Sally Ann Howes: Truly a Treasure

When Walt Disney produced Mary Poppins (1964), the film became the envy of “James Bond” series producer Albert R. “Cubby” Broccoli. Broccoli had successes with the early James Bond movies: Dr. No (1962), From Russia With Love (1963), Goldfinger (1964), etc., though his three children: Tina, Tony, and Barbara were too young for those movies and Broccoli wanted to produce a movie that his children could grow up on—that could possibly imitate the success of “Poppins.” 

Broccoli discovered that Ian Fleming, ironically the author of the “James Bond” novel series, had also written a book called Chitty-Chitty-Bang-Bang: The Magical Car as gift to his son Caspar. Hence, Broccoli brought the idea of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang as a movie-musical to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. When it came to cast, Broccoli had hoped to reunite Dick Van Dyke and Julie Andrews as the respective two leads, Caractacus Potts and Truly Scrumptious. While Van Dyke agreed to play Potts, Andrews declined Scrumptious. Broccoli instead, found another renowned Broadway performer, Sally Ann Howes. While Truly Scrumptious became Howes’ best-known role, she mad quite a versatile career. 

 

Sally Ann Howes was born on July 20th, 1930, in the St. John’s Wood district of London, England. A career as a performer was natural thing for her because she was born into a show business family. Her parents were British comedian Bobby Howes and actress Patricia Malone, brother Peter was a professional musician, grandfather Capt. J.A.E. Malone was a London theatrical director of musicals, and her uncle Pat Malone was an actor on stage, television, and film. Most of her childhood was spent with her nanny and her parents’ theatrical friends, though it was organized and peaceful.

After appearing in school productions, Howes received her first major film offer when a friend of the family, who also happened to be a casting agent, recommended her for the leading role in a film called Thursday’s Child (1943). Producer John Argyle had tested two hundred girls for the part, to no avail, until he saw Howes’ test. After appearing in another film called The Halfway House (1944), Ann Howes was put under contract by Michael Balcon of London’s production company, Ealing Studios, and she appeared in seven films before the age of 20 including: The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby (1947) and Anna Karenina (1948) with Vivien Leigh.

After getting another contract at Britain’s Rank Organization, she appeared with Sir John Mills in The History of Mr. Polly (1949) and Fools Rush In (1949). Television and stage later came calling and she appeared in the BBC’s Cinderella (1950) as the title character and made her first professional stage appearance in Sandy Wilson’s Caprice in London’s West End that same year. She also married H. Maxwell Cooker that year, but they soon divorced. In 1953, she co-starred with her father, Bobby, in West End’s original production of Paint Your Wagon, featuring music by Frederick Lowe and lyrics by Alan Jay Lerner. It flopped on Broadway, but ran for 18 months in London’s West End.

Lerner & Lowe’s next Broadway musical project, My Fair Lady, opened to rave reviews on March 15th, 1956 and starred Julie Andrews as Eliza Doolittle and Rex Harrison as Professor Henry Higgins. When Andrews left the show 1958 to recreate Eliza Doolittle in London’s West End, Lerner and Lowe needed a permanent replacement and they offered the part to Howes. She declined their first offer, as she was attached to appear in Admirable Crichton (1957) with Kenneth Moore. Lerner and Lowe continued to persist and Howes finally accepted their third offer. She was even paid a salary higher than Andrews. During her first performance, she filled in for Andrews before she had officially left and the show’s director, Moss Hart announced that she would play the role and the audience was appalled by the news of Andrews’s absence. When Sally came on stage to perform, she stopped the show with the numbers “The Rain in Spain” and “I Could Have Danced All Night,” and Howes was later quoted as having said her debut in “Fair Lady” was “the most exciting day of my life,” and she remained fond of American audiences for the rest of her life. ’58 was also the year she married Richard Adler, composer of Broadway musicals such as The Pajama Game and Damn Yankees, and she adopted his sons Christopher and Andrew.

In 1962, Howes starred in New York City Opera’s revival of Lerner and Lowe’s Brigadoon and she received a Tony Award Nomination for her performances as the Leading role of Fiona MacLaren, making her the very first Broadway actor ever to receive a Tony Nomination for a performance in a Revival. It caught the attention of “Cubby” Broccoli, who knew instantly he had found his Truly Scrumptious for “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.” In addition to casting Dick Van Dyke, Broccoli also hired many of the same creative team behind “Mary Poppins,” including composers/lyricists Richard M. and Robert B. Sherman, Choreographers Marc Breaux and Dee Dee Wood, and Conductor/Music Supervisor Irwin Kostal. “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang” was initially a commercial flop, but it has achieved near cult status today, and was even re-adapted for Broadway in 2005, playing a total of 285 performances and receiving five Tony nominations, including a Best Actress in a Musical nomination for Erin Dilly for her performance as Truly Scrumptious.

Howes divorced her second husband in ’66 and after “Chitty,” continued to appear on stage in touring productions of The King and I in Britain and The Sound of Music in the United States. In 1972, she married Douglas Rae and they were married for 49 years until his death in September 2021. She appeared in two seasons of Stephen Sondheim’s A Little Night Music as well. She never made another film appearance until 1980’s Death Ship. In 1990, she debuted in her one-woman show “From This Moment On,” at the Edinburgh Festival and later brought the show to the John Drew Theatre at Easthampton, New York as a benefit for the Long Island AIDS Association. Her final stage appearance was in a U.S. Tour of My Fair Lady though in this production, she portrayed Mrs. Higgins. (She was later replaced in the tour by Marni Nixon, who ironically had provided the singing voice for Audrey Hepburn in the 1964 film adaptation of My Fair Lady.)

Sally Ann Howes died just this week of natural causes at the age of 91 in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida. She will forever be remembered as Truly Scrumptious, though her career was “truly” remarkable.    

   

 

The Christmas Song That Beat Them All

Jerome Kern was once asked to describe Irving Berlin’s place in American Music and he replied “Irving Berlin has no place in American music. He is American music.” One song he wrote early in the 1940’s proves the point. The song I’m referring to is none other than “White Christmas.” Around for nearly eight decades and still beloved today—whether referring to the song or the 1954 movie—brings wonderful memories for many. Today’s blog explores the history of the melodious tune and how it became a classic.

There’s a story that says that Irving Berlin wrote “White Christmas,” while staying at the La Quinta Hotel in La Quinta, California, though the Arizona Biltmore in Phoenix, Arizona, insists that Berlin wrote it there. It’s unknown for certain. At one point, he told his secretary, “I want you to take down a song I wrote over the weekend. Not only is it the best song I ever wrote. It’s the best song anybody ever wrote.” The song was introduced to Bing Crosby, though Crosby initially wasn’t a fan of the song. He doubted its potential, but little could he have ever predicted how synonymous the song was going to become with his career. 

Crosby first performed the song on his NBC Radio show The Kraft Music Hall on Christmas Day, 1941, not long after Pearl Harbor. He would later record the song with the Ken Darby Singers and the John Darby Orchestra playing the tune at Radio Records in Los Angeles. The song was later written into Paramount’s Bing Crosby/Fred Astaire-led film Holiday Inn (1942). Although “Holiday Inn’s,” “Be Careful, It’s My Heart,” was the bigger hit at first, “White Christmas,” won the Academy Award for Best Original Song and it rose to the top of many radio charts, including Billboards, where it remained for 11 weeks. Despite “hit” status, Bing Crosby continued to deny its success, also being quoted as saying “a jackdaw…could have sung it successfully.” But Crosby’s alliance with the song still wouldn’t stop.

Irving Berlin initially began negotiations with Paramount for a film based on his song as early as 1948, though it wasn’t made until 1953. Paramount had intended to reunite Bing Crosby and Fred Astaire from “Holiday Inn,” and Blue Skies (1946). Astaire declined due to disliking the script and his desire to be released from his Paramount contract. He was replaced by Donald O’Connor who later quit due to illness. He was replaced by Danny Kaye, with Rosemary Clooney and Vera Ellen as Crosby and Kaye’s respective love interests. 

“White Christmas,” was Paramount Pictures’ first film produced in the VistaVision process, which was a widescreen format invented by Paramount, which doubled the surface area of 35 mm film. The film became a universal hit, and was the highest-grossing film of 1954, earning 12 million dollars in theatrical rentals. It even earned Berlin another Best Original Song Oscar Nomination for the song “Count Your Blessings Instead of Sheep.”

Bing Crosby’s original 1942 recording was damaged from constant playing, though it was rerecorded in 1947 by Crosby, and the Darby Singers with the Trotter Orchestra. That is the version most often heard today, and has sold about 50 million copies. One of those copies caught the attention of a five-year-old Michael Buble, which triggering his interest in jazz. Buble himself recorded the song as a duet with Shania Twain on his Christmas album in 2012. Their duet was re-recorded by the cast of Glee that same year. Gwen Stefani and Meghan Trainor also recorded their own versions: Stefani sang the duet version with Seth McFarlane in 2017, and Trainor sang her solo version in 2020.

The movie-musical “White Christmas” was adapted for Broadway in 2008. It opened at the Marquis Theatre on November 23rd, 2008 and played a total of 53 performances. The show received two Tony Award Nominations for Best Choreography and Best Orchestrations, and in addition to including many of the film’s beloved songs, the show also featured Berlin songs that were not written for the movie, including “I’ve Got My Love to Keep Me Warm,” and “Let Yourself Go.” The show was revived the following year in 2009, and played again the Marquis for a total of 51 performances.

Transitioning from pages of music, to movie screens, to the Broadway stage, “White Christmas,” is a special song for many reasons. It’s a song that’s about the kind of Christmas we all want and/or hope to have with lyrics like “Where treetops glisten and children to listen to hear sleigh bells in the snow.” And the irony is, even if we don’t get to experience a white Christmas (which we usually don’t in Texas), just listening to the song itself can still warm our hearts during the holiday season: “May your days be merry and bright. And may all your Christmases be white!”