Julie Andrews Reflects In "Home"

Actress Talks About Alcoholic Mom, Broadway And Books In Autobiography

(AP) 
Meanwhile, her mother was often on the road, especially when she hooked up with a handsome singer-guitarist from Canada, Ted Andrews. Eventually, she married him, and at 17, Julie Wells became Julie Andrews.

In "Home," she writes that she didn't really trust her mother.

"I think that the best way to explain that is that my mother gave me all the color and character and flare and liveliness, and my father gave me all the sanity and nature and all the things that helped me be a more rounded human being," Andrews said.

"My dad (Wells), being as decent a man as he was, if he said he was going to be somewhere, he was. My mum could be unpredictable. I didn't doubt that she didn't love me - I know she did, and I her.

"But being in show business, dealing with alcoholics (Ted Andrews) and becoming an alcoholic herself, she was not as reliable as was my dad."

When she was writing "Home," Andrews had the advantage of an in-house critic: her husband of 38 years, writer-director Blake Edwards ("Breakfast at Tiffany's," "The Pink Panther" comedies and other movies).

"One of the few comments that Blake made about the book was that `characters make your story.' I had such characters to write about - my aunts and uncles, the people I worked with, Tim White," she recalled.

T.H. White, the eccentric author of the classic Arthurian tale "The Once and Future King," lived in solitude on the tiny English Channel island of Alderney. Andrews and her husband at the time, set and costume designer Tony Walton, visited him and ended up buying a small place on the island. White was delighted that she would play Guinevere in a Broadway musical, "Camelot," an adaptation of his work.

Although White could be cordial, he could also become quarrelsome. One night in an island cafe, he behaved so abominably that Tony and Julie, who was pregnant with Emma, called him on it. He stalked out.

Andrews writes of another encounter with an author. It happened the day after she had given birth to Emma Katherine Walton, on Nov. 27, 1962. The phone rang and a voice said, "Hello, this is P.J. Travers."

After her Broadway triumphs in "The Boy Friend," "My Fair Lady" and "Camelot," Andrews had been signed by Walt Disney to star in her first American movie, "Mary Poppins."

Travers, who had written the books about the high-flying nanny, commented, "Well, you're much too pretty, of course (to play Poppins). But you've got the nose for it."

Andrews considers herself fortunate to have walked with the "giants" of theater. "That great golden era of Broadway - I hit it just as it was peaking. It was wonderful."

She cited the three great steppingstones in her life: at 12, when a flower lady on the street gave her violets as she was walking to a theater to perform and she ended up stopping the show; going to Broadway; going to Hollywood.

"To be that lucky is phenomenal," she said.

The full title of her tome is "Home: A Memoir of My Early Years." So is she planning on "Home: A Memoir of My Later Years"?

"I don't think so," she replied defensively. "I'm just so amazed at the success of this book. It was easier to write because I didn't have to tiptoe around anything; I was just able to write it. That's not true; I did tiptoe. But I didn't have to worry because everybody has passed on.

"The later years would be harder to write because there's just so much: the wonder of people I've met, the movies I've made. I can wait."