The Times - UK (2021-12-22)

the times | Wednesday December 22 2021 55

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Artist famous for his

supersized self-portraits

Chuck Close

Page 56

As the daughter of Bobby Howes, a
popular star of stage and screen, Sally
Ann Howes learnt the tricks of her
future trade at an early age. “When I
was making the transition from child
to mature actress,” she recalled, “I
auditioned for a role and was asked if
I smoked. Naturally, I said yes. My
father had taught me long before that
when a casting director asked if you
could do something, you immediately
said yes, and if you couldn’t you
learnt darn fast. At any rate, I learnt to
smoke for that role and when I finished
it, I stopped.”
The same principle came into play in
1966, when, as an established musicals
star with silvery soprano vocals, she
was asked if she could dance as well as
sing. Since the role in question was in a
musical set in Edwardian times, she
imagined her footwork would be
hidden under long skirts, so, following
her father’s advice, she said yes. The
film was Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and
not only would her character, Truly
Scrumptious, have to dance in the en-
semble Toot Sweets number, she would
also have to perform what was effec-
tively a solo song and dance routine for
the Doll on a Music Box set piece that
takes place at a pivotal point in the film,
when Truly and Caractacus, played by
Dick Van Dyke, masquerade as life-
sized toys brought into the castle where
children are being held captive.
A crash course of dancing lessons fol-
lowed before the day came for the film-
ing of the scene in which Truly pretends
to be a jointed wooden doll. Since the
toys perform in front of a vast hall full of
party guests, she found herself with the
eyes of 150 extras fixed on her every,
angular, movement. “It was the most
difficult thing in the world — it was
mathematical to the nth degree. Every-
thing’s on a count. They put me up on
this little box and off I went. I got it in
one take, and I got a round of applause
from all the extras.”
Sally Ann Howes was born in St
John’s Wood, London, in 1930 to Bobby
Howes and Patricia Malone (née
Clark), a singer and actress. Their eldest
child, Peter, would become a classical
clarinettist. During the Second World
War, she was packed off to the family’s
second home, in Hertfordshire. “Father
sometimes brought theatrical people to
visit on weekends, but they were never
identified much to me. They were
always just plain Mr So-and-So,” she
said.
When she was 12 years old, one of
these Mr So-and-Sos, an agent, re-
membered her when he heard that
there was a call out for a young girl to
play the leading role in a new film. He
asked her parents to allow her to make
a screen test. “They took me to London
after school one day,” Howes recalled,
“and I made the test in a tiny hole in
Wardour Street. I had no idea of what
was going on, but I got the part.”
That part, in Thursday’s Child (1943),
was of a schoolgirl who becomes a child
star. It proved prescient. Her glowing
reviews landed her a contract with Ea-
ling Studios, where her films included
the classic portmanteau horror film
Dead of Night (1945). From there she
transferred to Rank, where she played
the winsome Kate in The Life and Ad-
ventures of Nicholas Nickleby (1947) and

two sons after the death of their

mother. She continued to raise them

after her divorce. Christopher Adler, a

songwriter, died in 1984; Andrew

Adler survives her. After a very short

third marriage to Andrew Maree, she

married the British literary agent

Douglas Rae in 1973. That marriage

lasted for 48 years and they were, ac-

cording to her nephew, “inseparable”.

Rae died in September.

After My Fair Lady her career in

musical theatre blossomed. She

became the first artist to be nominat-

ed for a Tony award for a perform-

ance in a revival when she played

Fiona in the New York City Opera’s

production of Lerner and Loewe’s

Brigadoon in 1962. Jackie Kennedy

loved the show and invited the cast to

perform at a state dinner at the White

House. Halfway through a song, the

taped orchestral accompaniment slow-

ly died only to return a few awkward

moments later. It transpired that the

First Lady had secretly plugged in her

personal tape recorder and had blown

all the fuses.

An award-winning television version

of Brigadoon (1966) — about which The

New York Times said “it would be diffi-

cult to imagine a better Fiona than Sally

Anne Howes” — caught the eye of the

Bond producer Cubby Broccoli, who

was looking to emulate the success of

Mary Poppins with his lavish musical

adaptation of Ian Fleming’s Chitty Chit-

ty Bang Bang. He offered her the part of

Truly Scrumptious after Julie Andrews

had turned it down. Filming took a full

‘It was the most difficult

thing in the world...

but I got it in one take’

Obituaries

Sally Ann Howes

Much-married singer and actress best known for playing Truly Scrumptious in the musical-fantasy Chitty Chitty Bang Bang

ALAMY; CBS PHOTO ARCHIVE/GETTY IMAGES

Howes learnt the tricks of her trade from her father, Bobby, also a popular performer. Below, with Richard Burton in 1960

year, and despite the film’s instant and

enduring popularity, its reviews at the

time were mixed and more film work

did not materialise.

Apart from the occasional TV part,

she focused on the theatre for the rest of

her career. She toured the UK with The

King and I in the early 1970s before

moving into light opera and operettas

in the 1980s, and featuring in A Little

Night Music by Stephen Sondheim

(obituary, November 27, 2021) at the

New York City Opera in 1990. Her one-

woman show, From This Moment On,

debuted at the 1990 Edinburgh Festival

and she was lured out of semi-retire-

ment in 2007 to take on the part of Mrs

Higgins in Cameron Mackintosh’s tour-

ing production of My Fair Lady.

“I would have liked a film career, but

I didn’t pursue it — I just loved connect-

ing with an audience,” she said. “The

theatre is a drug. The problem is that to

be remembered, you have to do films.”

Sally Ann Howes, actress and singer,

was born on July 20, 1930. She died on

December 19, 2021, aged 91

y

John Mills’s love interest in The History

of Mr Polly (1949).

At the age of 20 she made the move

into musical theatre. Having started

singing lessons towards the end of the

war, she had developed a crystal-clear

soprano voice and that, combined with

stage “business” picked up from her

parents, made her a natural for the

genre. Taking a drop in salary in the

transition from screen to stage, she

made her theatrical debut in the musi-

cal Caprice, in 1950.

She liked to joke that it

had all started when

her father — “my best

friend” — had been

given a rousing

ovation when he

announced his

daughter’s birth

at the end of a

show that he was

headlining. In

1953 they worked

together, playing

father and daughter

in the original 18-

month West End run of

the Lerner and Loewe

musical Paint Your Wagon. The

seasoned trouper could not resist the

urge to upstage the young co-star.

On opening night, she stopped the

show with the song What’s Goin’ on

Here. “The applause went on and on,

and I moved my eyes to stage left and I

saw my father coming on several times,

a little too soon, intentionally. He

taught me everything by example, but

he also gave me things to do if anybody

played games with me on stage. Come

in immediately on someone’s applause,

and you will kill it. And if anybody’s

getting a laugh, lift a cigarette or pat

your hair, use some gesture that will

take the eye and ear away from the

other performer. It’s like having the

atomic bomb.”

More musicals followed, firmly

establishing her as a West End star

though she continued to appear in the

occasional film, notably The Admirable

Crichton, with Kenneth More, in 1957.

By then, she had been married and di-

vorced (her first husband was Maxwell

Coker, an American actor). Her

subsequent engagement to the society

photographer Sterling Henry Nahum,

aka Baron, ended with his

unexpected death in 1956.

On Broadway in

1958, she took over

from Julie Andrews

as Eliza Doolittle,

the flower girl

who becomes a

lady, in Lerner

and Loewe’s hit

musical My Fair

Lady. “The best

afternoon I ever

had was my first

matinee. It was the

performance before

Julie’s last show, and he

wanted me to get a per-

formance under my belt. Moss

[Hart, the director] introduced me. He

announced that ‘Julie Andrews will not

be playing Eliza Doolittle,’ and there

was this audible groan. The audience

felt cheated and I immediately felt I had

been thrown to the wolves. By the end

of the performance, I had turned them.”

Her Broadway debut was big news —

she was on the cover of Life magazine

— and her “dirtier, brasher, bathed in

Cockney” Eliza stood up in its own right

against Julie Andrews’.

Her private life was complicated.

Having married the Broadway com-

poser Richard Adler in 1958, she made

the States her home and adopted his

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