Thoroughly Modern Millie let Julie Andrews return to musical comedy, this time as a 1920s flapper determined to make her own way in New York.
Thoroughly Modern Millie was released in 1967, directed by George Roy Hill. Julie Andrews played Millie Dillmount, a young woman who arrives in New York in 1922 determined to be modern: she cuts her hair, raises her hemline, learns to dance the Charleston and sets out to find a job and, she hopes, a rich husband. Mary Tyler Moore played her friend Dorothy, and Carol Channing played the eccentric landlady Muzzy Van Hossmere.
The film was a colourful musical comedy, with songs and dance numbers that played on the styles of the 1920s. Andrews was in her element, combining brisk comic timing with musical numbers that suited her clear voice. The story also had a darker subplot, involving a white-slavery ring run from a hotel, which gave the comedy an unexpected edge, although the film treated it lightly.
Thoroughly Modern Millie won an Academy Award for its music score, and it remains one of the most enjoyable of Andrews’s musical films. It showed that, even after the dramatic roles of the mid-1960s, she could still lead a big, cheerful musical, and it kept her name at the centre of Hollywood musicals at a time when the genre was beginning to change.