oh what a Beautiful Morning, and several others
have that quality, and they're timeless. The melody is so
clear and clean and simple and lends itself to the
most wonderful orchestration. I wish I had the opportunity to
have met Richard Rodgers and ask her hammers just such
(26:15):
brilliant giants. Again, I walked with giants. I know. The
hills were alive with the sound of helicopters. That opening
scene was a bit challenging, wasn't it. You would never
in a million years was the last thing we shot
in the movie too, and and and it was tough.
(26:36):
Tell me about how hard it was. Well, simply the
very very first time that I'm revealed on film is
walking as a very small speck across the field and
making this turn before I begin to sing. That's all
I had to do was walk and make a turn.
And it was shot from a helicopter. I started at
(26:56):
once end of the field, and the helicopter with a
very brave the cameraman strapped at the side of it
through the door that was no longer there. And this
this thing was from the other end of the field,
was coming at me sort of like a giant crab
in a way, sideways, with this wonderful caraman hanging out
the side of it, and the camera strapped his chest,
(27:19):
and I walked toward him, and he helicoptered his way
towards me, and then I made the turn, and then
the helicopter went up and around me to go back
for another take, because either I wasn't on my marks,
or he didn't feel he had gotten the right shot,
or it wasn't. I mean, we had to have a
few in the in the bank in the case of
(27:39):
an accident, and and and focus and so on. And
every time that helicopter went around me to go back
to his end of the field, the down draft from
those helicopter engines just flattened me into the grass. Did
you say the outtakes they have been saved. I've seen
one of them, but I don't know who has it.
(28:01):
I wish, you know, if anybody out there that knows
where they are. I'd love to see it again. I
would love to see I have seen it, though, And
you know, after the third or fourth time, you you
get so angry that you're you know, spitting grass and
some mud and so on, and you I kept signaling
to the helicopter pilot could he make a wider turn?
(28:22):
And I only got a thumbs up? And let's do
another one, you know. Up next, Julie gets candid about
her forty year marriage to the brilliant but complicated Blake
Edwards and reminiscence about some old friends, including Elizabeth Taylor
and Carol Burnett. I want to ask you about Blake Edwards,
(28:51):
who seems like he was the coolest guy he was?
Was he charismatic, wicked sense of humor? I mean wickedly dark?
And and may I say he was? He was? He
was sexy, yes he was, or believe me, he certainly was.
(29:11):
And I miss him dreadfully. But as he'd be the
first to say, what else are you going to say?
Because I'm a darling. Well, you know, I think did
you learn much about balancing your your career and your
marriage because of growing sort of apart from your first husband, Tony?
And what did you learn that allowed you to keep
(29:31):
your marriage to blake intact? I think probably, as is
true with most second marriages, you really, really this time
want to make it work. It does take two people.
You can't just have one wanting it or anything like that,
but it takes two to work at it. And I
think we both wanted to stay together, and I'm so
(29:52):
thrilled that we did. I adored him. He was very complicated, charismatic, complicated,
and had a very depressive personality at times. It wasn't
manic depressive. He was just prone to depression and also
later in his life towards opioids and things like that,
(30:14):
but tried so hard to get off them and get
back to the way he was when we first met.
And you can give anybody for saying sorry and trying
that hard. You write a lot about addiction in your
family with unflinching honesty, and I just thought of it
helped anybody identify and say well, then I can I
(30:35):
can manage that about your stepfather your mother both amusing alcohol. Yeah,
your brother was a drug addict. As you mentioned, Blake
Edwards had become reliant on Painkilly had issues. Certainly, were
you at all hesitant to do that? Yes? And I
hope I showed every side of Blake because it wasn't
(30:58):
just that like borne it if if it had been,
I wanted to show all the humor and the the
laughter that we shared and it was great at times,
and those are the things I cling to and remember,
and I I mean, I still adore him to this day,
(31:18):
no matter what. I know that. You're also very honest
about therapy, because this is something that you started doing
when you were living in Los Angeles in the nineteen sixties,
and you talk about what a positive impact it had
on your life. People didn't talk openly about being in therapy,
and in fact, it's a relatively new phenomenon. Well I
(31:42):
don't know how new it is these days, but I
remember my mother saying, what you know, thinking that you
only went into therapy if you were totally mad or
something like that. In my certainly my hometown in Walden
on Thams, nobody I think at that time talked about therapy,
but I wanted to clear the chaos in my head.
(32:04):
And it made me understand so much more about my
childhood and put it in perspective, and forgive so much
about my family and my parents, and understand people a
lot more. I think I was a better wife and
mother and so many things because of getting rid of
that garbage that you carry around that you don't need
(32:26):
to carry around and staying focused on essentials. You were
racked with self doubt and I know a lot that
you had impostor syndrome really throughout much of your life,
and I don't think that before. Well, it's sort of
not thinking you deserve something and that you don't understand
(32:46):
why you're being came more from not having had an education.
I'd love to have gone to college and and had
a really good education. But that very smart therapist realized
that's what I need, did and eventually decided to help
give me one. And in fact, he really became your
de facto college did he was Merlin. He could tell
(33:08):
me about a very expensive college professor, I might add
worth worth it all read. So you all would talk
about history and art and all kinds of geology and
astrology and just anything. He'd bring it up or I'd
bring it up, and God, I wish I had absorbed
a more, but what I did get was phenomenal. And
(33:29):
did it give you a lot of self confidence then,
feeling that you were more learned at least I could
converse about things a little better. And yes, it did
help enormously. Of course, you mentioned a lot of very
special people in this book, so I thought we could
play a name game. Let's spill the tea, as the
young people say today, I guess that means let's dish um.
(33:53):
Carol Burnett, great chum, godmother to my daughter Emma. We
us such good friends. I think there's something that's very
similar in our childhoods. She also came from an alcoholic family,
and we just bonded instantly, like two kids that discover
they live on the same block. And we've been friends
(34:14):
for years. You played a prank on Mike Nichols that
backfired miserably or hilariously. Hilariously not miserably. Now he won
that one hand. Now, yes, tell us, Okay, that's a
good tease. Get the book. By the book, you talk
about the ultimate Hollywood moment with Betty Davis. It's on
(34:36):
page seventy eight. Do you mind reading now? It's a
very sweet It's not very long. I was talking about
the opening night of Sound of Music in New York,
I think, and I wrote after the screening, during the
crush in the lobby, I suddenly saw Betty Davis approaching me.
I had never met her before, though I was a
(34:58):
huge fan. As we shook hands, she said, you, my dear,
are going to be a very big star. I had
always imagined that she might be crisp or loof, but
her warmth and generosity just bowled me over. That must
have been an incredibly exciting moment for a young actress. Yeah,
(35:18):
and I've I've always been such a fan of hers
and her work. And she was funny and lovely, and
I mean we didn't talk for very long, but what
a generous thing to say. You mentioned Elizabeth Taylor talk
about bold face names. I've always wanted to be you,
Julie Andrews. But you described a scene on boxing day
on vacation of Europe, and you are talking about bold
(35:40):
face names, I mean, nold coward. You mentioned we went
to supper with David Niven and Nol Coward and Richard Burton. Well,
excuse me, well I did. I did. Obviously I knew
Richard and a little bit Elizabeth from from having done
Camelot with Richard and Nol. Coward had come backstage several times,
(36:01):
so I felt I knew him. David Niven was a
good friend of Blake's and had done Panthers, so it
was a good group. Must have been fun. What was
Elizabeth Taylor like? I got to interview her once, By
the way, I'll tell you what she I mean, you
were friends. I just talked to her and she taught
me how to keep lipstick from getting on my teeth.
(36:21):
She said, you take your index finger and you kind
of form an oh with your mouth, and then you
just pull your your finger out of your mouth and
it takes the lipstick off so it doesn't get on
your teeth. WHOA, thank you, Elizabeth, Yes, thank you. We'll try. It.
Was she fun, and I know she was showing off
(36:43):
a diamond, right. She was fun, and she she was
actually a really good gal. She was a good egg,
as they say, I mean she she was down to
earth in a very good way, and she was kind
of racy, right, yeah, And she'd been through it all,
but that Christmas, this was boxing day of the day
(37:03):
after Christmas, and Richard given her this enormous ring and
she just sort of flashed it at us and said,
look at what Richard gave you. It's a bit of
a giggle, isn't it. And Blake said it was enough
to sort of make him a communist instantly, But it was.
She said it with such a smile and a sense
of humor, you couldn't be upset by it. Christopher Plumber,
(37:27):
you write that he was a bit out of pocket
while filming The Sound of Music. Julie, do tell how
does that mean? Did I out of pocket? Um? What
did I mean? Well? I think he was a little
He loved his red wine and sometimes after the day
was over he would drink quite a lot. Is that
what you meant? Yes? Yes, But but my god, he
(37:51):
was the glue that really pulled the Sound of Music together,
because here's a stringent quality, took away so much of
that saccharine that I was worried about. Right, And he
was such a lovely actor to work with. I mean,
he's a great chum. We giggle a lot and remember
each other's birthdays and Christmass and things like that. This
book goes up to the nineteen eighties, so obviously there
(38:15):
is another memoir come because you need to talk about
all the that you went through when you had the
vocal surgery and what that was like, and then seeing
in the Second Princess Diaries and discovering a whole new
life and a somewhat new career in terms of writing
(38:36):
with Emma and so on. Yeah, I guess you're saying
there'll be another book. And if you just asked me
in about a month, when I've recovered from this one,
I'd be thrilled. Well, I think people never never get
tired of hearing from you and the extraordinary stories of
your life. Well, I just know that you know that phrase.
(38:58):
Are we lucky or what? I've really been so blessed.
My mother used to say there are hundreds of people
out there that can do what you do just as well,
so you work hard and and be grateful, and it
was great advice. Well, we're lucky because of it. I
(39:18):
went on a little long and Julie's manager was getting
pretty annoyed with me by this point, but before I
let her go, I had an important favor to ask,
so we were going to do something really fun. You guys,
are you okay with time? We were going to do
to something. Jennifer Garner is such a die hard fan,
and so I arranged to surprise her. I met her
(39:42):
and interviewed her for my podcast. Can you just call
her and say hello? Real quickly? Okay, Hello, Hello? Is
this Jin? Yes, this is Julie Andrew's Jin. Hello. I
(40:02):
want to tell you I'm a huge fan and love
what you do. And Katie was just telling me that
that you were pretty admiring of me too, so I thought, well,
let's just have a chat. Oh my god, how are you?
Why haven't I ever met you, jenn I would love
to and one day I saw you from Afar once
(40:24):
but I couldn't. I couldn't just you know, put it
into words, and I couldn't. I couldn't possibly be normal,
And so I just admired. But I like getting you
in the middle of yours washing up or something like that.
Certainly not miss Andrews. I would pull over and leave
(40:46):
my children on the side of the freeway. Um, it's
Katie there, Yes, she's all the other Okay, So Jennifer
posted watching Sound of Music and totally fan girling and
it was so cute, and so I had wrote on
her Instagram page, I'm interviewing Julie Andrews. Come with and
(41:09):
she said, don't mess with me, Katie, and so so
we planned this, Jen So ask her a question. Chat
for a second, and I'm going to let out you
know what, Julie Andrews, Miss I have just called. Okay, Well, um,
I've read my kids with you and I because I
(41:32):
was raised on you and I as weds everyone you
know in the world. But here's the thing. Your book
I love. I mean, the children's books completely real to me.
I can't wait to read your new book. It's I
cannot wait. It's I can't wait. But proc and the
(41:54):
the last of the really great wing doodles I've read aloud, wife,
and I love it. I'm so pleased you do, because
I loved doing that. It's it's it was. It was
my second book, and it oh gosh, that was such
a thrill to write it and to see it published.
And it's stayed in publication too, stayed in publication. It
(42:18):
is it is an our house. We talk about those
characters and Mandy and the dump truck and that you know,
but especially Mandy and lasted really really great Wang do
we speak about them like their family friends and my kids.
For them to even connect that that you wrote those
(42:39):
is so wonderful because it helps them see that you
can really be a full person, that just because you're
a performer, it doesn't mean that you that that's all
you do. They you know, they love knowing that that
that my fair lady and that um Mary Pop, that
all of them are the same person playing some one
(43:00):
else and also is an author. Well, thank you. What
a great, great compliment, and it's just so lovely, and
I think it means more. Odd Oddly, I don't mean
to be dismaraging to anybody else, but when somebody says
they liked one of my books, it really is a
thrill because it's I'm still learning on my feet about writing,
(43:21):
but but I'm thrilled when somebody says they loved my
book or it was one of their favorites or something.
And I'm here talking to Katie today about this second
book of memories, and so I hope you enjoyed that
one too, for yourself, not for your kids or how
old your kids now they're thirteen, ten and seven. Well,
(43:44):
they get around to it one day, but you can.
I want the I want the two of you to
meet and have lunch at some point um and maybe
I'll join if I'm on the better past, and it
would be so much god my here. Yes, yes, I
feel like I did a little match making. I did
(44:04):
a little Mitz buzz all right, lots of love and
we'll see for lunch, see you again, and I hope
I'll meet you again. Yes, I really do hope so
much love. Thank you. I can't wait to the bye bye.
(44:25):
Thanks so much for listening everyone. If you'd like to
know what's happening every morning and have some original content
in the form of interviews and inspiring stories, please sign
up for our daily morning newsletter called wake Up Call
by going to Katie Couric dot com and follow me,
of course on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter. Next Question with
(44:47):
Katie Curic is a production of I Heart Radio and
Katie Curic Media. The executive producers are Katie Kuric, Lauren
Bright Pacheco, Julie Douglas, and Tyler Klang. Our show producers
are Bethan Macaluso and Courtney Litz. Supervising producer is Dylan Fagin.
Associate producers are Emily Pinto and Derek Clemens. Editing is
by Dylan Fagin, Derek Clements, and Lowell Berlante. Our researcher
(45:10):
is Barbara Keene. For more information on today's episode, go
to Katie currek dot com and follow us on Twitter
and Instagram at Katie curric For more podcasts for my
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Host
Katie Couric
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