Loverly:The Life and Times of My Fair Lady (Broadway Legacies)

by McHugh, Dominic

  Following this, the Theatre Guild and Pascal started pursuing other composers and lyricists, the names on their list including Arthur Schwartz (The Band Wagon), Harold Rome (Wish You Were Here), Richard Adler and Jerry Ross (The Pajama Game), André Previn (one of MGM’s staple conductors and composers), and Harold Arlen (House of Flowers).38 According to D’Andre, “Pascal offered to contact Burton Lane and Yip Harburg [of Finian’s Rainbow fame], but Helburn and Langner thought it would be better to try Leonard Bernstein, Betty Comden, and Adolph Green. Pascal was very enthusiastic about this idea and met with Bernstein two times. Bernstein gave a verbal agreement that he would start work on Pygmalion in the fall.”39 On February 8, 1953, the Times confirmed that “the Theatre Guild has not forgotten about its proposed project to present a musical version of Shaw’s Pygmalion. True, the team of Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe no longer is trying to do the book, score and lyrics. However, overtures now are being played elsewhere.”40

  But at this point Theresa Helburn started to wonder whether the idea of turning Pygmalion into a musical was quite as felicitous as it had at first seemed. A musical version of J. M. Barrie’s play What Every Woman Knows had opened at New York’s National Theatre under the title Maggie and had been condemned by Brooks Atkinson in the New York Times.41 On February 20, 1953, Helburn wrote to Langner that the review “makes me feel more than ever the difficulty of making an almost classic play as a musical. Isn’t Pygmalion really fundamentally more difficult than Barrie’s play? I think we should consider this carefully before concluding the contract, unless the writers have terrific ideas.”42 It is difficult to know whether Bernstein, Comden, and Green—the dream team of On the Town (1944) and Wonderful Town (which opened in February 1953 less than a week after Helburn’s letter)—actually got around to writing anything for Pygmalion, but according to D’Andre, the Theatre Guild relinquished the rights to the play in May, seemingly bringing an end to the projected musical.43

  CHANGING PARTNERS: LERNER AND LOEWE GO THEIR SEPARATE WAYS

  October 1952–September 1954

  In the meantime, Lerner and Loewe had both moved on. For the first time since joining forces with Lerner in the early 1940s, Loewe started to write with a different lyricist. In 1953 he set to work with Harold Rome on a musical to be called A Dancin’ Day, based on Sir Alexander Korda’s 1949 film, itself adapted from the play Saints and Sinners by Paul Vincent Carroll. On May 27, the New York Times ran a story by their correspondent Sam Zolotow saying that Loewe was to write the music for a new show based on Saints and Sinners, with Jerome Chodorov and Joseph Fields to write the book (fresh from their success in writing the book for Bernstein’s Wonderful Town) and Leo Robin (lyricist of Jule Styne’s Gentlemen Prefer Blondes) to write the lyrics.44 Loewe, Chodorov, and Fields went on to be involved with the project, but Robin was soon replaced by Harold Rome, composer and lyricist of the shows Call Me Mister and Wish You Were Here. Rome’s papers at Yale University reveal some details of the progress of Saints and Sinners. On July 8 an agreement was entered into with Alexander Korda and Paul Carroll for the rights to the show.45 Then on August 28 Zolotow reported in his column that Moss Hart was to read the script and that if he agreed to direct the show (as he would later take charge of My Fair Lady) his brother Bernard Hart and Joseph H. Hyman would produce it together, just as they had done with several plays directed by Hart during the 1940s including Dear Ruth, Christopher Blake, and The Secret Room.46

  By September 18 circumstances had changed. Zolotow again wrote about the show, this time saying that Moss Hart had read the book and was interested, but because Chodorov and Fields were busy with their new show, The Girl in Pink Tights, the Saints and Sinners project had been deferred until the next season.47 In fact, a letter from October shows that Loewe’s lawyer was encountering trouble with the rights to Saints and Sinners. The composer had been negotiating with Paul Carroll on the understanding that he was the sole rights holder for the material. But it seems that British Lion Productions, the studio that made the 1949 film, was objecting to the deal, so the first of many delays was incurred.48 On December 9 Zolotow once again turned his attention to Saints and Sinners, reporting that Jack Hylton, the British producer of the London productions of classic musicals such as Call Me Madam and Kiss Me, Kate, would be in charge of the show.49

  By January 26, 1954, a financial deal had been reached between all parties. It is interesting to observe that Loewe was clearly the driving force behind the musical at this stage—a big difference from the traditional depictions of the Lerner-Loewe collaboration, in which Lerner is usually made out to be the more active of the two. For Saints and Sinners the composer had paid the initial $1,000 to Carroll, which Jack Hylton (who is confirmed as the producer) was to repay, along with any further money payable to the British Lion Film Corporation.50 Within a few months, however, Hylton had withdrawn from the show. On June 11, Zolotow reported that although composition was almost complete, Hylton would no longer produce, with Harold Prince a possible replacement; he again commented on the ongoing search on July 21, now mentioning Burgess Meredith as a possible producer.51 But there was still none in place by September, leading Benjamin Aslan, Loewe’s lawyer, to request that Carroll’s representatives accept a smaller payment for the rights to the show than he was ultimately owed, since it was conventionally the producer’s job to pay this sum and no one had yet been found.52

  At this point, Lerner and Loewe reunited on the Pygmalion project, and no further work seems to have been carried out on Saints and Sinners until 1956. It was not completely abandoned, though. The New York Times reported on January 8, 1955, that Fields and Chodorov had “not forgotten Dancin’ Day” but that Rome and Loewe must complete the score first. Rome’s papers indicate that the project was revived in September 1956, six months after the opening of My Fair Lady, when the four collaborators had to pay up or relinquish the rights to Carroll’s play. In October it was decided that the musical would be made into a film, rather than a stage show, something that was later mentioned in the New York Times; and by March 1957 a deal had been reached with Romay Pictures Inc., which would make the film.53 Nothing more seems to have come of it, however—perhaps because of the gradual demise of the movie musical in the 1950s, or perhaps because Loewe was busy on his new musical with Lerner, Gigi—and there is no further mention of it in the Rome papers. An undated typescript for the show has survived, though; some of Loewe’s manuscripts for the songs were sold at an auction at Christie’s in Los Angeles in 1999; and the Library of Congress possesses a thirty-minute composer’s “demo” recording of ten numbers from the show.54 Therefore, more time was evidently spent on this project than has been previously acknowledged, and it would even be theoretically possible to piece the material together to produce some kind of liberal realization of the work. Both script and composer’s demo indicate that the score inclines toward the earlier style of the Loewe of Brigadoon, however, and one can see why the composer of My Fair Lady and Gigi decided to let it go.

  Meanwhile, Lerner—ever the insatiable workaholic—had begun work on new projects with Arthur Schwartz. On March 17, 1953, the New York Times reported that the pair had “reached an agreement with Al Capp to make a musical of his popular cartoon, Li’l Abner, for presentation on Broadway next season. … Mr. Schwartz will compose the music and Mr. Lerner will work out the book and lyrics. Together, they will serve as producers of the venture.”55 The article went on to relate how the idea of making a musical out of Capp’s cartoons had previously been explored by Joshua Logan, the director of South Pacific, and that this would mark the first collaboration between Lerner and Schwartz, who had been a prolific writer of songs for Broadway for more than twenty years.56 The article also reported that Lerner was writing another play for Schwartz, and that the pair was working on a film adaptation of Lerner and Loewe’s 1951 stage show Paint Your Wagon—clear confirmation of a rift between the original collaborators, with three projects outlined for the new Lerner-Schwart
z combination. Their Wagon film had been mentioned in the New York Times as early as February 1953, when it was slated to be “the first feature-length entertainment film to be made in the Cinerama process,” though ultimately the musical did not make it to the screen until 1969 when extra songs were added by Lerner and André Previn.57

  Ian Richardson as Higgins in the 1976 Broadway revival of My Fair Lady (Photofest)

  The Los Angeles Times had also reported on the movie on February 11, stating that it was “all but set for Paint Your Wagon to go before the cameras June 8 as the first Cinerama production here, and a big musical it will be.” In addition to the Lerner and Loewe numbers from Broadway, the article continued, “Lerner and Arthur Schwartz are to write eight new songs.”58 Seven of these songs have survived in piano-vocal manuscript and are in the Arthur Schwartz Collection at the Library of Congress. Two of them lack lyrics, but collectively these numbers represent a substantial amount of work. “Bonanza!” is a lively jig in 6/8 time, and like all these songs, it shows Schwartz’s lightness of touch in combining the thirty-two-bar song form with the atmosphere of the Wild West. “Californey Never Looked So Good” is a similarly upbeat and optimistic number, and though the lyrics for “Kentucky” have not survived, the use of common time, the tempo indication of Allegretto, and the persistently underlined D-major tonality suggest a positive depiction of the state. No words remain for “Paint Your Wagon,” either, but it is marked “Slowly” and features the conventional dotted-rhythm accompaniment of western music, apparently used (as far as one can tell) to poignant effect. Although “Noah was a Wisdom Man” maintains the western tinta of the rest of the numbers, it also serves as a reminder of the Dietz-Schwartz songs of the 1930s revues, both in its fast harmonic rhythm and witty lyrics (“For after days afloat, it has been wrote, / Nobody wanted to leave the boat”). The finest numbers, however, are “Over the Purple Hills” and “There’s Always One You Can’t Forget,” both of which are gentle, romantic ballads in E-flat major.59

  At their best, one can see how the fruits of the Lerner-Schwartz alliance might have boded well for future collaborations. Evidently the pair were able to work together fairly quickly, for they came up with these seven songs in only a few months, and a script is also extant in the private collection of Paul Schwartz, the composer’s son.60 No less importantly, it is easy to understand why Lerner might have turned to Schwartz: as a composer, one of his stylistic facets was the ability to create a lot of expressive internal harmonic movement in a song, something that he shared with Loewe. Had the film come to pass, Lerner and Schwartz might have gone on to create a string of works together, and of course the announcement of two stage works in addition to Paint Your Wagon shows that this was their intention.

  But at this point, a somewhat surprising swap of composers took place. With no progress apparently having been made on Li’l Abner, Schwartz signed up to write the score for a show called By the Beautiful Sea, starring the Broadway veteran Shirley Booth (who had previously featured in Schwartz’s A Tree Grows in Brooklyn). Louis Calta’s New York Times column reported on November 12, 1953, that the composer Burton Lane, who had earlier collaborated with Lerner on the Fred Astaire film Royal Wedding, had abruptly withdrawn from By the Beautiful Sea “because of changes made in the story line,” and that Schwartz would now take over. His work on the new show (due to open in late February 1954) would “not interfere with the plans for Li’l Abner, the musical based on Al Capp’s comic strip,” which, according to Calta, “will go into rehearsal next August.”61

  But Schwartz’s defection to another show seems to have invoked Lerner’s ire, according to the composer’s son, Jonathan Schwartz. Years later, the latter explained how his father had been in need of money and could not afford to wait for the notoriously slow Lerner to get around to working on their projected stage musicals, hence he went to write By the Beautiful Sea.62 Lerner broke off the relationship with Schwartz and teamed up with Lane, who had left the Beautiful Sea show, to write Li’l Abner. On June 21, 1954, it was reported that Abner was one of three musicals under consideration by director Robert Lewis. According to Zolotow’s New York Times column, “Herman Levin expects to have the Alan Jay Lerner–Burton Lane show in shape for a November rehearsal date.”63 Another article of August 15, 1954, confirmed that Lerner was “Now busy collaborating with Burton Lane on the forthcoming stage musicalization of the Li’l Abner comic strip.”64

  But it was not to be. On seeing Gabriel Pascal’s obituary in early July, Lerner thought once more of Pygmalion, and on meeting up with Loewe again on the persuasion of Lerner’s then-wife, Nancy Olson, he realized they could work together on the play.65 Composer and lyricist put everything else aside and set to work. The entrance of Herman Levin into the story at this stage was crucial, since although the Li’l Abner musical did not come to pass in this form (it eventually reached the stage in 1956 with a book by Norman Panama and Melvin Frank, music by Gene De Paul, and lyrics by Johnny Mercer), it was Levin’s determination that brought My Fair Lady about in the face of adversity. Lerner informed Levin that he was putting Li’l Abner to bed for the time being and that he wanted Levin to produce Pygmalion instead, with Loewe as the composer.66 The producer was understandably surprised but trusted Lerner, and there was now no looking back.

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  FROM PAGE TO STAGE

  THE GENESIS OF MY FAIR LADY

  PYGMALION WITH LEVIN, LERNER, AND LOEWE

  October–December 1954

  On October 11, 1954, Herman Levin announced to the press that he was to produce Lerner and Loewe’s musical version of Pygmalion. Sam Zolotow reported that the Lerner-Lane treatment of Li’l Abner had been deferred and that “Pygmalion may be put on here.”1 This caused dismay and shock in the Theatre Guild camp, and Theresa Helburn and Lawrence Langner wrote a letter about the matter to Lerner. He responded on October 19:

  My reaction is puzzlement and bewilderment. Pascal, not The Theatre Guild, was the owner of the rights, and it was he who approached us about the project in California, much before any arrangement with The Theatre Guild … Gaby was negotiating with Thompson and Allen before he died. Suppose that negotiation had been concluded and they had approached Fritz and me and we had accepted? Would you have written us as you did? Of course not. The property belonged to Pascal as it now belongs to his estate, and it is with his estate we negotiated.2

  Lerner’s letter went on to explain that he and Loewe did not return to the Theatre Guild with the project because of the difficulties they had over the royalty agreement. He claimed that everybody else “held firm on their royalty and only the author was asked to accept less than minimum. My ego was not troubled, but my sense of fairness was definitely jarred.” He ended, triumphantly: “Suffice to say I have improved my lot with Herman Levin.” The response from the Theatre Guild was strong: “To say that we have been played a dirty trick is not a fair characterization of what has happened.”3 But in spite of the Guild’s fury at having been left out of a project on which they had once worked so hard, Levin, Lerner, and Loewe moved on with the show.

  The correspondence from Levin’s papers begins on October 2, 1954, with a letter from Noël Coward in London to Levin in New York, in which he stated that he was about to play cabaret seasons in London and New York, where he was due to arrive in the first week of December. The significance of this becomes clearer in Levin’s reply from October 15: “When you get here the first week in December, I hope that you will be able to spend an hour with Alan Lerner, Fritz Loewe and myself. We want to tell you of a project that may interest you.” Clearly Lerner and Loewe had revived the original idea of having Coward as Henry Higgins, but this letter almost ends all mention of Coward’s connection with the Broadway production. The meeting may have taken place, but on January 25, 1955, Coward sent Levin a very final refusal in which he indicated that he was committed elsewhere well into 1956.4

  No leading man for the show, then, but preparations were underway. Levin’s next move
was to contact the designer Oliver Smith, his old friend and colleague from musicals such as Jule Styne’s Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1949) and Harold Rome’s Bless You All (1950), both of which Levin co-produced with Smith (who also designed them). On October 17, 1954, Smith wrote to Levin from Hollywood (where he was designing the film version of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Oklahoma!) in the wake of a brief visit to New York, giving some tantalizing details about the Pygmalion musical: “Please write me about Pygmalion. Are the rights cleared? I want to start soon working on ideas. I have some wonderful research here which will be absolutely terrific. … Send me a scenic outline so I can begin to think about Pygmalion soon.”5

  Smith’s eagerness to start work on what would become My Fair Lady is palpable. It is also interesting that he was the first member of the production team to be hired; indeed there appears to have been no debate as to which designer to use for the show. Levin replied to Smith on November 1 with a surprisingly early production date: “From what Alan and Fritzie tell me, Pygmalion is coming along beautifully, and if it continues that way and we can get our casting done in time, we should be in rehearsal by February 15th.”6 So although very few letters from this period survive, Levin was evidently intent on getting the show on the stage within a few months: although he concedes that “I can’t promise the February 15th date, and we all know that February 15th could become September 15th”; he also asks, “If we do go in February … will you still be able to do it?”

  The producer continues with a further important piece of information: “I’m having lunch with Cecil Beaton today, because I feel very strongly that he is the best one to do the costumes.” From this, one might infer that Levin was responsible for choosing Beaton for the show, though of course he had been in the running with the Theatre Guild’s potential version in 1952; however, Lerner claims that the choice was “unanimously agreed” upon and that the conversation with Beaton took place during Lerner, Loewe, and Levin’s trip to London in early 1955.7 Also crucial to the genesis of the show is a final reference in the letter from Levin to Smith: “It’s much too early to send you a scenic plot,” he says, “because, though they’ve got the book outlined, they have been working mostly on songs.” Although Lerner never claimed to have written the script by this point, it seems surprising that so little had been prepared by way of a scenic outline: How were the songs motivated, if not by the plot? We know at the very least that a detailed synopsis had been produced for Mary Martin in 1952. Of course, Levin may have deliberately wished to resist unveiling specific information about the show while so much had yet to be decided, but it does indicate, if nothing else, that his February 1955 rehearsal date was rather optimistic.