The idea hit Julie Andrews while watching a rap group perform on a recent music awards show: ”What if Carol and I did a rap song?”
Carol is Carol Burnett, with whom Andrews was planning their third TV special, ”AT&T Presents Julie and Carol: Together Again,” scheduled to air from 9-10 p.m. Wednesday on ABC (Ch. 7).
The result is ”Mama`s Rap,” which comically laments the way mothers are treated by their adolescent children. Besides being funny, the song also is meant to remind us of the changes that have taken place in Andrews` and Burnett`s lives in the 27 years since they performed their first Emmy-winning special, ”Julie and Carol at Carnegie Hall.”
”When we did our first special,” Burnett recalls, ”we were talking about our careers and falling in love. Julie was a newlywed and I was falling in love with Joe Hamilton.”
By the time they performed their second special in 1971, ”Julie and Carol at Lincoln Center,” the women were both remarried with children.
”Then,” says Burnett, ”we talked about how to take care of your family and maintain your career at the same time.”
When they reunited this past summer to rehearse ”Julie and Carol:
Together Again,” the topic of conversation was their health, she says jokingly. ”Julie asked me about my back and I asked her about her knee. I saw to it that she stayed off her feet as much as possible, and she made sure I took my Vitamin C.”
The idea for the first special, in 1962, was to showcase the women`s talent before a national television audience. Although Burnett already was a featured player on ”The Garry Moore Show,” the public`s perception of her as a performer was limited. Andrews, meanwhile, was known only as a Broadway actress, having starred in ”My Fair Lady” and ”Camelot.” The special was so successful in building their careers-both the show and Burnett won Emmys as a result-that scheduling subsequent specials was tough.
Budget problems prevented them from taking the third special to their first choice locale, the London Palladium, or returning to Carnegie Hall. They eventually landed at the Pantages Theatre in Hollywood.
For Burnett, taping at the Pantages was like revisiting her childhood. She grew up in an apartment four blocks away from the theater and remembers going to the movies there with her grandmother. The Pantages was the premiere site for all Columbia and RKO films and, on premiere nights, Burnett and her grandmother would ”hang on the ropes” and watch the movie stars make their entrances.
”Everyone would be screaming,” Burnett says of those Tinseltown nights. ”We were the fans in the bleachers. That`s where I got Linda Darnell`s autograph. I was 9 years old, and she was my favorite actress. My grandmother grabbed her and said, `Give this kid your autograph! We`re from Texas, too!`
And I looked up at Linda Darnell. She was the most exquisite person, everything perfect, so gorgeous. And I was standing so close to her that I was able to see up her nostrils, and I remember thinking, `Her right nostril is not the same size as her left one.` Later, I went home and looked at my own-they weren`t the same size either. After that I became very conscious of people`s nostrils. I guess that`s what the Pantages Theatre means to me: Linda Darnell`s nostrils.”
When Burnett returned to the Pantages in June to do blocking for the special, she went to the area of seats where she used to sit with her grandmother. ”It was always the last three rows on the left side” she says, ”My grandmother always had to sit far back because she was farsighted, and it always had to be an aisle seat because she`d have to go to the bathroom. I sat in those seats (again) and got goose bumps. In my heart and mind, my grandmother was still right there with me. ”
This special, unlike the previous two, would feature the pair of stars without any supporting cast of dancers or singers. ”It seemed like a challenge,” explains writer/producer Ken Welch. ”Could we do the show without any other bodies on stage?”
It wasn`t easy. In one comedy sketch, ”The Phantom of the Opry,”
Burnett had to play two parts when the writers made her twins.
The women did, however, invite a full orchestra along. ”We wanted the audience to feel like they were having a special night in the theater,” says Jeff Margolis, the show`s executive producer and director. To add to the mood of the evening, Margolis treated the studio crowd to old Carol and Julie clips while the actresses were off stage changing costumes.
Margolis, who has directed and produced TV specials for such performers as Barry Manilow and Olivia Newton-John, says he was impressed by the camaraderie between Burnett and Andrews. ”Occasionally, you get a couple of stars together, and one gets impatient when the other doesn`t get something right. But the support these two women showed for each other was incredible. If one needed to work something out with the choreographer, the other would sit patiently on the side and watch.”
One reason for the women`s compatibility may be the closeness of their family backgrounds. Neither woman had it easy growing up. Burnett can barely remember living with her parents, who divorced when she was 5. Likewise, Andrews` parents, both vaudeville performers, were divorced when she was a toddler. While Burnett`s childhood was spent with her grandmother in a one-bedroom apartment off Hollywood Boulevard, Andrews was living with her mother in a run-down flat on the outskirts of London. ”There is a certain kind of recognition between us,” says Andrews. ”We know where the other one is coming from.”
The first time Carol Burnett saw Julie Andrews at close range, she was standing in line at a drugstore waiting to buy a refill for her eye liner. It was 1956 and Burnett was still a struggling actress, while Andrews was starring on Broadway in ”My Fair Lady.” Burnett remembers being awestruck.
By 1959, Burnett was enjoying her own turn as a Broadway star in ”Once Upon a Mattress.” Andrews remembers her own sense of awe on seeing that performance,. ”I thought, `She has all the courage that I wish I had.` I mean, here she was doing comedy so brilliantly, and that was an area in which I felt completely out of my depth.”
The night of the show`s taping, Burnett feared that there hadn`t been enough rehearsal time. The Pantages Theater`s schedule hadn`t allowed for a full run-through on its stage, and one sketch involving a food fight hadn`t even been completely blocked. Burnett, known for her affable and fearless presence on stage, was more than a little nervous and upset.
All it took was a moment with Andrews to lift the clouds. ”Julie touched my shoulder and said, `Just remember, we`re here because we met 27 years ago, and isn`t that wonderful?` Then she kissed me and I kissed her. Suddenly, my anxiety was gone.”
Meanwhile, with their third special completed, Andrews and Burnett are busy with their separate careers. Andrews recently completed a six-week national concert tour, and Burnett is preparing a new half-hour comedy series, ”Carol & Company,” scheduled to air mid-season on NBC. It will mark Burnett`s return to network series television after a 10 years` absence.
Should there be a fourth special in their own series, Andrews` joking suggestion for a title and location is ”Julie and Carol: Live in the Basement of the YMCA.” Even if it doesn`t happen on stage again for a few more years, both women have vowed to see each other soon off stage. ”We`ve gone into another plateau of our friendship,” Burnett says. ”All of a sudden, Julie is one of my new best friends.”
