Julie Andrews

Artist: Julie Andrews

LP: Christmas With Julie Andrews

Song: "Jingle Bells"

[ listen ]

And now what you've all...well, what you've both been waiting for. Christmas music! My friend Sarah and I went to see Julie Andrews in VICTOR/VICTORIA last night, since neither of us had seen the film before and it was being screened at the newly reopened Uptown Theater as a tribute to Blake Edwards, who died earlier this year. Though not particularly convincing as a male female impersonator (she actually looks more like a man in drag on the cover of this album), Andrews is full of gusto in the title roles and the film is lots of fun. It's surprisingly forthright with its gay themes for Hollywood cinema of the early '80s, and I was shocked to discover at the end of the credits that the film had been rated PG! I could have gone to see it at the cinema in Yakima when I was thirteen instead of SUPERMAN III! I'm pretty sure it would have changed my life. Anyway, Julie Andrews applies her gusto to some mundane holiday material on this 1969 Christmas album, creating a little bit of heavenly holiday magic. She even throws in one of her shrill Victoria Grant vibrato stunts at the end of "Jingle Bells," which just shattered all of our martini glasses at work.