Special Excerpt from
Getting Along Famously: A Celebration of Friendship

"A Friend may well be reckoned the masterpiece of Nature."
—Ralph Waldo Emerson

INTRODUCTION

“A friend is someone who knows the song in your heart and can sing
it back to you when you have forgotten the words.”
—Anonymous

In mathematics, The Butterfly Effect says that a storm in New England may be caused by a butterfly flapping its wings in China. The world is so sensitive a place, so connected, the smallest act can change things forever. Friendship is the same way—sometimes we do not know how important a first meeting is. One chance meeting may, with time, lead to a friendship that keeps you laughing, feeds your mind or makes even the worst day feel easier.  Friendship can sustain you.

If you want to get primitive about it, remember that as gatherers, cooperation among women was vital to survival.  We, quite literally, needed our friends to go on living.  The same can be said in today’s urban jungle.  Studies have shown that having at least one close confidant can improve your longevity and reduce the risk of physical impairments as you age. It has even been said that living without close friends can be as bad for your health as smoking or being overweight.

With my friends, I have danced the night away in a Florence disco, learned to speak French, drank too many martinis, survived bad relationships, taken kickboxing, toppled a canoe, explored art, read new books, driven cross country, found the perfect dress, cooked a turkey, ridden horseback up a mountain, sung in a choir, gone skydiving and understood life lessons. Along the way, I have shared my hopes, my dreams, my experiences and my heart.  And been made better for having done so.

Friendship makes us better women, better lovers and better mothers.  When we play together, laugh together or cry together, we bring more meaning into our lives. Men may fix things, but women fix each other. When a friend says “yes you can” or “it will get better” or “his loss,” you know it is true.

If we are smart, we choose our friends based on the things that really matter—loyalty, an offbeat sense of humor, shared interests  or a listening ear. My friends lift me up when I am down, laugh at the absurd, and love me through it all.  When one of us goes down a pant size, we all celebrate.  If a man disappoints us, we rally together.  In crucial moments, we can make major life decisions over a cup of coffee.

My grandfather once said, “You are lucky to have ten true friends in your lifetime.”  The older I get, the more his words ring true.  Marriage, children, careers—life can get awfully busy.  And friendship takes time, generosity, unconditional love and support. 

Real friendship will transcend any distance, any lifestyle change and any amount of time.  I have friends I speak to everyday, some I chat with every week and others I catch up with only once a year.  Yet these bonds are equally important.  For I know that any one of them would be there for me in a second if I needed them. 

The beauty of friendship is that in the long run, it will likely outlast romantic relationships. And since women generally outlive men, sticking together can really pay off.  With all that said, friendship can sometimes be hard to define.  It is a fickle, subjective and elusive experience.  Why is she my friend?  Because she just is. Still, one thing is certain.  Sharing the journey—the highs and lows—makes it all that much sweeter.

 

CHAPTER TWO

Friends Sing Each Other’s Praises
Julie Andrews and Carol Burnett

“When we met it was just like instant friendship. It was just like heaven
and we have been friends ever since.”
—Julie Andrews

“The first time I saw Julie Andrews close up she came into Whelan's drugstore at 44th Street and Broadway, the Sardi's of the unemployed actors, to buy a refill for her eyelash curler,” Carol recalled. “Having stood through My Fair Lady four times, I rose as she entered out of force of habit —as thought Queen Victoria had just appeared. I bought the same refill for my eyelash curler, only I never could get it in straight.”

Two years would pass before Julie and Carol would meet.  Though they were raised on different sides of the world, they shared many things in common, not the least of which was having survived alcoholic parents.  They shared a passion for the stage and a wry, sometimes self-deprecating, sense of humor. One fateful night they were introduced in a Chinese restaurant and they took it from there—building a lifetime of song, laughter and love.

Chopsticks and Chatter

In the early sixties, both women were working in New York.  Julie was performing in the Broadway run of Camelot while Carol was starring in the musical Once Upon A Mattress. “I had a manager called Lou Wilson and he knew Carol and he said, ‘I think you two are going to get on like a house on fire,’” Julie remembered. “I resisted in the same way my eight-year-old daughter resists having me introduce her to a new friend I think is just right for her…Although I liked her instantly, I didn't really think, at that first meeting, that we'd become the great friends we are now.”

“We met at Ruby Foo's (Julie thinks that Chinese food, like the Statue of Liberty, is one of the glories of American civilization),” Carol remembered. “Over the egg-drop soup we traded anxieties: We're both devout coward's about airplanes and opening nights and criticism (the least little bit makes me contemplate slashing my wrists) and then we discussed our hair color (hers is natural —wouldn't you know).

“During the sweet-and-sour pork we compared our hideous childhoods: Julie swears she was buck-toothed and piano-legged and faintly wall-eyed for years: I was so tall the only thing that boys admired about me was my ability to outrun them, which was not what I had in mind.”

“By the time the fortune cookies appeared,” Carol recalled, “we were working out a plan to work together, some time somehow. The idea of teaming Miss Raggedy Ann Burnett, Girl Kook, with the remote, ladylike silver-throated Miss Andrews, 'ere from England to grace our 'humble U.S. shores, finally roused our poor escorts into calling for the check and stumbling out of the restaurant, holding their various heads.”

“We both started performing as kids. We both came from alcoholic families, we both had been caretakers, which is a tremendous burden for a kid.  Being raised in a chaotic household, we were also both super-neat and super-square.”
—Julie Andrews

“It's not every day you can run across a British kook in a Chinese restaurant who turns out to be your best friend.”
—Carol Burnett

Stage Presents

They would first team up for a spot on The Garry Moore Show where Carol was a regular.  “I appeared with Carol for the first time on The Garry Moore Show for one simple reason: I needed the money. Also, they promised I wouldn't have to sing anything from Fair Lady,” Julie said.

When Carol asked her what sort of number she would like to do, Julie said she had never played a cowboy. Carol, a native Texan, thought it was a great idea.  Especially coming from a prim and proper Brit.  “We did a song called Big D,” Julie remembered, “which was all about Dallas.  We did cowboy outfits with big hats. It was great fun, great fun.”  Carol was pretty good at the Texas drawl required, but it was Julie’s British lilt turned Texan that gave the number a whole new twist. 

It was good, but it was just a beginning.  Julie and Carol wanted to do an hour-long special together, but bringing the duet to television would take some doing.  “Everybody was excited about it except the networks,” Carol recalled.  “I wasn’t yet under contract to CBS, and nobody had heard of Julie west of New Jersey.  We went everywhere trying to sell the idea—to NBC, ABC and XYZ, but nobody was interested.”

Ultimately, Carol convinced execs at CBS to do the show and ''Julie and Carol at Carnegie Hall'' was born.  The show began with the catchy and cute “You’re So London”, featured a rousing (and soon-to-be ironic) parody of Broadway’s The Sound of Music with a reprise of “Big D” for the finale.  Not only was the show a huge hit, it also earned two Emmys.  “We had the time of our lives doing that show (maybe that's why it was a success) even though the rehearsals were so grueling we wondered whether we'd survive. We lived on tea and pep pills and developed psychosomatic colds,” Carol remembered. It was so successful that just two months later, CBS signed Carol to a ten-year contract.

Though Julie had been performing since she was nine or so—in vaudeville, on stage and even once with the Queen of England in the audience —there was something unusually special about performing with Carol.  “Normally, when I work, I'm here and the audience is there,” Julie said, “and I hope to hell that they'll like me —but I stay terribly reserved just in case they don't. Carol knocks that out of me totally, and I'm able to clown around without destroying my defenses, because I know I have an ally up there with me. I'm not frightened by an audience when I'm performing with Carol; I'm hardly aware of the audience. It's some weird thing that happens-and I know that with me a much more real quality comes through. God knows, Carol doesn't need this; yet I must give her something back, because so often I feel that magic happens when we work together.”

“Working opposite her is like having Winston Churchill for your copilot. She never panics,” Carol said. “Her Fair Lady director, the late Moss Hart, once said ‘She has that terrible English strength that makes you wonder why they lost India.’ Among the cast she was known as The Rock, a reference to her sheer staying power.”

That Happy Nun

Not terribly long after their special aired, Walt Disney brought Julie the idea of starring as the mysterious and magical super-nanny Mary Poppins. But Julie wasn’t too sure she should.  “When the Poppins part came up she asked me, ‘Do you think I ought to? Go work for Walt Disney? The cartoon person?,’” Carol remembered. “I assured her that Disney did other things besides cartoons, but she was a little worried about it. But when she came out to Hollywood she became totally enthusiastic. I don’t think she ever came out here to be the great big star of the world, but she was very excited about that one movie.”

Carol had helped to launch what would be one of Hollywood’s most beloved screen actresses.  In the next two years, Julie would go on to star in The Americanization of Emily and The Sound of Music. “We were always putting The Sound of Music down,” said Carol, “and Julie always made fun of that happy nun. I’m not sure Richard Rodgers was awfully pleased when she was offered the movie.  And I think he was concerned about her being Gwendolyn Goodie Two-Shoes. She sent me pictures from Austria of her in her nun’s habit, which was a big laugh.”

“I thought it might be awfully saccharine,” Julie said. “After all, what can you do with nuns, seven children and Austria?”  Of course, that happy nun would become Julie’s most iconic role.

While Julie was making her mark on the big screen, Carol was defining a golden age in television. After a series of comedy and musical specials, ''The Carol Burnett Show'' debuted in September 1967, ran through 1978 and continues in syndication today.  Winning 22 Emmys in its 11 years, the weekly show assembled such stellar talents as Harvey Korman, Vicki Lawrence, Lyle Waggoner and Tim Conway, and included special celebrity guests.  On the show, Carol perfected her now famous Tarzan yell and always ended the program with a tug to her ear, a message that said, “I love you grandmother.”

“In this carnivorous business we're in,” Julie noted, “there's absolutely no jealousy, no upstaging, no competition between Carol and me —and I'm not sure why. I suppose it could be because neither of us sees the other as a threat; we each have our own area in which we do reasonably well, yet I think we feel stronger when we work together.”

Julie and Carol would unite their talents once more in the 1971 special “Julie and Carol at Lincoln Center,” which was nominated for three prime time Emmys and again in 1989 in “Julie and Carol: Together Again” where Carol won the American Comedy Award for Funniest Female Performer in a TV Special.

“When I am working with her, she is such a consummate comedienne that I feel that I have to pull myself up a notch or two to equal her and I really mean that most sincerely,” Julie said.  “She allows me a certain kind of freedom that I know I can cut up and be foolish and stupid and we are pretty idiotic with each other, I must say.”

Stage Mothers

Just after taping their first special, Julie thought she might just be pregnant. “Carol was the first person I told when I suspected I was pregnant,” Julie remembers. “I confided to her that I'd just sent off a specimen and if the little mouse died, I'd know for sure. And she said: ‘Send me a message, no matter where I am, when you find out.’"

“It was several weeks after our show was televised that I got the word. I phoned CBS and was told Carol was rehearsing and couldn't come to the phone, so I asked the operator just to give her my message. Carol insisted that at one point all the loud speakers at CBS announced: ‘We have a message for Carol Burnett from Julie Andrews: The mouse is dead.’”

The day Emma was born in England, CaroI received a cable: “SHE'S HERE, KNOWN OFFICIALLY AS EMMA STOP START LEADING A GOOD CLEAN LIFE STOP YOU'RE HER GODMOTHER —MOTHER WALTON.” 

In 1969, Julie married her second husband, director Blake Edwards.  In addition to Emma, Julie became a stepmother to his two children. Yet three was not enough.  Julie and Blake would also adopt two Vietnamese girls. “One of Julie’s greatest acts of courage as a woman was to adopt those orphan infants with Blake,” Carol said.  “She was so devoted to them you completely forgot she wasn’t their natural mother…and she gave up years of her professional life to care for them.”

Julie, not for a lack of offers, decided to stay home with the family.  “I would have never believed that I’d be able to stop working the way I did.  I agreed to do just enough to keep my ego reasonably high.  I attended ballet class for a while, but found it took up too much time.  The days were terribly busy, though I couldn’t tell you what I did except get involved with some charities.  Finally I got down to essentials: Blake and the children.”

Carol also had a full house with three daughters of her own with her husband Joe Hamilton, a TV producer. “Carol relates to her own children in the same warm, generous, outgoing way she relates to every human being I've ever seen her come in contact with,” Julie said. “She has time for people, no matter how trivial or irritating their wants may be. I've never seen a chink in that attitude, and it definitely isn't a gimmick. That's just the way she is, and I guess I admire her all the more for it because I'm not capable of it myself.”

“When Julie and I first started, we talked about men.  Later on we talked about children. Then it was how do we keep in good shape? Now we talk Metamucil.”
—Carol Burnett

** End of excerpt **