My heart wants to sing every song it hears

Happy 75th birthday (yesterday) to that shining icon of Britishness, Dame Julie Andrews.

Possibly our best-loved singer-actress, everyone has fond memories of at least one movie or song by Julie - whether it be The Sound of Music, Mary Poppins, Thoroughly Modern Millie or Victor Victoria. Fewer people may recall that she worked with none other than Alfred Hitchcock in Torn Curtain, or was a Broadway star alongside Richard Burton in Camelot as well as Eliza in the original stage production of My Fair Lady.

She got a bittersweet revenge when Warner Brothers overlooked her for the film production of My Fair Lady in favour of Audrey Hepburn - Miss Andrews got the Oscar for Mary Poppins, and poor Miss Hepburn was not even nominated!

In her sixty-year career in music hall, theatre, film and TV, our Julie has won an Oscar, five Golden Globes, two Emmys, a Grammy and a BAFTA (among numerous nominations), as well as People's Choice Award, Theatre World Award, Screen Actors Guild and other notable awards across the world.

Facts about Dame Julie Andrews:

• she was born of an affair between her mother and a family friend, while she was still married to her first husband.
• her big break was due to theatre impresario Val Parnell, who cast her in his revues at the London Palladium, and she became the youngest performer at a Royal Variety Performance in 1948.
• she appeared regularly on American TV specials with lifelong friend Carol Burnett years before she got her big-screen success.
• Julie has starred in no less than seven films directed by her husband Blake Edwards (not all of them successful - notably Star!, and S.O.B. in which she famously whopped her tits out!).
• she apparently won her battle with the surgeons whose botched surgery on her vocal cords cost her her wonderful voice to the tune of £21 million!

Despite criticism of her recent O2 "concert" (at which she did not actually sing, as many of her fans believed she would), Dame Julie Andrews remains a "national treasure", and here at Dolores Delargo Towers we love her!

Julie Andrews - A Spoonful of Sugar

Julie Andrews - Le Jazz Hot

Julie Andrews - Trinkt le Chaim

Julie Andrews - The Hills Are Alive

Dame Julie Elizabeth Andrews, DBE (born 1st October 1935)