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J
UST BEFORE MOVING
to The Old Meuse, I did my first radio broadcast for the BBC, at a place called the Aeolian Hall in Bond Street, in London. My parents were performing on the show. I do not know why I was asked to perform as well, but I sang the “Polonaise” from Ambroise Thomas’s opera
Mignon
. In rehearsal, the engineers kept asking me to back off from the microphone because my voice was blasting their sound system, but the broadcast went well, and may have contributed to what happened next.

Not long after, my stepfather brought home a famous producer, the managing director of the Moss Empires circuit, named Val Parnell. Pop had met him at the golf club, and being the good salesman that he was, he’d persuaded Mr. Parnell to come and hear his “extraordinary little stepdaughter with the phenomenal voice.” I remember being summoned in from the garden and asked to sing for this impressive gentleman. My mother accompanied me on the piano.

The next thing I knew, I was invited to take part in Mr. Parnell’s new musical revue in London called
Starlight Roof.
The production was to be staged at the London Hippodrome, which was at the corner of Leicester Square and Charing Cross Road. I was given a contract for one year, pending the show’s success.

Mum and Pop had been professionally represented by the agency of Lew and Leslie Grade (Lew later became Sir Lew, and then Lord Grade, of television and film production fame). But at this time, an American by the name of Charles L. Tucker became their agent, and subsequently
mine. Charles was from Hartford, Connecticut. He was a comfortably large, elegantly dressed man with a cheerful, moon-shaped face, gray, curly hair, and a wonderful chuckle. He had been a vaudeville violinist in the States, but had moved to London and become a talent agent, and he represented some fairly high-end clients.

AS THE NAME
suggests,
Starlight Roof
was glamorous—a series of assorted theatrical entertainments strung together: sketches, songs, dance, comedy. The show was a perfect night out. It was light, witty, elegant to look at, and featured several big production numbers. There were two performances a night—one at 6:00 and one at 8:35.

The all-star cast included Vic Oliver, a stylish musician and comedian who played the violin and conducted the orchestra occasionally; Pat Kirkwood, one of the reigning glamour ladies of the day; the comedians Fred Emney and Wally Boag; a beautiful ballerina by the name of Marilyn Hightower; and a young newcomer, Michael Bentine. The show was staged by Robert Nesbitt, a dignified gentleman with dark, brilliantined hair. He had a fine reputation for bringing class and distinction to his productions, and his mere presence commanded everyone’s attention.

During rehearsals, I would sit in the theater and watch the lighting being designed and the numbers being rehearsed. I saw truly talented people doing their stuff, and it was a big learning curve for me. It was my first taste of real glamour—of the art and magic of professional stagecraft.

Originally, I was to sing Weber’s “The Skater’s Waltz,” a fairly innocuous song, not particularly difficult. I appeared in the show as if I were a member of the audience.

Wally Boag was a loose-limbed, adorable American who told stories and did silly dances, flinging his amazingly double-jointed legs out to the side and twisting them in all directions while at the same time making extraordinary balloon animals. By the end of his act, he’d created a giraffe, an elephant, and several dogs and make-believe creatures. Vic Oliver would come onstage and suggest that Wally give them away to the patrons in the theater.

Wally asked, “Who’d like one of these?” and as people came for
ward, I would run down from the back of the stalls, having been waiting behind an exit curtain, saying, “
I’d
like one, please!”

My costume was a pale blue, pleated smock made of silk, with a line of white rickrack at my bosom, such as it was. Over it was a simple blue coat with patch pockets on the front. On my feet I wore socks with ballet slippers—odd things to be wearing, considering I was supposed to be a member of the public.

Wally and Vic Oliver deliberately left me until last. As I was given my balloon, Mr. Oliver would say, “How old are you?”

“I’m twelve,” I’d reply. “How old are you?”

“I think
I’d
better ask the questions!” he’d respond, after the chuckles subsided. “Apart from going to school, what do you do?”

“I sing!”

“Would you care to sing for us tonight?”

“Oh, yes!”

“What would you like to sing?”

“I’d like to sing ‘The Skater’s Waltz.’”

“Oh, lovely!” he’d say with a twinkle. “Just the kind of junk I like!” And he’d conduct the orchestra for me.

There was a fair-sized orchestra in the pit, but there was also another onstage called George Melachrino’s Starlight Orchestra. This consisted of mostly stringed instruments, and the musicians were very good and elegantly dressed in white dinner jackets. Vic Oliver loved to conduct; in fact, after
Starlight Roof
ended, he traveled around England conducting with various symphony orchestras.

Literally the day before our opening night, the producers decided that I appeared too innocent, too young to be in a sophisticated revue. My being in the show was coming across as unnecessary and perhaps even inappropriate. I was to be let go. Mum, Pop, and Charles Tucker descended upon poor Val Parnell and his assistant Cissy Williams. I remember hanging back and waiting while they had a long, heated conference.

“You cannot do this to a young child!” they protested. “First of all, it’s her big break; secondly, she’ll be heartbroken. Third, we can make what she does even better.”

Mum and Pop asked me to sing the “Polonaise” from
Mignon,
which I
did. The “Polonaise” is a hundred times more difficult than “The Skater’s Waltz”—it’s a real coloratura tour de force, finishing with a high F above top C. Originally written in French, the English translation is silly beyond belief, but I belted it out, leaping octaves and ripping off cadenzas and changes of key with bravura and dash. When I finished, there was a momentary pause—then, to everyone’s delight, I was reinstated in the show.

OPENING NIGHT WAS
October 23, 1947. Mum escorted me up to London on the train. As we walked from the station to the theater, we saw an English flower seller tucked into a convenient corner of Leicester Square, with her baskets and flowers spread around her.

“I’ll buy you some flowers for luck,” said my mother.

“What does she need luck for, dearie?” the flower seller queried, in a strong Cockney accent.

“Well, do you see that name on the bottom of the poster there?” Mum pointed at it. “That’s my daughter, and she’s going to be opening tonight, singing in the show.”

“Then you ain’t buyin’ these,” said the lady, handing me a beautiful fresh bunch of violets. “I’m givin’ them to ’er for good luck.”

Later that evening, when my big moment came, I ran fearlessly down the theater aisle. I went up onstage, sang the “Polonaise” from
Mignon,
and at the end I hit that high F above top C. There was a hush—and then the audience went absolutely wild. People rose to their feet and would not stop clapping. My song literally stopped the show. The aria was so difficult, and I was barely twelve years old, a sprite of a thing, really, with this freakish voice, and it caused a sensation. It was the first of three major stepping-stones in my career.

The press followed us home that night. They took photographs of me posed on the bed with my teddy bear, and bombarded me with questions.

The next morning,
Starlight Roof
received very good notices, and I was treated exceedingly well. “Prodigy with Pigtails!” and “Pocket-money Star Stops the Show!” the reviews said.

Needless to say, the flower seller’s gift was indeed a lucky one, and violets took on a new meaning for me in the years that followed.

W
E PLAYED TWO
performances every night but Sunday, with no matinees, for a total of twelve shows a week. It quickly became obvious that I could not attend school regularly, so a tutor was hired for me. The London County Council, which protected children in the theater up to the age of fifteen, insisted that I have a chaperone to and from the theater, as well as a private dressing room. I was also not allowed to take a final curtain call with the company, since the law stated I could not appear on stage after 10
P.M
. Historically, children in the theater had been treated appallingly—so the government had strict rules under the Child Labor Law.

My first tutor was a young, pretty, ineffectual woman, whose name I don’t recall. I walked all over her, claiming that I was far too busy to do homework. Within two months she was gone, and a new tutor, much older, by the name of Miss Gladys Knight was hired—and she brooked no excuses. She was a disciplinarian, a darling, and a good teacher. We worked together for four hours every day, and I finally began to get the education I should have had all along.

It became increasingly difficult for Mum to travel up to London with me every evening, so sometimes Uncle Bill came with me, sometimes Aunt Joan, and then eventually, as the year continued, a lady called Mickey Smith was engaged to become my chaperone.

“Auntie Mickey,” as I called her, was a genteel spinster. Her sister was nanny to Lord and Lady Rupert Nevill’s children, which Mickey flaunted, albeit discreetly. She was a plain woman, who had a large gap
between her teeth, and blinked a lot behind her thick spectacles—but she knew a great deal about being appropriate.

She said, “Julie, your nails are appalling. I shall give you a manicure, but I want you to scrub them completely clean before I start to file them.” I returned to the sink several times before she was satisfied.

It seems I was belting out my aria twice nightly with dirt under my fingernails, holes in my socks, and looking scruffy beyond words. So between shows, after my homework was completed, she would push back my cuticles and polish my nails or give me a pedicure. My hair was brushed and braided, my outfit pressed and kept clean, and in general I looked a lot better. I was grateful for the attention.

Auntie Mickey lived in Surbiton, three stops before Walton on the railway line. At the end of each evening, we’d get on the train together in London and she would get off first at her station and I would go on alone to mine. My family would pick me up from there, or I would walk home.

I began to rate myself in terms of how well I sang each night. I kept a little book, writing “X” for excellent or “Fairly Good” or “TERRIBLE.” Because I had to manage that F above top C twice a night, I developed an excruciating habit of testing and re-testing the high note to make sure it was always there. I must have driven everyone crazy, because eventually a complaint was made to the stage manager. But I needed to ensure that my voice was lodged and secure, particularly if I wasn’t feeling very strong.

There were nights when my voice did
not
hold up, of course. It didn’t happen often, but occasionally I swallowed or gargled my top note from either sheer fatigue or stress. Truthfully, I think that performing an aria twice a night for a year was more than any twelve-year-old should have been doing. I had the facility, but there were nights in the smoke-filled theater (and
everybody
smoked in those days) when my vocal cords dried up and the famous top F didn’t come out as well as it should have. On other nights, it was as easy as could be.

I had at least two hours between my appearances, since I was in the first half of the show and then had to wait through the second half plus the interval between the shows. After I’d done my homework, my chaperone and I would sometimes go out into Leicester Square for a meal—usually to a chain restaurant such as Quality Inn or Forte’s. Leicester
Square was gaudy, pungent with smells and bright with neon, but it was always a treat for me.

Uncle Bill—“Dingle”—was my favorite chaperone, because he would often take me to a movie between shows. There was a cinema in nearby Charing Cross Road that just showed cartoons, and I had the best time watching an hour of Mickey Mouse, Bugs Bunny, and all the great animated funnies from America. After this happy distraction, we’d go back to the theater, I’d sing my song again, and be taken home.

When my parents escorted me up to London, they would go to the Backstage Club between shows, a theatrical hangout where they could drink and socialize. Because I was underage, I wasn’t allowed in the club, so I would have to stay in the hall—where I could smell and see the bar and hear the clink of glasses.

The Backstage Club had one of those wonderful cage elevators, which was operated by a lever. One had to anticipate exactly when the elevator would align with the floor of one’s choice. The porter, an old man in a shabby uniform, befriended me and would let me try operating the lift, and I became pretty good at conveying customers up and down.

Driving home with my parents at night, I would notice elegant women standing in doorways or walking the streets of Mayfair. On foggy nights when London was blanketed by a pea souper, these mystery ladies would lurk on corners or stand near the curb.

“Those are prostitutes,” Mum would explain.

When I grasped what they were all about, I asked, “But where do they go? Where do they live?”

“They probably have little apartments somewhere, or they get taken into the hotels,” Mum replied. The area was pretty notorious—Shepherd’s Market and Park Lane especially. The ladies struck me as being sad, somewhat mysterious, and no end intriguing.

DURING THE YEAR I
was in the show, I developed the most intense crush on our headliner, Vic Oliver. In truth, he was probably older than he looked—with a balding patch in his hair—but he seemed totally suave, wore an immaculate white evening jacket, and to me, seemed the epitome of class and style. He was married to Winston Churchill’s
daughter, Sarah, and appeared to travel in upper-class circles—always going to supper after the show accompanied by a group of friends. I found myself fantasizing about him and became a terrible groupie, hanging around the stage door for the chance to say good night to him. I didn’t know Pat Kirkwood very well, but I did get to know her understudy, Jeannie Carson. Jeannie was a member of the chorus, and was pretty and petite. She took over from Pat several times and was much loved by the company. I later worked with her again, and eventually she made quite a name for herself in English musical theater.

And there was Michael Bentine. Michael was attractive and brilliant, a young comedian with a shock of black hair and an enormous toothy smile. He had two appearances in the show, both times playing a frenetic, dedicated salesman. In the first segment, he attempted to convince the audience to purchase a toilet plunger by showing its many possible uses: a peg leg, a hat, or the electrical conduit from a tram to its wire. Later in the show he came back on with the upper half of a chair, extolling the many functions of its lattice woodwork.

While performing in
Starlight Roof
, Michael met and wooed a beautiful young ballerina in the chorus, Clementina, who was Marilyn Hightower’s understudy. Later, Michael and Clementina married, and I became godmother to one of their sons, Richard. Michael went on to have a wonderful career uniting with Spike Milligan, Harry Secombe, and Peter Sellers as founding members of The Goons, brilliant performers who were the precursors of the Monty Python gang. Michael was eccentric, energetic, and enthusiastic. One could not help loving him, and he became a lifelong friend.

DURING THE EARLY
part of our run, a recording company expressed some interest in me, and I made several 78 acetate discs. I did the “Polonaise,” of course; the love song from
Romeo and Juliet;
another song called “The Wren”; and with Pop, I recorded “Come to the Fair.” One song, based on the Theme and Variations by Mozart with the title “
Ah! Vous Dirai-je Maman,”
had the most incredibly difficult coloratura passages and long cadenzas.

I was also invited to do a screen test for Joe Pasternak, a big film pro
ducer from the U.S. who had made all the films starring Deanna Durbin. Deanna was a popular young soprano in Hollywood, and I was often compared to her.

The screen test took place at MGM Studios in Elstree. A lot of still photographs were taken, but it soon became apparent that they needed to gussy me up a bit because I was so exceedingly plain. The hair department curled my hair into ringlets and I ended up looking like a ghastly version of Shirley Temple. We pressed on.

For the screen test itself I sang a song, then I talked to Mr. Pasternak on camera, and finally I performed a little scene. The storyline was that I was being tucked into bed by my mother, and we discussed the fact that my father had disappeared and not been home for years and years. (This made me tear up, which was embarrassing.) As I was lying in the bed, almost asleep, the door opened, a man entered, and I sat up with arms outstretched and cried, “Daddy!”

Suffice it to say that the end result was so bad that had it ever emerged, I might never have worked again. The final determination was “She’s not photogenic enough for film,” and that was the end of that.

SUBSEQUENT TO THE
screen test fiasco, my mother decided I had better get some acting lessons, and for a while the local drama teacher came over to The Meuse to tutor me. I remember working on the death scene from Shakespeare’s
Romeo and Juliet
.

“Nurse? What should she do here?” I’d emote. “My dismal scene I needs must act alone.
Come
, vial!”

I was absolutely
awful
—nothing was thought out, there was nothing behind my eyes. I could actually see this poor lady gritting her teeth at the amateur theatricality of it all. Not that she was much help; she gave me no technique to work it through, simply, “Move here, do this, now say it for real.” It seemed another hopeless enterprise.

Mum also signed me up for piano lessons again, this time with an ex-pupil of hers who lived in the village.

Although the lady was adept at teaching the scales—the sharps, the flats, the fingering—the ironic problem was that I had such a good ear. I would pick up every piano piece too quickly and then not follow through
on the actual reading of the music. I raced ahead of myself, learning everything by heart. I’m ashamed to say that to this day I do not read music well.

I must have played well enough, since I was entered for an early grade exam. I was certain I would fail because of my inability to read music, but I performed my Clementi pieces with great flourish, and the examiner seemed fairly impressed. To my total surprise, I won the top grade for that exam in the whole of Surrey. I was astounded—somehow I got a “highly commended,” and I received a book based on the life of Schubert as a prize from the county.

Of course my mother was pleased, but I remember ruefully thinking, “I
still
can’t read music.”