"julie harris & william prince in i am a camera"

Although Christopher Isherwood created the character of Sally Bowles, it was playwright John Van Druten who put her on the stage for the first time in his play I Am a Camera. And it was Van Druten who selected Julie Harris to play her. Having seen Julie three times playing the 12-year-old Frankie in Member of the Wedding, he invited her to audition for the role of Sally.

“The reading happened in my apartment in New York. It was astonishing. Julie turned a timid girl into Sally Bowles before my eyes. I sat and stared at her. She seemed neither to move nor change, and I had no idea how or from where she was invoking all those things. After about five minutes, I even forgot to listen to her. When it was over, we talked about the play and the qualities I wanted from it. Julie finally plucked up the courage to ask: “What about ME?” I had forgotten that there had been any question. I answered: “But of course the part is yours.” After she had left, I told the producers that I did not think I had ever sat in a room with so extraordinary an actress.”

“If there were anyone less obvious to cast in the part of a Bohemian, egocentric trollop, it would be Miss Harris, who captivated the town with her restless, dreamy, innocent adolescent in The Member of the Weddingtwo years ago,” wrote Brooks Atkinson in The New York Times. “But with a sure sense of originality, Mr. Van Druten has now cast her as an impetuous and brilliant adventuress. She is magnificent. Now we all know what we have always wanted to believe, that Miss Harris can play just about anything.”

For her performance as Sally Bowles, Julie won her first Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play.

Other Sallys drawn by Hirschfeld: Jill Haworth, Liza Minnelli, and Natasha Richardson.