Although she never starred in any original productions of his shows on Broadway, Richard Rodgers described Sally Ann Howes, who has died aged 91, as “the greatest singer who ever sang on the American musical stage”. Best known for playing Truly Scrumptious opposite Dick Van Dyke as Caractacus Potts in the film Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (1968), Howes was a classic instance of the star who never really was, despite her talent and impeccable pedigree.
She had dual nationality in Britain and the US, like Julie Andrews, in whose track she followed, first as a child star in British films before and after the second world war, then as Eliza Doolittle in My Fair Lady in 1958. The show marked her Broadway debut, and she played in it for a year, and for a higher salary than her predecessor. When Andrews declined the role of Truly Scrumptious, in she stepped.
In 1973 the hills were alive again, not with the sound of Julie, but of Sally, as she led a US tour of The Sound of Music. The upside of this nearly star status was that Howes could make surprising and adventurous choices in her work, such as appearing in a West End thriller, Lover (also 1973) by Brian Clemens, with Max Wall, or a musical version of James Joyce’s The Dead (2000), with Blair Brown and Christopher Walken, off-Broadway and, briefly, on.
Although she was six years older than Andrews, the parallel career landmarks of both were uncanny. Three years before Andrews made her name in New York in Sandy Wilson’s The Boy Friend (1954), Howes made her stage debut in a show for which Wilson had written the lyrics, Caprice (1951), a musical comedy of domestic confusion in the south of France, at the Alhambra theatre in Glasgow.
Unfortunately, on her very first number on any stage, the conductor fumbled the score to the floor and Howes had to sing unaccompanied while the music sheets were noisily gathered, the instruments picked up their places one by one and, following them tentatively, she modulated gradually back into the correct key. The show never reached the West End.
Howes did, however, get there later in 1951, in a revue, Fancy Free (not the Jerome Robbins ballet) at the Prince of Wales theatre in London. In 1953 she established herself fully in the West End when she played Jennifer Rumson in Paint Your Wagon (featuring the songs Wand’rin’ Star, and I Talk to the Trees) for 18 months at Her Majesty’s theatre. In playing opposite her father, the musical comedy star Bobby Howes (the original Mr Cinders), she was at least, and at last, fulfilling her destiny.
Howes was the second child of Bobby and his wife, the actor and singer Patricia Malone. Her older brother, Peter, became a musician. Born in St John’s Wood, she grew up in London and Hertfordshire surrounded by her parents’ show-business friends (Cicely Courtneidge and Jack Hulbert were neighbours), and was educated at Queenswood school in Hatfield.
Her first film was the title role in Thursday’s Child (1942), written by Rodney Ackland, co-starring Wilfrid Lawson and Stewart Granger. Her prodigious juvenile output in the subsequent decade included Dead of Night (1945), an anthology horror film with Michael Redgrave, Googie Withers and Frederick Valk, the first sound screen adaptation of Nicholas Nickleby (1947; she was Kate), Anna Karenina (1948) with Vivien Leigh, The History of Mr Polly (1949), with John Mills, and Honeymoon Deferred (1951) with Kieron Moore and Griffith Jones.
She later said how unhappy she was with some of these films and she eventually managed to break a seven-year contract with Rank so that she could move on to the stage. She married the actor Maxwell Coker, who had been in the first London production of Oklahoma!, in 1950 (they divorced in 1953) and then Richard Adler, the lyricist of the Broadway hits The Pajama Game and Damn Yankees, in 1958.
Adler wrote Kwamina (1961) for her, a Broadway musical set in a village in west Africa which, despite choreography by Agnes de Mille, proved a misfire in a heated time of civil rights protest. “Almost liked the play, loved the loincloths,” wrote one critic, and the show closed after just 32 performances.
Still on Broadway, she had a popular success in a 1963 revival of Lerner and Loewe’s Brigadoon and broadened her appeal on television on both sides of the Atlantic, making appearances on game shows and variety specials, including six Sally Ann Howes shows for British television in 1960. Having become a US citizen, she was invited to sing at the White House by three US presidents, Dwight Eisenhower, John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson.
After Lover closed early in 1973, she played opposite Denis Quilley in George Bernard Shaw’s Man and Superman at the Yvonne Arnaud theatre, Guildford, and at the Adelphi theatre, London, opposite Peter Wyngarde in a sumptuous revival of The King and I, also at the Adelphi. In 1977 she joined Tommy Steele for 10 weeks in Hans Andersen at the Palladium and later played Gertrude in a touring production of Hamlet (Hilton McRae as the prince, Donald Pickering as Claudius) in 1983.
Chitty Chitty Bang Bang was undoubtedly her major movie, although she was appreciably noted vying with Diane Cilento for the affections of Kenneth More’s well-mannered butler in Lewis Gilbert’s The Admirable Crichton (1957), with Cecil Parker and Martita Hunt. She also acquired a minor cult following for her part in Alvin Rakoff’s Death Ship (1980), a grisly horror movie in which she co-starred with Richard Crenna, George Kennedy and Kate Reid.
By the time she appeared in the television miniseries of Judith Krantz’s Secrets in 1992, she was more often seen on stage in one-off concert appearances, such as A Little Night Music with New York City Opera in 1990, or in a Sunday charity performance such as the rarely seen Semi-Monde by Noël Coward at the Royalty theatre, London, in 1989. In 1990 she took a solo show, From This Moment On, for just three performances to the Edinburgh festival.
In 1997 she sang Alice Blue Gown from the musical Irene at the Palladium in a memorial show for the critic Jack Tinker. That bizarre celebration – Tinker’s surviving critical colleagues danced chaotically through Sit Down You’re Rocking the Boat from Guys and Dolls – was produced by Cameron Mackintosh, who in 2007 persuaded her to return to My Fair Lady, this time as Mrs Higgins, on yet another US tour.
After divorcing Adler in 1966, Howes married Andrew Maree in 1969. They divorced in 1970 and she married Douglas Rae in 1972. Rae died in September 2021. She is survived by Andrew, a son from her marriage to Adler.
Gemini said
Sally Ann Howes (1930–2021) was a quintessential “theatre royalty” figure whose career spanned seven decades and transitioned from the gritty realism of post-war British cinema to the height of Broadway and Hollywood musical splendor. While she is forever immortalized as Truly Scrumptious, a critical analysis reveals her as one of the most technically proficient vocalists of her generation—an actress who traded the “starlet” system for the longevity of the stage.
I. Career Overview: The Prodigy and the Professional
1. The Child Star and Ealing Years (1943–1950s)
Born into a theatrical dynasty (her father was comedian Bobby Howes), Sally Ann began her career as a child actor during WWII.
The Debut: She debuted in Thursday’s Child (1943) at age 12.
The Noir and Gothic Era: She became a staple at Ealing Studios, appearing in the horror classic Dead of Night (1945) and the Victorian melodrama Pink String and Sealing Wax (1945). These early roles established her as a sophisticated young presence who could handle darker, more psychological material.
2. The Broadway Revolution (1958–1960s)
In 1958, she achieved the impossible: replacing Julie Andrews as Eliza Doolittle in the original Broadway run of My Fair Lady.
The Media Sensation: Her arrival in New York made her a sensation, appearing on the cover of Life magazine. She brought a different, perhaps more “aristocratic” sharpness to Eliza that garnered critical debate over who inhabited the role more effectively.
The Tony Nomination: She earned a Tony nomination for the 1962 revival of Brigadoon, firmly establishing her as a premier leading lady of the American musical stage.
3. The Truly Scrumptious Era and Beyond (1968–2000s)
Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (1968): This role defined her global legacy. Opposite Dick Van Dyke, she displayed an effortless, doll-like precision (notably in the “Doll on a Music Box” sequence) that showcased her classical training and breath control.
Late-Career Integrity: She never retired, moving into complex character roles like Desiree Armfeldt in A Little Night Music (1990) and originating the role of Aunt Julia Morkan in the musical adaptation of James Joyce’s The Dead (2000), for which she received a Drama Desk nomination.
II. Detailed Critical Analysis
1. The Vocal “Self-Correction”
Critically, Howes is noted for her intellectual approach to her voice. In the early 1950s, frustrated that her film roles didn’t use her singing talent, she famously took a break from the screen to “lower” her speaking voice through rigorous training.
The Result: She developed a rich, resonant soprano that had more “earth” in it than the chirpy ingenues of the time. This allowed her to transition from the “pink-cheeked” roles of her youth to the more complex, ironical roles of Sondheim in her later years.
2. The “Refined” Naturalism
In your favorite 1940s Noir and 60s Kitchen Sink dramas, Howes provided a necessary structural elegance.
Contrast to the Grit: In The History of Mr. Polly (1949), she played Christabel with a delicate, ethereal quality that represented the hero’s “dream life.”
The “Straight” Technique: Analysts note that Howes’ greatest skill was her ability to play “straight” in fantastical settings. Whether she was in a flying car or a haunted house, she treated the circumstances with absolute, sober reality. This groundedness is what made the “magic” of her films feel believable.
3. Subverting the “Perfect Woman”
As Truly Scrumptious, Howes took what could have been a two-dimensional “love interest” and gave her a suffragette-like steel.
The Modernity of Truly: Critics have pointed out that Truly is often more competent than the men around her. Howes played her with a “sharpness”—a woman who drives her own car and speaks her own mind. She infused the 1910s setting with a 1960s independence, making her a precursor to the modern “strong female lead.”