The Julie Andrews Tragedy
The Rapid Fall of a Brilliant Star
Hollywood loves to make money. To do so they must please audiences. Seldom have audiences ever been more pleased than with THE SOUND OF MUSIC and Julie Andrews’ performance in the movie was beyond spectacular. At the time James Powers of the Hollywood Reporter wrote:
This Lady is not just a great star; she is a whole whirling dazzling constellation. She is not just an ordinary movie personality, she is a phenomenon. Once there was Mary Pickford, then there was Garbo, now there is Julie. She is very likely going to be the object of one of the most intense and sustained love affairs between moviegoers and a star in the history of motion pictures.
In a way, he was right. Julie Andrews is still cherished and honored by fans of THE SOUND OF MUSIC. On the other hand the Julie Andrews story is the model for how Hollywood can make someone popular in a movie that delights families and then destroy them in movies where they become “real.” In the process they waste their opportunity to make a lot of money. Worse, they lose a lot of money in the process of destroying someone’s career.
What many SOUND OF MUSIC fans don’t realize is that people in Hollywood had to hold their nose to make THE SOUND OF MUSIC in the first place. 20th Century Fox was bleeding to death on the high cost of CLEOPATRA and Richard Zanuck decided to green light THE SOUND OF MUSIC — which he saw as more family-friendly. He had trouble finding people willing to work on something so “sweet.” Even Julie Andrews in her biography said, “I was a bit nervous when they started to consider me. I knew it would come back to haunt me. At the time we all felt it was just so twee, and far too sweet. Once the film version came around, and I found out that Robert Wise was directing, well, let’s just say I changed my tune.” When Burt Lancaster heard that Ernest Lehman was working on the script he said to him, “Jesus, you must need the money.”
After the release of the movie, and seeing the wild enthusiasm of audiences, film critic Pauline Kael declared it the single most repressive influence on artistic freedom in movies. She wrote:
The success of a movie like THE SOUND OF MUSIC makes it even more difficult for anyone to try to do anything worth doing, anything relevant to the modern world, anything inventive or expressive.
She was wrong. THE SOUND OF MUSIC came out just as Hollywood abandoned the motion picture code and unleashed the MPAA rating system. The floodgates opened. Movies like THE GRADUATE, BONNY & CLYDE and MIDNIGHT COWBOY thrilled those who agreed with Pauline Kael, even as overall ticket sales declined.
So how did Hollywood, in the opening days of the sexual revolution, follow up on the success of THE SOUND OF MUSIC? How would they use their whirling, dazzling star Julie Andrews?
Julie was next teamed with Paul Newman in the Alfred Hitchcock thriller TORN CURTAIN. A modest box office success, the role for Julie Andrews didn’t offer her fans much to get excited about. This was followed by the big Universal roadshow HAWAII which came in second in domestic box office to THE BIBLE: IN THE BEGINNING, but FAR behind THE SOUND OF MUSIC. Julie played the wife of a very strict missionary. She was still loved by a ship captain who knew her before she was married. The movie’s message is that the church can repressive and needs to be more accepting of others.
From HAWAII Julie moved on the THOROUGHLY MODERN MILLIE which opens with Julie looking like a Christian Temperance Union member transforming herself into a Roaring Twenties “bopper.” Her goal in the movie is to get a job as a secretary and marry a rich boss. The background of the movie is a story about the sex slave trade. While this was a musical, and featured Julie singing, it was nothing close to THE SOUND OF MUSIC. It came in 10th in domestic box office.
20th Century Fox then decided to re-team Julie Andrews with Robert Wise in a huge new roadshow musical STAR!. With a budget well above that of THE SOUND OF MUSIC they made a movie about stage star Gertrude Lawrence. Lawrence was portrayed as vulgar, selfish and obsessed with her own career. There’s a scene where her daughter doesn’t want to be with her as a teenager because her mother wanted nothing to do with her as she grew up. Fox was stunned by how monumentally the movie flopped. The advertising was changed to emphasize the re-teaming of the makers of THE SOUND OF MUSIC. It still flopped. The movie was recut and retitled THOSE WERE THE HAPPY TIMES. The poster had lines like “Be glad, they still make pictures like this,” and “When everyone was singing a happy song.” It still flopped. Those making the movie didn’t have to worry about it being “too sweet.” Those marketing the movie had to worry about it not being sweet enough. In the end they could not make their pig fly. Julie Andrews earned fans being sweet, she shed them being mean and selfish.
As if Fox’s disaster was not big enough Paramount hired Julie’s husband to feature her with Rock Hudson in DARLING LILI. It became the most expensive project of her early career and an even bigger flop. Julie played a WWI German spy trying to seduce an American soldier and get secret information. Americans did not wish to see Julie Andrews using her body like a prostitute to help Germans kill American soldiers. The magnitude of the flop made the major studios consider Julie Andrews box office poison.
Julie’s career devolved to the point she appeared topless in the movie S.O.B. and as a strong advocate for homosexuality in VICTOR, VICTORIA.
Any sane person who watches THE SOUND OF MUSIC cannot help but wonder why Julie Andrews was not featured in more great family films in the 70s, 80s and 90s. In 2001 she did return, with considerable success, in PRINCESS DIARIES. In 2004 she made a successful sequel. As voice talent she has been in the hugely successful SHREK and DESPICABLE ME movies.
The lesson has not been learned. Look at DAKOTA FANNING, LINDSAY LOHAN and MILEY CYRUS. Each made movies popular with family audiences and then tried to become “relevant” — casting aside “goody-two-shoes” images. The result is forgettable box office bombs made by former family stars.
What Hollywood needs to learn is that family films are relevant. The world could use more sweet people and fewer vulgar ones. The world wants more sweet people and fewer vulgar ones. Movie ticket buyers want more sweet people and fewer vulgar ones.