The Daily Mail has been running some excerpts from Mary Poppins star Julie Andrews' new autobiography Home: A Memoir Of My Early Years, and from what we've read, it appears to be a rather interesting piece of work, with Julie sharing tales of complicated family life (at fourteen, having her drunk mother inform her that the man she's just met at a party is her real father strikes us as a rather traumatic moment for a teenage girl to live through) amongst other things. You can read the whole thing here.

But the bit that leapt from the page and beat us about the head screaming "DID YOU KNOW ABOUT THIS? DID YOU? HAS EVERYBODY HEARD THIS RUMOUR BUT YOU?" was the following.

Just before she left the Broadway cast of Camelot, Andrews filmed a TV special with the American actress and comedienne Carol Burnett, her closest friend. It was titled Julie And Carol At Carnegie Hall.

Two-and-a-half weeks later, Andrews discovered that she was pregnant. When her daughter, Emma Walton, was born on November 27, 1962, Carol Burnett became her godmother. But was she also a lover?

 

This is the extraordinary suggestion which has found its way onto the internet, a rumour that in fact goes back as far as 1965, the year in which Andrews made The Sound Of Music.

On January 18 of that year, prior to their appearance on stage at President Lyndon B. Johnson's Inaugural Gala, Julie Andrews and Carol Burnett were observed kissing passionately in public in a Washington hotel.

The clinch, which both women later claimed was a stunt staged to amuse their friend, actor and movie director Mike Nichols, was witnessed by the President's wife, Lady Bird Johnson, who unexpectedly stepped out of the hotel elevator at that moment.

This incident, sadly, is missing from Dame Julie's new book, in which she says of her chum Carol, "'I loved all that she was, all that she exuded - we bonded instantly," adding: "I lost my own inhibitions and felt free beside her."

How free, we'll never truly know.

But if you're inclined to jump on Google and search for evidence of deep Sapphic love between the two ladies in question, you may like to read Carol's article from a 1963 issue of Good Housekeeping about her friendship with Julie, and Julie's 1972 response in the same publication.

Tags: au | carol burnett | gays | julie andrews