My Fair Lady was the must-see hit show of the 1950s and, during her long three and half year run with it in both New York and London, Julie was visited backstage by a steady stream of high-profile international dignitaries and celebrities. After one of her Broadway performances, Julie was paid a dressing room visit by none other than ‘La Divina’ herself, Maria Callas.

In her 2008 autobiography, Home, Julie describes the encounter thus:

The great opera singer Maria Callas came to see us. Afterward, she asked me how many performances I did a week.
"Eight," I replied.
"How do you do that?” she was genuinely amazed. “How do you survive? At the height of the season I sing maybe two performances a week or, at the very most, three. You do eight shows a week, night after night, and two on Wednesdays and Saturdays. Not only that, but you sing and you speak, which means you have to keep changing your vocal placement.”
She was truly impressed, and I was grateful for the acknowledgment of how hard we were all working.” (210)

One wonders if the conversation was exactly quite as Julie remembers here, but it doesn’t require too much of a stretch to imagine Callas being impressed by Julie and sharing her enthusiasm. The Callas of popular myth is often unfairly reduced to a stereotype of shrewish intemperance but biographical portraits reveal that, while she certainly had a healthy ego and volatile personality, she was charming and witty and capable of great human warmth: “the tigress and the lamb” as the title of one slightly sudsy biography puts it (Bret, 1998). By all accounts, Callas, in her youth, had also been an avowed fan of popular Hollywood musicals, with a particular enthusiasm for Deanna Durbin, so it’s entirely likely that she’d have responded warmly to Julie in My Fair Lady.

It’s not clear exactly when the backstage meeting between Julie and Callas took place though it would have to have been some time during April 1956-April 1958 while Julie was in the Broadway production and one suspects it would most likely have been in late-56/early-57 when Callas was in New York for her Metropolitan Opera debut. In this period, Callas was at the height of her global fame, hounded almost everywhere she went by the press, so photos must surely have been taken of the meeting between Julie and Callas but, as far as is known by this author at least, they’ve never surfaced publicly. However, should anyone reading this happen to have copies in their possession and, ahem, care to share, shouts of jubilant gratitude would ring across the Julie-verse.

The absence of hard documentary evidence does however facilitate the flowering of fantasy and, here in the Parallel Julie-verse we like to imagine that the meeting of the two legends sparked an instant, if unlikely, friendship à laJulie and Carol. After the show, we fancy that Julie and Maria retired together to a nearby Italian eatery where the bowls of pasta al pomodoro got cold on the table as the gals chatted gaily into the night, swapping stories over glasses of chianti about their years as childhood performers and the thorny difficulties of life with an ambitious stage mother. Exchanging phone numbers, the two vowed to keep in touch and a firm friendship soon blossomed.

Commentators were surprised to say the least when, in 1959, Julie and Maria announced that they would perform together in a one-off special at London’s Covent Garden, but even the most skeptical naysayers had to admit the show was a triumph. From the light-hearted opening where the two performers poked fun at each other’s image—“You’re so Broadway, you’re so bright lights and high kicks and I’m so La Scala”—to the closing medley of “A History of Coloratura Music Hall,” the show revealed new layers of hidden talent for both stars. “Who knew Callas could be such a hysterical clown?,” gushed The Times, while The London Evening Standard enthused that “Andrews matched Callas high note for thrilling high note and, by the end of their breathtaking performance of the ‘Flower Duet’ from Lakmé, there was scarcely a dry eye in the house.”

However, the night of theatrical triumph ended sourly. Backstage after the show, Callas was convinced Julie took seventeen curtain calls after her solo performance of “I Could Have Danced All Night,” while she had only received sixteen for her “Mad Scene” from Lucia di Lammermoor. A frightful spat erupted with Callas chasing Julie out of the theatre with a fusillade of fiery Greek expletives, and a legendary feud was born…

Sources:
Andrews, Julie. Home: A Memoir of My Early Years. New York: Hyperion, 2008.

Bret, David. Maria Callas: The Tigress and the Lamb. London: Robson Books, 1998.

Huffington, Arianna. Maria Callas: The Woman behind the Legend. New York: Cooper Square Press, 2002.