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. The show follows an absent-minded inventor Caractacus Potts who restores a broken-down old racing car with the help of his children Jemima and Jeremy. Soon the family discover the car has magical powers, and along with the delectable Truly Scrumptious, the family end up on a hilarious fantastical adventure to far off lands.

In the story, the nasty Baron Bomburst, tyrant of the fictional land of Vulgaria, attempts to steal Chitty. The family escape thanks to Chitty's miraculous transformation into a boat, and Truly goes home to Scrumptious Manor ("Lovely Lonely Man"). The Baron sends two bungling spies to get the car, but they fail repeatedly and eventually decide to kidnap Caractacus instead, but mistake Grandpa for Caractacus. As they fly away in their airship ("Posh!"), Chitty sprouts wings and propellers, and the family pursues the airship all the way to Vulgaria. Opening at Mayflower Theatre, Southampton on 30 April 2024 where it will play until 12 May 2024, the production will then tour venues in England, Scotland, Ireland and Wales. See below for full tour schedule. 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. Irwin Kostal supervised and conducted the music for the film based on songs written by the Sherman Brothers, Richard and Robert, and the musical numbers were staged by Marc Breaux and Dee Dee Wood. At the 41st Academy Awards, the film's title song was nominated for Best Song – Original for the Picture.As Caractacus' story concludes, an awkward moment ensues when the children ask Caractacus if the story ends with him and Truly getting married. Caractacus does not answer and tries to apologize for his children when he drops Truly off at her manor, saying that the difference in their social status would make a relationship between them ridiculous, offending Truly. and there's a steam train bit and the railway line on the bridge before the 2 spies catched the wrong car 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.

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. This new production will be directed by Thom Southerland (Titanic, Parade), choreographed by Karen Bruce (BBC’s Strictly Come Dancing, The Bodyguard) with Set and Costume design by Morgan Large (Newsies, Joseph and the Technicolour Dreamcoat), Orchestrations and Musical Supervision by George Dyer (The Wizard of Oz, Annie, Billy Elliot) and casting by Debbie O’Brien. Returning glumly to his cottage, Caractacus is surprised to find Lord Scrumptious waiting for him with an offer to buy his candy to sell as a dog treat. Overjoyed that he has finally made a successful invention, he rushes off to tell Truly, inadvertently causing her to crash into the pond once more. He rescues her and they admit their love for each other. Then, as they return home, Chitty flies up into the sky once again, this time without wings.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. Based on Ian Fleming’s timeless story for children and later made into the famous 1968 film, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang features the unforgettable songs by the Sherman Brothers including Toot Sweets, Hushabye Mountain, Truly Scrumptious and the Academy Award-nominated title song, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. 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.