Julie and Carol at Carnegie Hall (1962) - Julie Andrews, Carol Burnett

Julie was also moonlighting for the rival network. Refusing to give up on the idea of a television showcase for the pair of them, Carol Burnett had persuaded James Aubrey, president of CBS, that they were a good risk. The two girls rehearsed solidly throughout February, working through the athletic dance routines. ’Julie lost weight,’ said Carol, ’and I gained it, mostly in the bags under my eyes . .. Working opposite her is like having Winston Churchill for your co-pilot.’ ’I talk dirty with Carol Burnett,’ was how Julie described the show, taking a night off from Camelot to record it on Monday 5 March, for transmission three months later. No matter how daunting the venue [...] the pair were on a mission to debunk, marked by Carol’s opening belter, ’There’ll Be No Mozart Tonight at Carnegie Hall’. The Texan comedienne and the English miss were then contrasted in ’You’re So London’ (’you’re so Kensington Gardens, and I’m so-San Antone’), and a ten-minute history of the American musical, in which Carol sang ’Wouldn’t It Be Loverly?’ and Julie parodied ’I Cain’t Say No’ from Oklahoma! (’How can I be what I ain’t? I cahn’t say cain’t.’) ’Big D’ was reprised from The Garry Moore Show, but the high points were Mike Nichols’ brilliant spoofs, ’The Nausiev Ballet’ (touching on the current obsession with Rudolf Nureyev) and ’The Pratt Family of Switzerland’. The latter parodied a show which, a year before Camelot, had hit Broadway like a tidal wave: Rodgers and Hammerstein’s The Sound of Music. Dividing the critics from the start, it nonetheless enraptured audiences with the story of the Austrian nun (a Tony-winning turn from Mary Martin) who tends seven motherless children, marries the father, and helps them all escape the Nazis. As if this was not enough, its box-office power surged anew on the death of Oscar Hammerstein in August 1960. ’It became’, said Sandy Wilson, who saw the show at the time, ’like a sell-out Requiem Mass.’ Mike Nichols was having none of it. His Pratt Family boasted nineteen sons, Carol as the only daughter, and Julie as Mama Pratt, chirping, ’We bring you a happy song that I used to sing when I was a happy nun back home in Switzerland.’ The song, echoing ’My Favourite Things’, ended, ’The things we like best are these: pigs’ feet and cheese.’ ’We were always putting The Sound of Music down,’ Carol remarked, ’and Julie always made fun of that happy nun.’ ’I love to dress up in mad get-ups, camp around, to horse around,’ said Julie. [...] At ten in the evening, Monday 11 June 1962, Julie and Carol at Carnegie Hall aired nationwide- to excellent ratings and subsequent reviews, Variety hailing ’this expert fusion of talent and virtuosity’. The show would win the 1963 Rose d’Or at Montreux, the first American television programme to do so. Julie won plaudits for her comedy as well as her singing. But it was Carol who did best of all, scooping an Emmy Award-as did the show’s producer Joe Hamilton, who married her the following year. ’I got through that show with the help of God and Carol,’ said Julie. ’Mostly Carol.’ Julie Andrews: An Intimate Biography by Richard Stirling, 2008 (pages 112 - 114) -------- CBS; June 11, 1962 Producer: Bob Banner, Joe Hamilton Director: Joe Hamilton Music: Irwin Kostal Writer: Mike Nichols, Ken Welch #JulieAndrewsSpecial