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T
HAT CHRISTMAS OF
1951, I was invited to play the role of Princess Balroulbadour—the principal girl—in Emile Littler’s holiday pantomime
Aladdin
back at the London Casino. Jean Carson was to play the title role.

Aladdin
was an elaborate production. The Genie’s cave at the end of the first act was dazzling to behold, and there was a huge ballet, beautifully designed and executed, in the second act.

I wore exotic, sparkling headdresses, which I loved, and a lot of satin kimono-style robes with long, draped arms. The setting was Middle-Eastern, but I looked more Japanese than Persian. I also wore ballet slippers, to keep my height down and make Jean Carson look taller than me.

The cast included a Danish acrobatic troupe, the Olanders—five lads who, clad in silk pantaloons and waistcoats, performed death-defying gymnastics: springboards, leaps, balancing acts. Every time they were onstage, I had to come down to watch—they were that good. A special combination of bravura and muscular strength, with lean, beautiful bodies.

One of the acrobats—the best—was a young man called Fred who executed something like twelve amazing butterfly leaps around the stage. He was attractive, fit (obviously), and very gentle and dear.

My mother knew that I was fond of him, and she said, wisely, “Bring him down to The Meuse for a weekend.” Later she joked that he never stopped swinging from our chandeliers (we didn’t have any).

My mother was ever-present. Fred and I would sit on the couch, bodies pressed together, and there was a lot of hugging and kissing. Mum plied her sewing machine across the room, her back to us but rigidly alert.

I was heartbroken when the run of the show ended. Fred went off with the Olanders as they continued to tour around England and Europe. Later in the year, I went with Auntie Gladdy to see their act at a theater outside London and was able to say hello to him backstage. My heart broke all over again because I thought this would be the last time I’d ever see him.

Walking along the station platform to board our train home, I was miserable. I said something dramatic to Auntie Gladdy, like, “How will life
ever
be the same?” I must have been a complete bore all evening, because she simply exploded.

“Oh for God’s sake, Julie! You’ve got your whole life in front of you. You don’t think there’ll be
other
lovely young men?”

She said it so clearly that life just fell back into perspective, thank goodness. Fred occasionally wrote to me from Denmark, but eventually our friendship just petered out.

DURING THE RUN
of
Aladdin
, I traveled to London, as always, on the train. I would then either take a taxi or go on the Underground to the theater, do my two performances, then travel home late at night. If my mother or Dingle didn’t pick me up from the station, I would walk home. There was an outside light by The Meuse’s front door, but my mother would often forget to turn it on. The long driveway with the towering rhododendron bushes on either side was dark as could be, and I would whistle cheerfully in order to confound the molester I imagined was waiting to pounce on me.

I complained about the front door light and expressed my fear to Mum.

“Who on earth would be interested in you?” she said. “Why would anyone want to attack
you
?”

That did the trick!

ON FEBRUARY
6, 1952, King George VI died. He had been our monarch for sixteen years—almost my entire life—since reluctantly being crowned after the unexpected abdication of his brother, Edward, in 1936.

He had been in failing health for some time. The war had taken its toll, and his heavy smoking had led to the development of lung cancer. Princess Elizabeth had assumed more and more of her father’s royal duties as his health deteriorated. She received the news of his passing during the first stage of a Commonwealth tour to Kenya, Australia, and New Zealand. Having left Britain a princess, she returned as Queen at the age of twenty-five.

FOLLOWING
ALADDIN
, I spent the spring touring the provinces in a revue produced by Charlie Tucker called
Look In
. Charlie had many clients, and he decided to put several of them together in one show, presumably to guarantee them work. I believe it was his first attempt at a production, and it was tacky beyond words.

Among the many venues, we played at the Theatre Royal—Portsmouth, the Birmingham Hippodrome, the Nottingham Empire, the Palace in Blackpool, the Finsbury Park Empire in London (which I liked, as it meant I could stay at home and travel up to the show each day), the Bristol Hippodrome, and theaters in Swindon, Cardiff, Swansea, and Northampton.

The show starred a comedian, Alfred Marks, with whom I had briefly worked on the radio show
Educating Archie
, but I didn’t know him very well. He seemed a little hedonistic, a man with large appetites. His girlfriend, Paddie O’Neil, was also in the show. She was bleach-blonde—a soubrette—and onstage she exuded a winning awareness of all things sexy. She and Alfred made a good team.

Both the show and the tour were done on a shoestring; the costumes were rented, which meant they had all been worn before. The sets were pieced together from other productions. The title of the show referred to the increasing importance of television in people’s lives,
Look In
being a take on the more familiar “Listen In” catchphrase used by radio.

Because I was touring on my own, my mother and, I suspect, Charlie Tucker asked Alfred and Paddie if they would keep an eye on me and take me under their wing. Initially I slept in the same room as they did, on a rollaway cot. I would take myself to bed early and they would return to the hotel quite late. It was difficult for me, and must have been truly irritating for them. None of us was happy about the arrangement, and a separate room for me was soon provided.

Paddie behaved strangely toward me. On the one hand, she kindly showed me how to put on a basic stage makeup. In those days, one plastered greasy panstick on one’s face, but it would cake around the hairline. “Once you’ve put it on and powdered, take a toothbrush and scrub the hairline to get the pancake and powder out and smooth the edge a little better,” she told me. But another time, as she came offstage, I was in the wings and gushed, “That was great, Paddie. Oh, I
do
love you!” She brushed past me and said, “Well, I
hate
you.”

I may have been foolish and sycophantic, but it was a difficult remark to weather. Paddie could be charming, but I learned not to trust her. My diary entries for this period are filled with notes like “Can’t wait to go home.”

ALTHOUGH I WAS
soon to be seventeen, I was still being billed as “Britain’s youngest singing star” and I was now performing in the penultimate spot of the show. I did several radio broadcasts at this time, and continued the weeks of vaudeville and individual concerts. Throughout the year I suffered from bouts of laryngitis—my tonsils were chronically infected—but I didn’t worry about it much, and always tried my best to sing through it.

In early September, I had a small introduction not only to the world of animated film but also to the art of dubbing, which I found fascinating.
The Rose of Baghdad
was a Czechoslovakian film originally made in 1949. It was now to be distributed in the UK, and it told the tale of a beautiful singing princess, somewhat in the spirit of
Aladdin
or
Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves
. The role of Princess Zeila had been sung by a soprano with a high voice of great beauty. The producers wanted me to dub the songs into English, but record with the original orchestrations. I had a
coloratura voice, but these songs were so freakishly high that, though I managed them, there were some words that I struggled with in the upper register.

I wasn’t terribly satisfied with the result. I didn’t think I had sung my best. But I remember seeing the film and thinking that the animation was beautiful. I’m pleased now that I did the work, for since then I don’t recall ever tackling such high technical material.

T
ONY WALTON AND
I continued to see each other whenever we could. He had graduated from Radley College that spring, and was due to fulfill his National Service obligations at the end of the summer. I still visited his adorable family, feeling easy and relaxed in their company.

It was late summer, I believe, when Tony asked me out on our first real date. We traveled to London and saw the movie
The Greatest Show on Earth
, which we both enjoyed. Though I was nearing the age of seventeen, I was still pretty gauche, my experiments with Fred notwithstanding. I was innocent, shy, my social skills lagging considerably behind my ability to fool a large crowd such as an audience. In the cinema Tony held my hand, but I was stiff and withdrawn, for I felt that he was becoming interested in a deeper relationship, which I wasn’t ready for. Fortunately, nothing impeded our friendship.

Just after my birthday, I was contracted to appear in yet another holiday pantomime. This time I played the role of Princess Bettina in the Coventry Hippodrome’s production of
Jack and the Beanstalk
. It was another principal girl role. I was never asked to play the principal boy, as I was, of course, too young, and, in spite of all the dancing lessons, my legs were not good enough.

Coventry is virtually in the center of England. Its famous cathedral was bombed to smithereens during the war, and its empty shell, standing adjacent to the new cathedral, is a stark reminder of that event.

The Hippodrome was relatively new at the time, run by a truly decent impresario called Sam Newsome. He was proud of his theater, and took
me on a tour of it when I first arrived. The dressing rooms were upscale; the principals’ rooms had private bathrooms—mine even had a big bath in it. The backstage area was modern and clean, so different from the shabby theaters I had been working in up to this point.

I roomed with a young soubrette called Joan Mann, also a client of Charlie Tucker’s. She was to play the role of Jack, the principal boy. Joan was dark-haired, had a great figure, and she was lively and fun.

We did some early rehearsals in London with the respected choreographer Pauline Grant. Charlie Tucker had asked Pauline to be a mentor to me—to help with my deportment, to give me some West End polish. We became good friends, and she was a big influence in my life. Petite and packed tight in her skin, Pauline had slightly bulging eyes and pouting lips that were prettily bowed. She looked a little like Leslie Caron. A former dancer, she had exquisite small hands and when she walked, her feet seemed placed “at a quarter to three” (my mother’s description). She always wore very high heels, and she dressed in suits and silk blouses with bows at the neck to soften the tailored image. If she could afford it, she bought herself one haute-couture Hardy Amies outfit every year. She taught me the value of having a few elegant pieces in my wardrobe, rather than a lot of cheap ones.

She had a good sense of humor, and she and Sam Newsome hit it off. He began to ask her out to dinner, and eventually they married.

The show started to take shape. Pauline was a task master with the corps de ballet. She would demonstrate with a flourish of the hands.

“I need a ‘pyum!’ here and a ‘pyum!’ there!”

Norman Wisdom, the comedian, was the main attraction of the pantomime. He was a cheeky little chap, a brilliant humorist, much in the manner of Chaplin. He wore a black suit that appeared too small for him and the peak of his cap was pushed to the side of his head. He adopted a funny walk and played a kid very well. He was married, and during the years I knew him, his wife seemed always to be pregnant.

Norman and I had a friendship of sorts; we worked well together onstage, and on the Saturday nights that he would travel home (returning on Monday), he would sometimes give me a lift as far as Ealing, on the north side of London, where he lived. My mother or Dingle would come
up from Walton and wait by a certain roundabout. Norman would drop me off, I would swap cars, and Mum or Dingle would drive me on home.

Pauline Grant stayed with us through the beginning of the run in Coventry, then came back from time to time—ostensibly to check up on us, but also to see Sam Newsome. He would pop around backstage at the oddest times, his friendly face appearing at my dressing room door, and it was always a pleasure to see him. He was consistently gracious, his manners exquisite.

One night, after we had opened, we were all invited to his house for a celebration party. Most of the company were chauffeured there in limos. He lived in a stone lodge at Warwick Castle, situated just inside the main gate to the castle grounds. It was a beautifully appointed home, and I remember being impressed by the quiet luxury of it.

Mum and Pop bought a secondhand car—a Hillman Minx, which I called “Bettina” after my character in the show. It was a grand little automobile and extremely useful. I didn’t drive it myself, although it was officially “my car.” It was really my mother’s to use and enjoy, but I was very proud of the fact that my earnings had paid for it.

My mother explained there would be tax benefits if I purchased her half of The Meuse. Pop and I would own it together. Pop was not working and was looking for a job, so by assigning a portion of the mortgage to me, they were able to keep cash flow going. I’m fairly sure that Charlie Tucker helped them work out the details of the transaction; maybe he even suggested it.

A year or two later, I also bought out Pop’s share, and the deed to The Meuse was transferred to my name. This furthered my sense of obligation to work, as it was now my total responsibility to keep up the payments. Without my contribution, we really would go under. I didn’t object, for I knew how much the place meant to my mother, and I had promised long ago that I would look after her and all the family. I justified working so hard by knowing that I was helping to maintain the roof over our heads. My passion to hold onto every home I have ever had since was influenced by the unthinkable prospect of losing The Meuse.

Dad, Win, Johnny, Auntie Gladys, Keith, Tappets, and the gang from Auntie’s dancing class came up for the last night of
Jack and the Beanstalk
,
and they helped with the huge pack-up to go home. Bettina, the car, was brought up, and all my luggage, trunks, makeup, and such were loaded into her and one other car, until both were stuffed to overflowing.

Tony had been to see the show, his National Service having been delayed a few months due to his having contracted glandular fever. He had now just returned from a ski trip with his family in Arosa, Switzerland, where he had broken his leg. The poor fellow was in a cast and on crutches, and was really suffering. Nonetheless, he was scheduled to fly to Canada in a few days’ time to begin his tour of duty in the Royal Air Force. He looked terrific in his RAF uniform, but he was very distraught.

My mother said to him, “Why don’t you paint a picture that you and Julie can share as a bond between you.” Tony did a small but exquisite rendering of a little island. Mum said, “You could call it
Ours
.” It was the first real painting Tony ever gave me. It has a view looking through trees and bushes to an idyllic setting, rather dark and sad. He left for Canada on Christmas Eve, and though I wouldn’t see him again for two years, he wrote constantly and faithfully during the time he was away.

For me, this was a period of turmoil and some guilt. I knew that Tony was very fond of me and wanted more than I was able to give at the time. While I felt great affection toward him, I wished to experience more of life before committing myself to anyone. It wasn’t until much later that I realized how much he mattered to me.