Carmerella’s Reviews > Home Work: A Memoir of My Hollywood Years > Status Update

Standing in the bright spotlight, I attracted a host of fans from the insect world, ending up with a moth in my bra, another in my eye, and one in my mouth. Since I was mid-song, I pocketed the latter in my cheek and eventually swallowed it at a discreet moment. Yuck.

we were invited to a party at the home of a very powerful Hollywood agent. I can’t remember why we chose to attend; we were so seldom partygoers. When we arrived at the house, we were confronted by a classic “scene” for those days, but one that I had yet to witness. A group of guests were doing lines of coke in the sunken living room. During dinner, the coke was passed around as dessert.

Blake and I spent the first two months of the New Year writing. He was finishing the screenplay he had started in Switzerland, a western called Wild Rovers. I was trying to push forward with Mandy (children’s book)

I was frightened he’d be unapproachable and that we wouldn’t connect, but he turned out to be just the opposite. He was funny and lugubrious about himself, and I learned that he was a great connoisseur of wine and art. I left feeling excited to be working with him. - Julie on meeting Alfred Hitchcock

I missed Tony’s friendship, his dignity and gentleness, and wanted to hold on to that. I worried that I risked losing it by not making up my mind. My sleep was chaotic and disrupted, and I wrestled with fearful dreams, loneliness, and depression.

the villa is now a museum devoted to the von Trapp family and there is no mention of the German occupation, you can literally feel the evil that once permeated those walls.

I never visited the real von Trapp villa while filming The Sound of Music, but fifty years later, when Diane Sawyer and I were in Salzburg for the anniversary of the film, we went there and we both got chills.

home is a feeling as much as it is a place; it is as much about loving what I do as being where I am. - Julie Andrews

To me, it’s an anthem that speaks to one’s homeland, no matter where that may be, and it moves me deeply. I spent so much of my early life trying to unify my need for home with my commitment to work. These days, I’ve come to realize that home is a feeling as much as it is a place; it is as much about loving what I do as being where I am.

“Edelweiss” is the last song Oscar Hammerstein ever wrote, and it is my favorite song in the film, despite the fact that I only sing it with the von Trapp ensemble. I have, however, sung it many times in the years since.