Julie Andrews joined her mom Barbara and stepfather Ted Andrews’ touring vaudeville act at the age of 12 and in her first major appearance (and London debut, “Starlight Waltz” 1947) brought the house down at the Hippodrome with a bastardized version of the polonaise from “Mignon”. Quickly graduating to top billing, she became the family’s primary breadwinner on the strength of her several octave range soprano and continued to tour after Barbara and Ted retired, traveling with a tutor until age 15 when her mother decided that her education was adequate. Title roles in pantomime productions of “Humpty Dumpty” (1948), “Red Riding Hood” (1950) and “Cinderella” (1953) preceded her Broadway debut as Polly in Sandy Wilson’s 1920s pastiche “The Boyfriend” (1954). Two years later, she was starring on the Great White Way as Eliza Doolittle the Cockney girl Rex Harrison’s Professor Henry Higgins was “making over”, in Lerner and Loewe’s “My Fair Lady”, for which she earned a Tony nomination. After a four-year run in that role, Andrews landed another plum, Guinevere to Richard Burton’s King Arthur, in Lerner and Loewe’s “Camelot”, garnering a second Tony nomination.
