![]() "Will I ever completely come to terms with not singing? I don't know," says the former Mary Poppins. Not only didn't Julie Andrews sing the 'blue hair' parody of "My Favorite Things" for a Radio City Music Hall audience on her 69th birthday, she couldn't have. In 2000, she settled her malpractice suit out of court, and though the terms of that settlement were not publicly disclosed, the amount she recouped is believed to be in the neighborhood of £20 million (about $30 million US). Her multi-octave singing voice was virtually destroyed.Īndrews sued the two doctors and the hospital for what had been done to her. That year she was admitted to Mount Sinai Hospital for the removal of a non-cancerous polyp on her vocal cords, and what should have been a simple surgical procedure went dreadfully wrong. Julie Andrews lost the ability to sing in 1997. Not only was this anecdote false, but sadly so. In March 2002, the item was repeated in Dear Abby's column, with the advicemeister waving off the Mary Poppins connection with, "The rewritten lyrics are a hoot, but I doubt that Julie Andrews ever warbled them."Ībby was right about that. Readers were instructed to "Start humming like Julie Andrews with gray hair" - that is, pretend they were the legendary singer as they croaked the new words about Maalox and walkers to the popular melody better associated with warm woolen mittens.īy July 2001, newsgroups posts of the pastiche were prefaced "Reportedly, Julie Andrews recently performed at a concert for AARP members." This marked a turning point in the history of the piece: what had previously been offered solely as a spoof of a popular song was now being presented as an anecdote about its celebrated singer. The 'blue hair' version of this famous number appears to have begun as a USENET newsgroup post in April 2001 where it was offered as a humorous send-up of a well-known song, with no accompanying avowal that anyone in particular had performed it, let alone Julie Andrews on her birthday. ![]() While Julie Andrews' 69th birthday was on 1 October 2004, she did not on that day, as the e-mailed tale asserts, sing a takeoff of "My Favorite Things" at a benefit in New York City. ![]() It was to be expected that sooner or later an "It's tough to be an old geezer" version would surface. Over the years, it has been used to lampoon, well, just about everything. Andrews received a standing ovation from the crowd that lasted over four minutes and repeated encores. Thin bones and fractures and hair that is thinnin',Īnd we won't mention our short shrunken frames, No spicy hot food or food cooked with onions,īathrobes and heat pads and hot meals they bring,īack pains, confused brains, and no fear of sinnin', Hot tea and crumpets, and corn pads for bunions, Pacemakers, golf carts and porches with swings, Polident and Fixodent and false teeth in glasses, Walkers and handrails and new dental fittings,Ĭadillacs and cataracts and hearing aids and glasses, Maalox and nose drops and needles for knitting, One of the musical numbers she performed was "My Favorite Things" from the legendary movie "Sound Of Music." However, the lyrics of the song were deliberately changed for the entertainment of her "blue hair" audience. To commemorate her 69th birthday on October 1, actress/vocalist Julie Andrews made a special appearance at Manhattan's Radio City Music Hall for the benefit of the AARP. The song's rhythmic cadences lend themselves readily to the tuneful renditions of lists, with its pivotal lyric ("These are a few of my favorite things") supplying a delicious touch of irony to even the most outrageous compilations.Īn example of this claim was collected on the internet in 2005: Since the 1965 film The Sound of Music acquainted the movie-going public with the Rodgers and Hammerstein tune "My Favorite Things," innumerable parodies of that ditty have been coined by a legion of aspiring humorists who found it the perfect platform from which to launch a bit of comic mayhem.
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