In 1949, when Julie Andrews was 13 and Tony Walton was 14, he saw her perform in the title role of Emile Littler's Eighth Annual London Pantomime of "Humpty Dumpty." The following day, he visited her -- they lived in the same town -- and soon after sent her a letter from his boarding school. The rest is -- well, you know.
Miraculously, that handwritten letter, complete with Walton's illustration of Sherluk Glug, a toad from a children's book he was trying to write, can be seen in a new exhibit at the Sag Harbor Cinema devoted to the relationship, personal and professional, of the couple, who married in 1959. Although they divorced in 1968 and both remarried, they remained close friends and, at times, collaborators.
"Julie and Tony," which includes personal correspondence, rare sketches, and objects related to their collaboration, is on display on the cinema's third floor. The exhibition is part of a yearlong retrospective devoted to Ms. Andrews, which launched in June with a screening of "Victor/Victoria" and continued in August with a showing of "Thoroughly Modern Millie."
It's fitting that the primary focus of the exhibit is "Mary Poppins," Ms. Andrews's first motion picture, which will be shown at the cinema on Sunday at 4 p.m., followed by a conversation between the actress and Giulia D'Agnolo Vallan, the theater's artistic director. The film will also be shown on Saturday morning at 11.
Among the memorabilia featured in "Julie and Tony" is the original program from the world premiere of "Mary Poppins," and a photograph of Ms. Andrews, Walton, Walt Disney, and Lilian Disney, signed by Disney.
The original copies of personal correspondence include a thank-you note from Diana Ross to Walton for his work on "The Wiz" and a letter from Stephen Sondheim, in which he says of Mary Poppins, "it's at best uneven." Fortunately, the composer wrote as a close friend of the couple.
One wall of the exhibit is lined with Walton's sketches for the characters in "Mary Poppins," and a display cabinet is devoted to "The Great American Mousical," a children's book by Ms. Andrews and her daughter, Emma Walton Hamilton, illustrated by Walton. Original sketches by Walton for the book, which was published in 2006, are also on view.
A second exhibit, set for spring of 2023, will focus on the collaboration between Ms. Andrews and her second husband, Blake Edwards. "Like the rest of the retrospective, the two third-floor shows were conceived together with Ms. Andrews, and they could not have been possible without her generosity and the collaboration of Emma Hamilton and her family," said Ms. Vallan.
Brenna Leaver, a local artist and filmmaker, styled the exhibit, and Amelia Garner, the cinema's programming assistant, supervised the research.
Of "Mary Poppins," Ms. Vallan says it is "a work of genius in so many ways -- Disney's and his animators', the Sherman Brothers's, Tony Walton's, and, of course Julie Andrews's." The film received 13 Academy Award nominations and won six, including best actress for Ms. Andrews, who also took home a Golden Globe. Walton was nominated for a best costume design Oscar.
