In Victor/Victoria, Julie Andrews played a singer who finds success by pretending to be a man pretending to be a woman, in one of her most celebrated comic roles.
Victor/Victoria was released in 1982, directed by Blake Edwards. It was set in Paris in the 1930s. Julie Andrews played Victoria Grant, a soprano who cannot find work, who is persuaded by the entertainer Toddy, played by Robert Preston, to perform as Count Victor Grazinski, a Polish female impersonator. James Garner played King Marchand, the Chicago nightclub owner who is drawn to Victoria while doubting his own reaction to Victor.
The film’s comedy came from identity, performance and misunderstanding, and Andrews handled all three with ease. She sang in both registers, so to speak, and she made Victoria’s ambition and vulnerability equally believable. The musical numbers, with music by Henry Mancini, were integral to the story, not interruptions to it.
Victor/Victoria won an Academy Award for its music, and it remains the film most often mentioned when people discuss Andrews’s later career. It was also a personal project: Edwards directed, Andrews starred, and the story’s warmth and tolerance gave it a lasting appeal. It was a fitting late-career triumph, combining the musical skill of her early years with the comic confidence she had developed over two decades on screen.