My heart wants to sing every song it hears

She's practically perfect, in every way!

Yes, the venerable and venerated Dame Julie Andrews blows out 90 candles on her cake today, and the tributes are rolling in - not least this amusing one in The Guardian. Who knew she used to drive around Los Angeles with a “Mary Poppins Was a Junkie” bumper sticker on her car?!

But I digress... On with the show!

Julie Andrews - Saga of Jenny (from Star!)

Julie Andrews - Wedding Song (Trinkt le Chaim) (from Thoroughly Modern Millie)

Julie Andrews - A Spoonful of Sugar (from Mary Poppins)

Julie Andrews - Le Jazz Hot (from Victor, Victoria)

Julie Andrews - The Sound of Music Opening Scene

Many, many happy returns, Dame Julie Elizabeth Andrews, DBE (born 1st October 1935)

An important public message from Maria Von Trapp

I couldn't resist posting this:

Do-Re-Mi (the COVID-19 version)

Brilliant...

[Thanks to my sister for alerting me to this one!]

Mother Love

Three important celebrations today.

It's Mothering Sunday here in the UK.

Our clocks have gone forward, so it's officially British Summer Time - yay!

And Miss Shirley Jones - whose career took her from grieving ingénue in Carousel to matriarch of The Partridge Family - will be 80 years old tomorrow.

Here is a rare piece that suits the "Sunday mood" - Miss Jones' magnificent version of The Sound of Music:

Shirley Jones - The Sound of Music

And here is a clip of Miss Jones (playing second fiddle again to the gorgeous David Cassidy) with The Partridge Family, and an appropriate number for today:

Partridge Family - Summer Days

We were privileged back in 2010 to see Shirley Jones in her one-woman show - read all about it - and we were pleased to note her voice was still a force to be reckoned with.

Shirley Mae Jones (born 31st March 1934)

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)

“What are fears but voices airy?"

On this, the 80th birthday of the lovely Christopher Plummer, what better way to celebrate than with a piece from his most lauded film The Sound Of Music?

In the actual movie, Mr Plummer's voice was dubbed, but here is a rare clip that features his own voice. As he says in his autobiography, In Spite of Myself:

"Daunting is not a strong enough word to describe it. Julie and I stood side by side in a small glassed-in cubicle facing two microphones. Surrounding our prison cage sat 75 musicians like hungry jackals waiting to pounce, led by their keeper, Irwin Kostal.

"Warbling softly into a mike is far more difficult than singing full out in a theatre as I was later to discover. One is much more likely to catch and collect "frogs" in the throat, whereas projecting usually gets rid of them. I tried so hard not to look like a complete basket case. Julie, sensing my nerves, took hold of my hand and held it throughout the session. It must have taken her days to recover the use of it afterwards, I had squeezed it so hard.

"No matter how diligently I'd slugged away at my lessons, I was still untrained as a singer. To stay on a long-sustained note was, for me, akin to a drunk trying to walk the straight white line, whereas you can bet the very first cry that Julie let forth as she emerged from her mother's womb was in perfect pitch! Listening to the playback, there was no disputing we were on separate planets. In the end, Robert Wise managed to hire someone to take care of my elongated passages, and the balance was somewhat restored."

Christopher Plummer (in his own voice) - Edelweiss

Despite his fifty-year film career - everything from The Fall of the Roman Empire, through The Return of the Pink Panther, to The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus - he will forever be remembered for being "Captain Georg von Trapp", and generations love him for it!

Christopher Plummer on IMDB