Do you know what your first word was? In the opening sentence of her memorable memoir Home, renowned actress and singer Julie Andrews declares "home" was the first recognizable word she ever said. She doesn't remember the event, but was told this by her parents. Given how important the concept of home became to her, somehow she didn't find this news surprising.

What I found surprising was how much I enjoyed this beautifully written memoir. I didn't plan to read it -- I very rarely read celebrity biographies of any sort. But it caught my eye on the new non-fiction shelves of our local library. Like many others, I grew up loving Julie Andrews' film work, mostly especially her family friendly movies Mary Poppins and The Sound of Music. During high school I also spent countless hours listening to (and memorizing every line of) the Broadway album to My Fair Lady, which of course featured Andrews as Eliza Doolittle. Despite enjoying her singing and acting for so many years, however, I knew very little about her life. So I picked up the book, intending to read a bit out of curiosity.

Less than a week later, I found myself closing the final chapter, having zipped through a 300 plus page memoir in just a few days (an amazing feat given the busyness of my days right now). It was that interesting and that hard to put down.

Almost Two Books: From Growing Up Years to Broadway Fame

The book is subtitled "A Memoir of My Early Years." As such, it doesn't cover everything in Andrews' career thus far, only about the first 27 years of her life and work. She dives right into the narrative with a brief foray into her family history (parents and grandparents), moving quickly to her birth in October 1935. The book goes neatly full circle, ending not long after the birth of her first daughter, Emma Walton, in 1962.

If you're only interested in reading about Andrews' later career, beginning with her work in My Fair Lady on Broadway in the 1950s, you could skip to the final half of the book. But you'd be missing what, in my estimation, turned out to be the surprisingly best part of the narrative. Andrews writes lovingly and poignantly about her childhood and youth, and her family experiences may come as a bit of a surprise to anyone familiar with her elegant and rather "high-class" public persona. Her roots were decidedly working-class and there was plenty of dysfunction to be had in her family. Indeed, one realizes early on that her love of "home" as a settled place one returns to came about primarily because she moved around so much.

Her earliest years were particularly unsettled by turmoil on a small scale (her parents' marriage was not stable, and essentially came to an end when she was only five or six) and on a larger scale, as the family, like so many others, endured the German bombing of England. Andrews paints a vivid picture of wartime as experienced by a young child yet remembered and put into perspective by a adult. Her stories about the blitz, bomb shelters, blackouts and food rationing are vivid and help one understand the "unsettledness" of her growing up years.

She spends a fair amount of time unpacking her complex relationships with both parents: a loving working-class father who enjoyed literature and who harbored a secret that came to affect her deeply, and a highly-strung, artistic mother who left the family for another man and ended up an alcoholic. Her mother, as you might guess, was musical. She had trained as a classical pianist and then ended up playing in musical theater, basically the English vaudeville circuit. When Julie was only six, her Mum gave birth to a son by a man who was not Julie's father, but who would become her step-father (and legally give her the name "Andrews"). Julie ended up spending most of her childhood and adolescence with her Mum and "Pop," though her relationship with the latter was never as loving and easy as with her real father, who gave her most of her sense of security.

Still, it was through working with her mother and stepfather's vaudeville act that her amazing voice came to the attention of others early on. It was clear by the age of 9 that she had a unique talent, and she began to train with "Madame" (Lilian Stiles-Allen). She worked with Madame for years; her memories of those voice lessons shows her profound respect for the quality of the training she received from this amazing lady, and for the lady herself.

In fact, I think it's the tone of respect that really captures the reader throughout the narrative. Even when Andrews is writing about someone (like her step-father, or some of her leading men on stage) with whom her relationship was clearly complex and even painful, she manages to find a way to honor something about the person. One doesn't get the sense that she's whitewashing, but rather that she's come to terms with a lot of these early memories and is able to graciously and honestly understand the complexities of other people and of situations. There's a deep sense of "coming to terms" throughout the book; one gets the sense that this book was perhaps cathartic for its author to write.

Andrews' prose is clean, simple, and rather elegant, much like her actual voice. Despite the fact that I tended to "hear" much of the narrative in that well-known speaking voice, there were moments in the first half of the book where I almost forgot I was reading about Julie Andrews: it just felt like a good coming of age story. Andrews' extraordinary talent gave her opportunities that took her beyond her roots. Her work for the BBC radio program "Starlight Roof" led her to other radio work and eventually to offers to work on the London and then American stage. Her first big break was in "The Boyfriend" but she would come to worldwide attention and fame when she starred on Broadway in Lerner and Loewe's My Fair Lady opposite Rex Harrison.

The second half of the book details her time on Broadway, particularly with My Fair Lady and then Camelot, where she starred opposite Richard Burton. She also talks about her courtship and eventual marriage to Tony Walton, the costume and set designer, and a number of important friendships in her early stage career and their early marriage, including a friendship with the author T.H. White.

There are wonderful anecdotes from this period of her life, relayed with joyful fondness, and I thoroughly enjoyed reading them. Most of my favorites came from her memories of My Fair Lady. Just as one example: Andrews candidly admits that she wasn't much of an actress when she got the role, and worried she would lose the part. Director Moss Hart actually shut down rehearsals for 48 hours to work with her exclusively. Veteran actor Rex Harrison wasn't very patient with her originally, but it was his turn to struggle when they began rehearsing with the orchestra, something he'd never done. When Stanley Holloway, playing Eliza's father, complained that the two leads were getting all the attention, Andrews claims that Moss Hart said "Look, Stanley, I've had my hands full with a leading man who's never done a musical before and a leading lady who's never played a dramatic role. You've done both, so take it as a compliment that I didn't get to you immediately."

I thought that the second half of the book, detailing a more known period of Andrews' life, lacked a bit of the reflective depth she brought to the less familiar years. Or rather, it began (perhaps by necessity) to feel like a more standard celebrity biography, with Andrews giving shout-outs to some of the great people she'd worked with. The gracious and authentic tone continues, and some of the anecdotes, especially about Rex Harrison, are hilarious. But I sometimes senses a "disconnect", as though the public voice was taking over the private voice. Although Andrews remained close to her family (father, mother, siblings, aunts and uncles) and they continue to come into the narrative, one begins to realize what a huge jump she'd made from one life to the other and how many things changed for her over a relatively short period of time. She spends a lot of time talking about her professional development, and given how much she was working then, perhaps that felt like her whole life. But I did find myself curious to know how she made inner adjustments as she moved from a life of relative poverty and dysfunction to a life of relative fame and wealth.

Returning Home?

About sixty photographs are included (in two separate sections) and they add a lot of charm to the narrative. They're well-chosen to highlight the detailed family and stage moments throughout. Seeing Andrews' first publicity photos from her extreme youth is a lot of fun -- she's always looked just like herself! There are also some lovely shots of her family, and from her radio work and Broadway. Andrews also includes her own favorite photo of the first time she ever performed for the Queen. The photos enhanced the book immeasurably.

Home is a fascinating, well-written memoir that gives a fairly intimate look at Andrews' early life and career. I felt a little frustrated by its somewhat abrupt ending, with Andrews winging her way toward Hollywood and the filming of Mary Poppins, but I suspect we're being set up for a sequel. I for one would welcome the chance to read one. There's much still to cover in her life, stage and film career that would be of real interest to fans. And unlike many celebrities, Andrews has a crisp and intelligent writing style that enables her to deliver anecdotes and shape a narrative with thoughtful elegance and wit. If you've followed her career with any interest, I think you'd find this an excellent read.

~befus, 2008

Home: A Memoir of My Early Years
by Julie Andrews
Hyperion, 2008
ISBN 9780786865659




Recommended: Yes