A film mogul wanted flying nanny Mary Poppins to be high as kite by offering her a “spoonful of sugar”.
But Julie Andrews, who played the very proper, magical governess, was not about to take this medicine, whether or not it would go down – or up – in a most delightful way.
Dame Julie, who was also clean-cut Maria in The Sound of Music, politely turned her nose up when pressured to snort cocaine at a party.
Instead she and husband filmmaker husband Blake Edwards told their Hollywood host they were “high on life”.
Julie, now 84, said she was offered the drug at the unidentified Mr Big’s party.
She said: “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 living room.
“During dinner, the coke was passed around as dessert. When it was offered to Blake and me, we both declined.
“The hosts began pushing me hard, curious to see how Mary Poppins would react. The peer pressure was intense.
"Blake came to my aid. ‘She doesn’t need any of that stuff,’ he said. ‘She’s high enough on life as it is.’
“Mercifully, they backed down. When we left, there were bodies on the floor, leaning against the wall, totally wasted.”
Surreal
Julie won a best actress Oscar for 1964’s Mary Poppins, which was her big screen debut, and a Golden Globe for Sound of Music the following year.
Julie, who recounts the 1971 anecdote in her new memoir, admitted she found it difficult to make sense of her friends’ drug-fuelled antics.
She wrote: “Back at home, I stood at my open kitchen window and looked out across the golf course, trying to make some sense of the surreal experience.
“Suddenly all the sprinklers came on. As they arced over the greens in the starry night, I felt the coolness of the air and smelled the water on the earth.
“It brought me back to reality and restored my equilibrium.”
- Home Work: A Memoir of My Hollywood Years by Julie Andrews is out now.
