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R
EHEARSALS FOR
The Boy Friend
were held at a theater on 46th Street, a block or so from the Piccadilly Hotel. Vida Hope, our director, was a loving den mother, theatrical and fun. She was a buxom woman and had a slight speech impediment. Our choreographer, John Heawood, was lively, very skinny, and very gay. Since they both had staged
The Boy Friend
in London, it wasn’t so much a question of finding the nature of the show as it was putting it back together again.

Dilys Laye immediately found a wonderful character reading for her role as Dulcie. She knew just how to raise a shoulder, assume a stance, or bat her eyes. She had a husky voice, which she used to marvelous effect. Annie Wakefield was the young soubrette Madcap Maisie, Millicent Martin played Nancy, and Stella Claire played both Fay and Lolita, the voluptuous tango dancer. John Hewer played Tony Brockhurst, the boy friend.

There were perhaps nine English members of the company; the rest of the cast were American Equity performers. Everybody seemed to know exactly what they were doing. Everyone knew how to pose, how to be camp; everyone, that is, except me. I kept thinking “How do they
know
? I’ve never done anything like this; I’ve never lived in the twenties. How is it they grasp the style so easily?”

One morning, not long after rehearsals began, I was looking up the airshaft outside my hotel window, checking the weather, and I saw that it was raining. It made me feel much more at home and was certainly welcome, for New York had been unbearably hot and humid. I left for work,
and as I walked down the street, I noticed that a lot of signs were swinging and canopies were straining at their bindings. The wind was certainly strong.

As I rounded the corner of Eighth Avenue and 45th Street, I had to hold onto a lamppost to keep my balance. I turned the next corner and a blast of rain lashed my face and drenched my clothing. I staggered up to the theater stage door, heaved it open, and stumbled inside. The place was empty, except for the doorman, who was in his cubicle.

“Where
is
everybody?” I asked him breathlessly.

“What do you mean?” he said.

“Well, aren’t we rehearsing this morning?”

“Honey,” he replied, “that’s Hurricane Hazel out there!”

CY FEUER ATTENDED
rehearsals almost every day. He had boundless energy and was the complete opposite of his business partner, Ernest Martin, who was dark-haired, very quiet, and a little dour.

I was still having difficulties with my character, Polly Browne, trying to discover who she was, and what I was supposed to be doing. I watched everybody else and tried to emulate them. I didn’t know how to research a role, had no idea how to “break down” a script. Vida wasn’t much help because she was so busy with the entire production. We were not going out of town for a tryout run, but were to open cold on Broadway since the show was already a known quantity. With so little time to prepare, every day, every moment of rehearsal mattered.

There were rumors that all was not well between Cy, Vida, and Sandy Wilson. Cy felt that although
The Boy Friend
had been a big hit in London, it now lacked the punch that was required for a Broadway audience. Sandy objected. He was the author, and felt that the style of the show had proven itself already. He was against any changes, and resented Cy’s interference.

The day came when, to our dismay and horror, news flew around the company that Sandy and Vida had been dismissed and were actually barred from entering the theater. Cy was to take over the show. Something had obviously happened after hours, of which we were all unaware, and the company was anxious.

Cy came in like a drill sergeant. The first thing he did was to coach the girls. A lot of their dialogue was spoken in unison. When they cried, “Oh,
do
tell us about him, Polly!” for example, he energized it and made them say it with precision timing. Wherever the play was soft or vague, Cy tightened it, making it sharp and clean.

Truthfully, Cy’s phenomenal energy was exactly what was needed. I don’t think anybody, not even Vida or Sandy, had grasped the standard expected for a Broadway show. The English production had been a delicate piece of lace. Our production became crisp, full of liveliness and giddy fun.

We soon understood that this was not the first production Cy had taken over. But it seemed that whatever he touched, he turned to gold.

We moved into our own theater, the Royale, for dress rehearsals. We had a sizeable orchestra, bigger than the London production, with soprano saxes, a tuba, “wac-a-doo” trumpets, and a banjo. The orchestrations and the musicians were dynamite.

We played two weeks of previews, and I continued to feel that I was the only one who still needed to get my act together. Oddly, there were performances when I received wonderful laughs from the audience, and others when there was no reaction at all. I couldn’t figure it out. I tried different things each night. In hindsight I was probably working so hard for a gag that it became the kiss of death; when I was just being real and innocent, people seemed to love it. But I didn’t have the experience to grasp that.

The last preview of all was my worst performance, and I knew that I was drowning. The following morning, Cy Feuer collared me at rehearsals and said, “Come with me.”

He took me out to the long, dark alley where the Golden, the Royale, and the Majestic stage doors converge. We sat on the fire escape steps.

The first thing he said to me was “You know you were terrible last night.”

“
I know!”
I replied with equal candor. “I just don’t understand what’s wrong.”

“Here’s what you are going to do,” Cy said. “I want you to play Polly Browne as
truthfully
as you possibly can. I want you to forget every funny,
campy thing the others are doing and I want you to play her straight—right down the middle. When you lose your boy friend, I want your heart to break. Play the role sincerely; believe it with every fiber of your being. If you do as I say, you
may
stand a chance of being quite a success tonight.”

I realized that Cy was giving me the answers I had been looking for, that he was throwing me the rope I needed. I grasped it with both hands, and with sudden clarity everything fell into place. Thank God for his guidance. That night I played Polly Browne as I believe she is meant to be played: an innocent, vulnerable little rich girl who wants nothing more than to be loved for herself.

It was September 30, 1954, the eve of my nineteenth birthday, and I will always remember that performance. The orchestra was superb, the company was superb, and every laugh I hoped to get came my way. The reception at the end was unbelievable. The audience rose to their feet as one, stomping and cheering. People danced the Charleston down the aisles as they exited the theater.

The crush backstage was tremendous, noisy, and enthusiastic. I tried to get through to my mum in England on the stage door telephone.

“Mum, it’s over!” I shouted into the mouthpiece, a finger in my other ear. “We seem to be fine.” But she could barely hear me.

Bill Birney, one of the authors of
Mountain Fire
, had asked to take me out for supper, and not knowing the traditions of a Broadway opening, I accepted. Everyone else repaired to Sardi’s to await the reviews, and I went off with Bill to the Ambassador restaurant and had a staid and elegant meal. Eventually we headed for Sardi’s, and the maître d’ informed us that the company was gathered in an upstairs room. People were waving newspapers or poring over the reviews. Dilys received wonderful notices and, miraculously, so did I.
The Boy Friend
was a smash hit.

Ten days after we opened, I arrived at the theater and glanced up at the marquee. To my surprise it read: “The Boy Friend—with Julie Andrews.”

O
NCE THE SHOW
opened, the really hard work began. We had to record the cast album immediately, so there was very little time to catch our breath. Every newspaper and important magazine wanted to shoot its own photo layout and center spreads. These were always done after the evening performance. In a way, it was like doing an extra show, and we often worked late into the night. With matinees as well, it was pretty exhausting.

Dilys and I pooled expenses and moved out of the Piccadilly Hotel and into a single-bedroom apartment at the Hotel Park Chambers, on West 58th Street. It had a living room, a closet-sized kitchen with a tiny fridge, hot plate, and sink, a bedroom with twin beds, and a bathroom.

It was a convenient location, and there was a good drugstore with a soda fountain across the street. Compared to the Piccadilly, it was heaven. We didn’t have much room in our closets, or in our one bathroom, but we made it work.

I discovered that Dilys was wonderfully gregarious. Sometimes she would bring a boyfriend back to the apartment. They would occasionally become amorous, so I would retreat to the bedroom, but I couldn’t help overhearing the mounting sexual exertions taking place on the couch in the next room.

Neil came down from Canada whenever he could. Most often Dilys let us take the bedroom, maybe because her friends could make their exit more easily from the living room.

I WAS LONELY
at times, and extremely grateful for any connection with loved ones back home. I phoned my mother once a week, which in those days was a very expensive thing to do. In later years, Don and Chris both told me that they had always hovered by the phone, longing to say a few words, hoping for their own moment with me, but perhaps in Mum’s enthusiasm to speak to me herself, she neglected to consider their feelings. Letters became my lifeline and I looked forward to the mail delivery each day. Tony continued to write occasionally, and I to him. I believe he was aware of my relationship with Neil, but he had the grace not to mention it.

My dad’s letters were always exquisitely written in his fine hand, and full of news of the countryside; what blossom had just appeared, how the daffodils were showing their golden heads, how he had just built a garden gate for a neighbor…things that I relished and could identify with. I was still very concerned about my mother, and continued to beg her to separate from Pop. I wrote to both my father and Charlie Tucker asking them to intercede, and my dad wrote back. His typically eloquent letter is excerpted as follows:

 

Ockley, 24 November 1954

Darling Julie:

Following your letter of Tuesday 16th…I have phoned Mummy and as a result am now posting her the following:

 

“Dear Barbara:

It was not my wish that last night’s talk should become so bitter, and I do not want to cause you distress at a time of strain and difficult decision…When Julie left for U.S.A. she was happy in the knowledge that at last some positive action to break the impasse in your affairs had been initiated, and she asked me to do my utmost to help bring it to an effective conclusion. For her sake, and yours, I hoped it would be, but if now you decide otherwise, I hope your courage will be rewarded and that the doubts as to your future will be resolved. But, in that event, I
propose regularly to enquire into those aspects of the inevitable negotiations that must take place that affect Julie…Please believe that out of this I want only three things: Happiness for Julie; the simple same for you and yours; and for myself the satisfaction of having helped you both.

Yours really sincerely, Ted.”

 

Now, my darling little girl…There is no need to get worried over this; no need to lament your absence as a handicap to communication. Just go on doing your job out there; leave it to us to get things right; and, above all, far above all, look after yourself.

 

A thousand blessings,
Ever, Dad.

 

 

I doubt if Dad’s letter influenced Mum, as before long, she and Pop were back together again. Auntie later wrote me that Pop was “
courting Mum madly with phone calls, presents, dates for dinner.”

EVERYTHING ABOUT NEW YORK
at the beginning seemed like an assault. The pace, the customs, the pressures of being in a wonderful hit show, the exposure to so much that was exciting and new. There were days when I was so overwhelmed that I literally found myself pausing in shop doorways to gain my breath.

The press company for
The Boy Friend
set up numerous radio and television interviews for me. I wore the same dress for every appointment, because funds were so short and I didn’t have anything else.

My salary was $450 a week. Almost half of that was taken out for taxes, and from the remaining money, I sent $150 home. It left me with about $75 in total per week to help pay for the Park Chambers and food. By the time Thursday came round, Dilys and I were usually completely broke, with very little to eat in our tiny kitchen.

A lady by the name of Eleanor Lambert (who is considered the founder of fashion PR, and who invented the “International Best Dressed List” in 1940) arranged for me to do a fashion layout for a magazine. I modeled
several dresses, which fitted me beautifully, and afterward she gave them to me. I protested, but she said, “No, no, you used them; please take them.” I could not have been more grateful.

I was also asked to take part in a fashion show at the Waldorf-Astoria. Charlie Tucker had often talked about this great hotel, how grand and elegant it was—and he was right. I modeled a superb gown by the renowned designer Charles James. It was one of the most glamorous ball gowns I have ever worn. There was a communal dressing room backstage. A very pretty lady was putting on her makeup as I arrived to lay out my things. She said, “Hello. I think you’re from England, aren’t you? You’re in
The Boy Friend
?”

“Yes,” I said.

She extended her hand.

“My name’s Grace Kelly.”

THERE WAS ALWAYS
someone well known coming to see the show. Truman Capote was there one evening and visited backstage. He was diminutive and dressed like Little Lord Fauntleroy, with an enormous, round, white shirt collar and a floppy bow at his neck. He spoke in an effeminate way, his voice that of a small boy, but one sensed the shining intellect behind the strange façade.

Another night we heard that Cary Grant was out front, and the company was hugely excited. We learned that he was coming backstage to see a friend in the show. Everyone dashed to the stage door to watch him pass by, but I had to remove my wig, take the wax beading off my eyelashes, and cleanse my face. By the time I was finished, he had gone.

I was just heading out of the stage door, looking rather greasy and disheveled, when Cary Grant suddenly reappeared, having left something behind. We very nearly bumped into each other. “Oh, hello,” he said. “You don’t know me but my name’s Grant.” I shook his extended hand and my knees turned to jelly. He said he loved the show, but I was so overwhelmed by his charm that I don’t remember anything else we discussed.

LOU WILSON WAS
a regular visitor to the Park Chambers Hotel. If convenient, he would stop by after the show for a cup of tea and we’d just sit on the couch and talk. We chatted about his love of England, about Charlie Tucker, my parents, his divorce, his little daughter “Tuppence,” whom he didn’t see often. I think he, too, was lonely.

Lou loved to buy all the early morning newspapers as soon as they appeared on the stands, usually just after midnight. He would have read them cover to cover by dawn. He told me he didn’t sleep much, and that he did his best thinking in the middle of the night. He kept a blank pad and pencil by his bed, and would scribble down a thought without even turning on the light. In the morning, his bedside would be littered with notes torn from the pad. He was compulsive, energetic, endearing, dapper, and unbelievably kind to Dilys and me.

She and I decided he had been so decent that we would cook him supper one night. We wondered what we could produce on our little two-burner stove. We certainly couldn’t afford to take him to a restaurant. I went out and bought a can of Dinty Moore Beef Stew, and we dutifully heated it and served it up. He was very polite and ate every bite. But afterward, he tactfully inquired how much money we had, individually and together.

When we revealed our financial plight to him, he became quite concerned.

“I think perhaps I’d better become your manager in every sense,” he said.

From then on, he took over many aspects of our day-to-day living. Most importantly, he recommended we move to a sublet apartment and not spend our precious money on the Park Chambers.

He found a fairly nice place for us on the top floor of a four-story brownstone on East 55th Street. Again, it had a single bedroom, a living room, a slightly bigger kitchen—and even a small balcony. Coming home the first night and turning on the lights, we were horrified to witness cockroaches scattering in all directions. We tried to get rid of them, without much success.

One day, Dilys came home with a puppy.

My heart sank. “Dilys! What have you
done
?”

“I couldn’t resist, Julie, I just couldn’t. I mean, look at her!” she said.

She’d seen this baby dachshund in the window of a pet shop. Perhaps by way of mollifying me, Dilys let me name it. My mother had always said that if ever she had another girl she would call her Melody, which I thought a ridiculous name. I was not too fond of the dog, so that’s the name I gave her. Of course, somehow I ended up being the one who did all the feeding, the cleaning, the taking it out for walks. We called her Melly for short, and Melly came to the theater, and Melly pooped in the dressing room, and on the shag carpet in our living room, in the bedroom, in the kitchen, everywhere.

Since we were on the top floor of this walk-up, it soon became a real burden to take this puppy up and down the stairs all the time. I had a good idea. Knowing that manure is supposed to be very good for flowers, I folded some of it into the soil of the window boxes. The geraniums flourished, but the smell on the balcony was appalling!

When Neil was in Canada, we would have nightly phone conversations, and they grew longer and longer as time went by. Lou would admonish, “Julie, you’ve simply
got
to cut down on your long distance bill.” But, as lovers do, we talked for an hour or more, and the minutes would just add up.

To my surprise, Neil became anxious and controlling, asking me to account for places I’d been and everything I was doing. Sometimes he didn’t believe my answers and we would have heated discussions over the phone. I would say, “Neil, why do you doubt what I’m saying?” but still he would pump me. It was odd and eventually irritating. Sometimes I tried to make our conversations shorter, but that only served to make him more suspicious. I began to feel claustrophobic in the relationship.

One night on the phone, he asked me to marry him.

“Oh gosh,” I stammered. “I’ve not actually gone so far as to think about marriage. Let me write home and see what my parents say.”

Wimp that I was, I couldn’t say, “I have the feeling this isn’t going to work between us.” I wrote to my mum, and she wrote back a very sensible letter, saying,
“I would prefer that you at least wait until your year is
over and let’s talk about it when you get back. Marriage now, while you’re in the throes of something so new, doesn’t seem a very smart idea, and you’ll be home soon enough
.”

I was relieved, and showed the letter to Neil, saying, “I’m afraid we’ll have to wait.” He was not happy about it, and our relationship continued to deteriorate.

JOHN HEWER INVITED
me and Dilys to stay for a summer weekend at the tiny house he’d rented on Fire Island. The Sunday was overcast, but very warm. We decided to go down to the beach, and I lay out on a towel without putting on any sunscreen. I fell asleep and woke up two hours later. The sun was blazing and I was already lobster red. I managed to do the show that night, but for the next two weeks, my skin literally hummed with fiery color.

I remember both Dilys and Millie Martin recommending, “Cold tea! You’ve got to lie in cold tea. The tannin helps.” It was too painful for me to even bathe, so Dilys gently sponged my back and arms for me. I slathered chamomile lotion on myself, and for the show, I dabbed pancake makeup over that, but a purple glow still shone through. I’m surprised my skin wasn’t permanently damaged.

Other silly moments occurred. There is a scene in the show where Tony and Polly are just about to kiss, but Hortense, the maid, interrupts them. One night, the actress playing Hortense missed her cue. Leaning in for the kiss, John Hewer and I paused and looked at each other. Not knowing what else to do, we leaned further, pecked discreetly, then pulled apart. Still no sign of Hortense. After a long moment, I said brightly, “Well, I have to go now!” and left poor John just standing there. He teased me about it for months afterward. As I walked away, I heard the thunderous sound of the actress’s footsteps racing toward the stage.

LONDON’S SADLER’S WELLS
ballet (later to become England’s Royal Ballet) came to New York, and Dilys and I went to see a Sunday matinee of
Coppélia.
A young and extremely attractive dancer called David Blair was the male lead. His exhilarating leaps and spins and bravura performance took our breath away, and filled us with national pride.