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And now the hills are alive still with the sound of success. Julie's recording of the Sound of Music holds the sales record (7,000,000) for all LPs, and her album of My Fair Lady (6,000,000 copies) is second. This month her LP of Christmas songs, recorded as a special premium offer for Firestone, is selling like crazy at Firestone dealers for $1 a throw. Even her rare appearances on television ring up records. Her last TV special, in November 1965, pulled 35 million viewers—more than the Streisand show or the Carol Channing show or the Sinatra show that season. Small wonder that the Motion Picture Herald poll of exhibitors, to be published next month, will name Andrews as the No. 1 box-office star of the year.* She has already completed her fifth movie, Thoroughly Modern Millie, a Boy Friend-like musical about the '20s, and will soon start Star, a biography of Gertrude Lawrence ("Their lives are somewhat similar," notes Director Robert Wise. "Gertie was also a product of music halls and a broken home"). She hopes one day to do a show with Mike Nichols; he wanted her for the Broadway lead in The Apple Tree, but signed Barbara Harris when Julie's film commitments obliged her to turn him down. It was probably just as well: Julie would have been hopelessly miscast in that show.
Midnight Birds. With all her success, Julie is now facing up to the inevitable cliché that infects married couples who get deeply involved in their separate professions: Whither goest who? The answer is that Walton goeth to London, Julie to Hollywood. The result is that they are separated by more than an ocean and a continent. At one point, they corresponded on tape. "Every day, out went the tapes," says Tony. "Julie saying how frightened she was of acting, how unreal the whole thing was. But we got too good at the tapes and a bit too tricky. Every once in a while I'd get one from Julie saying 'It's midnight and I'm just dragging in from rehearsal,' and I could hear the birds singing in the background." Julie's mother cannot understand why Walton would not move permanently to Hollywood to work, but Tony would not settle for a career of being Mr. Julie Andrews. "Some husbands of stars can fit into the 'agent-manager' role," he says, but "I'm not agently inclined, and there's the other thing—pride—involved too."
To add to the complications, Julie has fallen in love with California, has bought an eight-room house in Coldwater Canyon near Hollywood. "I used to loathe Hollywood," she says. "It seemed miles from anywhere. The papers seemed just local gossip, and I felt unconnected with the rest of the world. But now I think that Hollywood is as real as New York or as real as London or as real as Venice. There's no place I'd rather be. When I'm away for very long, I can't wait to get back."