THAT CHRISTMAS OF 1951, I was invited to play the role of Princess Balroulbadour—the principal girl—in Emile Littler’s holiday pantomime Aladdin back at the London Casino. Jean Carson was to play the title role.

Aladdin was an elaborate production. The Genie’s cave at the end of the first act was dazzling to behold, and there was a huge ballet, beautifully designed and executed, in the second act.

I wore exotic, sparkling headdresses, which I loved, and a lot of satin kimono-style robes with long, draped arms. The setting was Middle-Eastern, but I looked more Japanese than Persian. I also wore ballet slippers, to keep my height down and make Jean Carson look taller than me.

The cast included a Danish acrobatic troupe, the Olanders—five lads who, clad in silk pantaloons and waistcoats, performed death-defying gymnastics: springboards, leaps, balancing acts. Every time they were onstage, I had to come down to watch—they were that good. A special combination of bravura and muscular strength, with lean, beautiful bodies.

One of the acrobats—the best—was a young man called Fred who executed something like twelve amazing butterfly leaps around the stage. He was attractive, fit (obviously), and very gentle and dear.

My mother knew that I was fond of him, and she said, wisely, “Bring him down to The Meuse for a weekend.” Later she joked that he never stopped swinging from our chandeliers (we didn’t have any).

My mother was ever-present. Fred and I would sit on the couch, bodies pressed together, and there was a lot of hugging and kissing. Mum plied her sewing machine across the room, her back to us but rigidly alert.

I was heartbroken when the run of the show ended. Fred went off with the Olanders as they continued to tour around England and Europe. Later in the year, I went with Auntie Gladdy to see their act at a theater outside London and was able to say hello to him backstage. My heart broke all over again because I thought this would be the last time I’d ever see him.

Walking along the station platform to board our train home, I was miserable. I said something dramatic to Auntie Gladdy, like, “How will life ever be the same?” I must have been a complete bore all evening, because she simply exploded.

“Oh for God’s sake, Julie! You’ve got your whole life in front of you. You don’t think there’ll be other lovely young men?”

She said it so clearly that life just fell back into perspective, thank goodness. Fred occasionally wrote to me from Denmark, but eventually our friendship just petered out.

DURING THE RUN of Aladdin, I traveled to London, as always, on the train. I would then either take a taxi or go on the Underground to the theater, do my two performances, then travel home late at night. If my mother or Dingle didn’t pick me up from the station, I would walk home. There was an outside light by The Meuse’s front door, but my mother would often forget to turn it on. The long driveway with the towering rhododendron bushes on either side was dark as could be, and I would whistle cheerfully in order to confound the molester I imagined was waiting to pounce on me.

I complained about the front door light and expressed my fear to Mum.

“Who on earth would be interested in you?” she said. “Why would anyone want to attack you?”

That did the trick!

ON FEBRUARY 6, 1952, King George VI died. He had been our monarch for sixteen years—almost my entire life—since reluctantly being crowned after the unexpected abdication of his brother, Edward, in 1936.

He had been in failing health for some time. The war had taken its toll, and his heavy smoking had led to the development of lung cancer. Princess Elizabeth had assumed more and more of her father’s royal duties as his health deteriorated. She received the news of his passing during the first stage of a Commonwealth tour to Kenya, Australia, and New Zealand. Having left Britain a princess, she returned as Queen at the age of twenty-five.

FOLLOWING ALADDIN, I spent the spring touring the provinces in a revue produced by Charlie Tucker called Look In. Charlie had many clients, and he decided to put several of them together in one show, presumably to guarantee them work. I believe it was his first attempt at a production, and it was tacky beyond words.

Among the many venues, we played at the Theatre Royal—Portsmouth, the Birmingham Hippodrome, the Nottingham Empire, the Palace in Blackpool, the Finsbury Park Empire in London (which I liked, as it meant I could stay at home and travel up to the show each day), the Bristol Hippodrome, and theaters in Swindon, Cardiff, Swansea, and Northampton.

The show starred a comedian, Alfred Marks, with whom I had briefly worked on the radio show Educating Archie, but I didn’t know him very well. He seemed a little hedonistic, a man with large appetites. His girlfriend, Paddie O’Neil, was also in the show. She was bleach-blonde—a soubrette—and onstage she exuded a winning awareness of all things sexy. She and Alfred made a good team.

Both the show and the tour were done on a shoestring; the costumes were rented, which meant they had all been worn before. The sets were pieced together from other productions. The title of the show referred to the increasing importance of television in people’s lives, Look In being a take on the more familiar “Listen In” catchphrase used by radio.

Because I was touring on my own, my mother and, I suspect, Charlie Tucker asked Alfred and Paddie if they would keep an eye on me and take me under their wing. Initially I slept in the same room as they did, on a rollaway cot. I would take myself to bed early and they would return to the hotel quite late. It was difficult for me, and must have been truly irritating for them. None of us was happy about the arrangement, and a separate room for me was soon provided.

Paddie behaved strangely toward me. On the one hand, she kindly showed me how to put on a basic stage makeup. In those days, one plastered greasy panstick on one’s face, but it would cake around the hairline. “Once you’ve put it on and powdered, take a toothbrush and scrub the hairline to get the pancake and powder out and smooth the edge a little better,” she told me. But another time, as she came offstage, I was in the wings and gushed, “That was great, Paddie. Oh, I do love you!” She brushed past me and said, “Well, I hate you.”

I may have been foolish and sycophantic, but it was a difficult remark to weather. Paddie could be charming, but I learned not to trust her. My diary entries for this period are filled with notes like “Can’t wait to go home.”

ALTHOUGH I WAS soon to be seventeen, I was still being billed as “Britain’s youngest singing star” and I was now performing in the penultimate spot of the show. I did several radio broadcasts at this time, and continued the weeks of vaudeville and individual concerts. Throughout the year I suffered from bouts of laryngitis—my tonsils were chronically infected—but I didn’t worry about it much, and always tried my best to sing through it.

In early September, I had a small introduction not only to the world of animated film but also to the art of dubbing, which I found fascinating. The Rose of Baghdad was a Czechoslovakian film originally made in 1949. It was now to be distributed in the UK, and it told the tale of a beautiful singing princess, somewhat in the spirit of Aladdin or Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves. The role of Princess Zeila had been sung by a soprano with a high voice of great beauty. The producers wanted me to dub the songs into English, but record with the original orchestrations. I had a coloratura voice, but these songs were so freakishly high that, though I managed them, there were some words that I struggled with in the upper register.

I wasn’t terribly satisfied with the result. I didn’t think I had sung my best. But I remember seeing the film and thinking that the animation was beautiful. I’m pleased now that I did the work, for since then I don’t recall ever tackling such high technical material.