Happy Birthday, Julie!

Julie Andrews, born Julia Elizabeth Wells, is our birthday girl this month.  She could always rock the short hair, couldn’t she?

Julie Andrews loomed large in my childhood for two reasons:  firstly, The Sound of Music (especially “How do you solve a problem like Maria?”) and secondly,  Mandy, a book she wrote in 1971, and one I read over and over again as a girl.

Successful at an early age, and then for decades, Julie has a voice that is gorgeous, comforting and familiar, despite its perfection.  Of her own voice, she said, “I had a very pure, white, thin voice, a four-octave range — dogs would come for miles around.”  Hardly:  “the hills are alive . . . with the sound of mu–sic.”  Come on, I know you’re singing along:  I can hear you!

Here’s to you, Dame Julie:  classic, beautiful and enduring.  I raise my glass of Veuve Cliquot to you!