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

by McHugh, Dominic

  PYGMALION: CLARIFYING THE TEXT

  Shaw’s reaction to this liberal treatment of his script was to amend it. To the end of the 1916 edition of the play he added a “Sequel,” in which he explained in prose what he intended by the final scene. Pygmalion is subtitled “A Romance,” and Shaw makes it clear in the sequel that this description refers not to a union between Higgins and Eliza but to the “transfiguration” of its heroine, a process the writer describes as “exceedingly improbable.”11 In other words, Eliza’s unlikely rise through the social ranks is the romantic element of the plot, rather than romance itself. Shaw also relates how Eliza and Freddy get married, briefly live with Higgins and Pickering, and later set up their own florist shop. Relations between the four remain positive, and Shaw says that Eliza is “immensely interested” in Higgins, and even has “secret mischievous moments” in which she wishes she could “just drag him off his pedestal and see him making love like any common man.”

  But, he continues firmly, “when it comes to … the life that she really leads as distinguished from the life of dreams and fancies, she likes Freddy and she likes the Colonel; and she does not like Higgins.”12 Eliza’s decision to choose Freddy over Higgins is “well-considered,” says the playwright, because she knows that the Professor will always prefer his mother, Milton, and the Universal Alphabet to herself. Since she is young and gifted, she has options. “Will she look forward to a lifetime of fetching Higgins’s slippers or to a lifetime of Freddy fetching hers?” asks Shaw, and goes on to answer that she marries Freddy.13 He adds that her “instinct tells her not to marry Higgins” but “does not tell her to give him up,” and underlines that he will remain “one of the strongest personal interests in her life.”14

  Shaw frequently tried to convince performers and audiences of his point of view, but it was often in vain. For a 1920 production at the Aldwych Theatre, he changed the text of the final scene by having Higgins return to the front of the stage after Eliza’s exit and exclaim “Galatea!” supposedly signifying that “the statue has come to life at last,” but as L. W. Conolly has noted, this implies that “just as Pygmalion marries Galatea so Higgins marries Eliza.”15 So for a projected film version in 1934, Shaw’s draft screenplay has Eliza and Freddy kissing (before getting in the car to go to Doolittle’s wedding), while Higgins shakes his fist at them.16 Then in 1938 (when the movie was eventually made) he wrote a different ending again, with Higgins having both a flashback to Eliza in Covent Garden and a “vision of the future” in which Eliza and Freddy are seen in their shop. A policewoman asks Higgins if anything is wrong, and he answers “No: nothing wrong. A happy ending. A happy beginning.”17 In 1939 a new edition of the play was published, in which the final lines were now changed in print. To Mrs. Higgins’s observation that “I should be uneasy about you and her if she were less fond of Colonel Pickering,” in this version Higgins answers: “Pickering! Nonsense: she’s going to marry Freddy.”18 However, the actual ending of the 1938 film has a scene familiar from My Fair Lady, in which Eliza returns to Higgins’s study while he asks “Where the devil are my slippers, Eliza?” apparently effecting a reconciliation and making no reference to the union of Eliza and Freddy.19

  In summary, the number of English-language versions of Pygmalion is large, even before we take into consideration several foreign film versions that preceded the 1938 British movie. This textual minefield clarifies one of the reasons why turning the play into a musical was so difficult: Which version should be adapted? The original play, in its five-act 1914 version, is quite simple in what it depicts. Act 1 shows Eliza in Covent Garden; she meets Higgins, who bets Colonel Pickering that in three months he could pass her off as “a duchess at an ambassador’s garden party.”20 Higgins takes pity on Eliza and gives her a handful of change. In act 2, Eliza arrives at Higgins’s house and requests elocution lessons; Pickering asks Higgins to make good his bet, and they decide to teach her. Eliza’s dustman father arrives, demanding his rights, and “sells” her for £5. Act 3 shows a tea party at Mrs. Higgins’s house, where Eliza disgraces herself with embarrassing stories about her family. Nonetheless, Higgins decides to persevere, and at the start of act 4 we learn that Eliza’s formal debut into society (which takes place during the interval) has been a success. However, Higgins credits solely himself for this achievement and ignores Eliza while basking in Pickering’s congratulations. Higgins and Eliza quarrel, and she leaves. Act 5 brings the story to a conclusion, at Mrs. Higgins’s house. Higgins and Pickering come to report Eliza’s disappearance, only to discover she has taken refuge with Mrs. Higgins. Doolittle arrives and announces he is to be married, having been left a legacy as a result of being recommended as a lecturer by Higgins on a whim. After a final confrontation between Eliza and Higgins, Eliza sets out for the wedding with Pickering, Doolittle, Freddy, and Mrs. Higgins, leaving Higgins behind.

  What’s striking about this synopsis is that there are no elocution lessons, and we are not allowed to witness Eliza’s triumph. In the original conception, Shaw’s emphases are on the role of woman in society and the way in which education could facilitate social mobility. For the 1938 film adaptation, produced by Gabriel Pascal and co-directed by Anthony Asquith and Leslie Howard, Shaw made some additions and changes.21 These include a scene at the end of act 1 in which Eliza hires a taxi with some of the money Higgins has given to her, to make the short journey home; a scene in act 2 in which Mrs. Pearce gives her a bath; an example of Eliza’s lessons; and a new scene between Eliza and Freddy in act 4, when the former leaves Higgins’s house in anger and hurt. The film also introduces Eliza’s return to Covent Garden after her argument with Higgins. But without Shaw’s knowledge, Pascal and the directors “secretly shot a different ending to Shaw’s screenplay,” and withheld it from him until the preview for the press “two days before the premiere, too late for him to do anything about it.”22 With the exception of this unauthorized ending, Shaw subsumed many of the new scenes from the film into the play script for a definitive edition in 1941, which has been the source used for most subsequent editions of the work.

  Lerner and Loewe saw the Pascal film in early 1952, and its screenplay was ultimately the primary basis for the script of Fair Lady. But before deciding to adhere to much of Shaw’s structure, Lerner and Loewe considered a more liberal adaptation. There is evidence of this in the correspondence partially discussed in chapters 1 and 2, as well as four outlines (see tables 3.1–3.5) of the show roughly dating from 1952 (Outlines 1 and 2), 1954 (Outline 3) and 1955 (Outline 4). These documents reveal how Lerner and Loewe initially sought to impose musical theater conventions on Pygmalion and were willing to tear the text apart to make it work as a Broadway show. Set pieces, locations, and the potential for the lyric moment (i.e., song and dance) were the priorities at this point, rather than the surface of the spoken text.

  There is a marked difference in attitude between literary scholars and musicologists when discussing the nature of the adaptation. Typical of Shaw scholars is Paul Bauschatz, who suggests that My Fair Lady is both a corruption and an inept treatment of Pygmalion. He says it “works badly” and “is structurally flawed.”23 Conversely, musicologists such as Joseph Swain tend to assume that the majority of the dialogue was simply lifted from Shaw’s text. Swain says that apart from the musical’s lessons montage, Shaw’s script “is followed quite faithfully” by Lerner.24 In fact, the adaptation of My Fair Lady shows an unusual conscientiousness compared to the average Broadway musical regarding the retention of the literary style of its source, as well as much of its dialogue, but Lerner, Loewe, and Moss Hart deserve more credit from musical theater scholars for their many innovations.

  In confirmation of this, a rehearsal script from producer Herman Levin’s papers shows that the musical went into rehearsal with a text that, if anything, contained more of Shaw than the final published script was to include. This is in direct contrast to standard views of the musical that assume it is merely a reduction of Shaw’s script,
to which some songs have been added. There are in fact well over two hundred differences between these two distinct Fair Lady texts, ranging from a change of word order to the omission or addition of a whole speech. The thrust of chapter 3 is on how these late modifications resulted in subtle changes of focal point even during the rehearsal period; but before this comes a discussion of the implications of the early correspondence about Fair Lady on its book, and the four outlines of the show predating the creation of the script.

  SHAVIAN SOURCES FOR MY FAIR LADY

  Alan Jay Lerner described at great length in The Street Where I Live how the challenge of making a musical out of Pygmalion was intimidating. “The more we talked,” he wrote, “the more insoluble the problems seemed to become because, unfortunately, the characters in Shaw’s play also kept talking, talking and talking. Pygmalion is a drawing room comedy and no matter how hard we tried, we did not seem to be able to tear down the walls of the drawing room and allow the play to unfold in a setting and atmosphere that suggested music.”25 But as is obvious from Valerie Pascal’s memoir of her ex-husband The Disciple and his Devil, one of the overall solutions to the problem had already been supplied to Lerner and Loewe by Pascal himself, who encouraged them to see a screening of his 1938 film version.26 On March 22, Lawrence Langner (of the Theatre Guild) sent a telegram to Pascal and mentioned that “Lerner and Loewe … are seeing [the] picture soon as possible and hope to settle [a] deal with them for immediate work on [the] musical.”27 This verifies the fact that they saw the film, and we know from a letter written by Lerner to Pascal on May 10, 1952, that he had already begun to give much thought to the adaptation of the story:

  Stanley Holloway (Alfred Doolittle) and Audrey Hepburn (Eliza) in the 1964 movie of My Fair Lady (Photofest/Warner Bros.)

  As far as the actual conversion into musical form is concerned, there are two basic problems that I see at this moment—both of which [are] easily overcome. The first is to get it out of the drawing room and into the open; and the second is to tighten the story. By that I mean to give characters such as Mr. Doolittle a more important role in the plot and not just be a highly amusing interlude as he is now. Too, Freddie should be developed into more attractive a fellow so that he can become more of a real threat. In the first instance of getting it out of the drawing room Fritz and I have several ideas which we didn’t have time to discuss with you. The scene in Mrs. Higgins’ home for example—the “gin to her was mother’s milk” scene—could be played at the opening of Ascot. It could be extremely colourful and lend itself to great humour both musically and otherwise. The calmness of the British aristocracy at the races I always thought very funny. Now, of course, following the motion picture, there are the ball scenes and the wonderfully touching sequence when she returns to Covent Garden and nobody recognises her. A scene like that could be developed so that the second scene at Mrs. Higgins’ when the Professor finds her after his long search could be obviated. The end of the first act, of course, can be one of the great moments of any musical I can remember. It should be Liza’s preparation for the ball, her excitement, her desire to please the Prof., her dressing, her rehearsing, her manners, etc. Musically it should be one of her big, big numbers—ending with her going off with the Prof. for the great and final test. It could be really wonderful, don’t you think?28

  This letter corroborates Lerner’s comment in his memoir about “getting the story out of the drawing room,” as quoted above. We can sense the desire to “open up” Shaw’s domestic story into a form that would work as a musical with a larger ensemble and the need for the “lyric moment” to clinch most scenes via song and/or dance. It also raises the issue of “tightening the story” by expanding the roles of Doolittle and Freddy. The comments on these two characters are interesting, because, excepting for his having two lengthy songs, Doolittle’s role is in some ways truncated in Fair Lady, rather than expanded—one might say a surprising treatment of a character whose wisdom and depth has been compared to Shakespeare’s Falstaff.29 Freddy, meanwhile, remains nothing but bland in the musical, even though he plays perhaps more of an active role.

  From this, the decision to move the scene of Mrs. Higgins’s tea party to the races at Ascot (act 3, scene 1) seems also to have been Lerner’s invention. Richard Traubner notes the presence of a scene at the races in the German film version of Pygmalion, which was premiered in Berlin in 1935, but it should be borne in mind that it concerns a rather different incident to that which takes place in the Fair Lady Ascot scene.30 Bernard Dukore has described how Higgins and Pickering take Eliza to “visit a race track.” Bored with the race, Eliza wanders around the course and sees her friend Jonny selling ice cream. “He admires her elegant apparel and leaves his cart to bring her some. While he is gone, a tall, burly man steals a cup of ice cream.” When Eliza sees what has happened, she alerts Jonny, who is then hurled “to the ground. … Furious, Liza yells at [the man], climbs over the railing in an unladylike manner, and flails him with her parasol.” Predictably, Higgins arrives and admonishes Eliza for her behavior. “Taking advantage of the bully relaxing his guard because of the interruption,” Eliza strikes him “resoundingly on the head with the parasol.”31

  It is true that the German film introduces a scene in a racecourse that Shaw’s Pygmalion did not contain, but this incident bears very little relationship to the Ascot scene from My Fair Lady. The Eliza of the musical is excited, not bored; she does not see a friend, ask for ice cream, or witness a crime; Higgins does not reprimand her in the musical, but rather stifles a laugh; the specific location of Ascot in the show—and the fact that it is the opening day—is far from insignificant, given the wider social implications; and the key climax in the musical—Eliza causing a public spectacle by losing her control during the horse race—is completely missing. Therefore, it seems likely that Lerner invented the Ascot scene without knowing about the German film.

  Lerner’s letter makes obvious his intention to embrace several sources for the Fair Lady script, including the play, the new scenes that Shaw wrote for the 1938 British film, and additional situations suggested by his own imagination. Perhaps the most interesting aspect is the placing of the interval in Lerner’s scenario. Since the play has five acts and its film version has no intermission, the question of how to slice the musical into two acts was important. Obviously, the final moment before an interval should be a climactic one, and at this stage the plan seems to have been to end with Eliza’s preparations for and departure to the ball. Going along with this plan, the published Fair Lady script includes the ball in the first act and has the interval at the end of it; the cliff-hanger is the question of whether Zoltan Karpathy, the Hungarian phonetician who is an ex-pupil of Higgins’s, has successfully discovered Eliza’s secret. However, the 1964 film version reverts to Lerner’s original plan—ending the first half with the departure to the ball—and Trevor Nunn’s 2001 production for London’s National Theatre also took this course. Whereas ending the act with Higgins’s gesture of respect to Eliza when they leave for the ball—he extends his arm to help her through the door—places emphasis on an emotional high in the Higgins-Eliza relationship, ending the act with the ball shifts the focus to the success of the experiment, leaving the characters to work out their problems with each other in the second act. This is just one example of many considerations Lerner had to bear in mind while fashioning the script.

  Outline 1: Act 1 only (ca.1952)

  None of the outlines discussed here can be dated with absolute accuracy, but it is easy to guess the order in which they were written. The earliest outline comes from Herman Levin’s papers and consists of a thorough five-page description of how the first act was to run.32 Unfortunately, there is nothing at all on the second act, either because it was never completed or because the second half of the document has been lost. It is enough, however, to see in what ways Lerner already had elements of the show’s structure in place, while others are completely unexpected. The outline is reproduced in
table 3.1, with the songs and dances separated into their own columns for clarity, and some of Lerner’s description of the action has been slightly condensed where a complete reproduction seemed unnecessary.

  In Outline 1, we can recognize several songs from the final score, including “The Rain in Spain,” “The Ascot Gavotte,” and “Just You Wait” (as well as “Say a Prayer,” which was cut during the New Haven tryouts). This suggests that Lerner and Loewe had already set to work on the score by the time the outline was written. On the other, the presence of scenes or elements that did not make it into the show (such as opening at Limehouse instead of Covent Garden) implies an early date. Lerner’s letter of May 10, 1952 (quoted earlier) indicates that he already had strong ideas of how the structure of the musical might work, and in all likelihood this is the outline referred to in his letter: there is a particular focus on Eliza’s character, which would make sense if Outline 1 was the one produced to try and persuade Mary Martin to play the part. If this is so, it means that the songs mentioned above were composed (or at least partly conceived) in 1952, rather than in 1954–55 as is usually assumed, and Outline 1 is certainly the earliest surviving version of the show.