Ex. 6.7. “You Did It,” cut passage.
This cut also represents an act of compression: it drives the piece home more quickly, more smoothly, and more breathtakingly. One notable aspect of the passage was the return of a second earlier theme (“I must confess without undue conceit,” deriving from “Now wait, now wait, give credit where it’s due”) in addition to the “You did it!” theme. The latter remained in the published version but only as a contrapuntal underpinning of the new “Congratulations!” theme; the barer “I must confess” part and the antiphonal section as a whole draw attention to themselves more assertively. By removing them, Loewe gave the closing section the air and function of an operatic stretta but foreshortened it to avoid direct allusion.
Loewe’s triumph in My Fair Lady was to create a score that truly enhances the potential of Pygmalion yet without overwhelming or undermining that text with extraneous musical numbers. Surely “Why Can’t the English?” depicts Higgins’s character better than any dialogue could, while the lessons sequence is a series of musical scenes with little precedence in the musical theater repertoire. This also represents a clear enhancement of Shaw’s text. Furthermore, theatrical technique is apparent throughout the score; for instance, “The Embassy Waltz” is a compelling use of musical diegesis, where the music is both part of the onstage action and expressive of the emotion of the scene. As for musical technique, the range of compositional approaches is brilliant, whether in the use of dance forms in the creation of songs like “Show Me” and “Just You Wait” or large-scale forms as in “You Did It,” as is the no less impressive way in which Loewe binds it all together. In this, he shares the credit with his colleagues: Rittmann’s arrangements and the orchestrations of Bennett, Lang, and Mason helped make the score contrapuntally taut and gave it its magical palette of sonorities.
But in the end, Lerner and Loewe’s most impressive achievement was the way in which they eventually balanced the Higgins-Eliza relationship in their songs. We have seen numerous examples of songs discarded as inappropriate (“There’s a Thing Called Love”), replaced by better numbers (“Please Don’t Marry Me” into “An Ordinary Man”), replaced by songs with a completely different subtext (“Shy” into “I Could Have Danced All Night”), or refined to remove gestures of conventional romance (“You Did It”). Although it is relatively commonplace for large numbers of songs from Broadway shows to be discarded before completion or cut before opening night, it is rare to find quite such a clear motivation for their removal as in My Fair Lady.
7
PERFORMANCE HISTORY
MY FAIR LADY ON STAGE
The performance history of My Fair Lady has been characterized by long runs and critical success. The original Broadway production ran for more than six years and 2,717 performances, and in so doing overtook Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Oklahoma! to become the longest-running Broadway show to date; it maintained this record for nearly a decade. The original cast won almost universal raves, both on Broadway and in London, and in 1964 the show went on to be adapted into one of the most successful movie musicals of all time, winning eight Academy Awards. The show was also seen internationally, including a tour to Russia at the height of the Cold War as part of a goodwill exchange with America. Broadway revivals in 1976 and 1981 returned to the original designs, choreography, and direction for inspiration, and three of the original 1956 cast members returned to their original roles. A further revival in 1993 continued this pattern, as Stanley Holloway’s son, Julian, took on his father’s role of Alfred Doolittle. Trevor Nunn’s 2001 production at London’s National Theatre quickly transferred to the West End, where it ran for 1,000 performances before touring first the UK and then the United States to mark the musical’s fiftieth anniversary. A new film version is currently in pre-production, which will make it one of the few musicals from Broadway’s golden age to enjoy two big-screen adaptations. Clearly, the show has a special place in the repertoire. This chapter explores its legacy in the theater, both in terms of trends and gestures in productions of the piece and how it was received by critics.
ORIGINAL BROADWAY PRODUCTION (1956)
Variety was one of the first publications to review the show. Its critic saw the premiere at the Shubert Theatre in New Haven on January 4 and reported: “[The show] has so much to recommend it that only a radical (and highly improbable) slipup in the simonizing process can keep it out of the solid click class.”1 This was the first of many ecstatic responses that the work would receive and is littered with gushing statements such as “George Bernard Shaw … never had it so good as with this lavish production,” “a glove-fitting score,” “stellar direction,” and “a general aura of quality.” A week later, Variety published a short article stating that fifteen minutes of the show’s running time was cut during the New Haven run (which ended on February 11), largely consisting of the “Come to the Ball” number. “Say a Prayer for Me Tonight” and the “Decorating Eliza” ballet were reported to have been cut after the New Haven closure but before the start of the Philadelphia tryouts on February 15. The article also said that “Local reaction to the musical set a new high for the last six years, rivaling that for the break-in stand of South Pacific at the same house in the spring of 1949.”2
This critical and popular success was to be more than matched when the show reached Broadway. The early reviews underline certain elements of the work that continue to inform its critical reception to this day. The first is the musical’s Shavian precedent, which was mentioned by all the reviewers. This is one of the points on which they were most divided. Some were highly complimentary of Lerner and Loewe’s work; for instance, Robert Coleman in the Daily Mirror said that Lerner’s lyrics had “kept the essence of the original” and that they “beautifully complement the Shavian dialogue.”3 Similarly, William Hawkins in the New York World-Telegram claimed that Pygmalion “has been used with such artfulness and taste, such vigorous reverence, that it springs freshly to life all over again.”
Most of the other leading critics made a point of attributing much of the musical’s success to Shaw. John Chapman’s review for the Daily News described My Fair Lady as a “musical embellishment of Bernard Shaw’s romantic comedy,” and went on to say that Lerner and Loewe “have written much the way Shaw must have done had he been a musician instead of a music critic.” The word “embellishment” here seems pointed; though not entirely pejorative, it portrays the composer and lyricist as having merely decorated something that was already there, rather than adapting the play as radically as they did. Similarly, Chapman’s comment about composing “as Shaw must have done” to some extent denies the imagination of Lerner and Loewe’s approach: it is as if their creation was pastiche rather than original. Three of the other reviewers were even more direct on the subject. John McClain’s Journal American review refers to the fact that Shaw’s text had not been “tamp[ered with] too much,” while Richard Watts Jr. in the New York Post wrote: “In handing out the allotments of praise, I suppose it would be a good idea to begin with Bernard Shaw. As a librettist, he is immense.” The latter comment apparently puts Lerner out of the picture as the show’s book writer. Along similar lines, Brooks Atkinson’s review in the New York Times contained the comment, “Shaw’s crackling mind is still the genius of My Fair Lady.”
In sum, although all the critics seemed to have hugely enjoyed the musical, they were almost united in denying Lerner and Loewe credit for its success, in spite of Lerner’s large number of departures from Shaw in his book. Of course, they did have a point, since more of Shaw’s play remains in the musical than would normally be the case, but one of the reasons for their stance is probably that they were drama specialists who all revered Pygmalion, rather than music specialists with an interest in the process of making it into a musical. The comments on the music almost speak for themselves: “Unpretentious and pleasantly periodic” was McClain’s description; “robust” was Atkinson’s adjective for the score; “they certainly are clever”
said Hawkins of the songs.
In addition to overemphasizing Shaw’s contribution and lacking the space (or knowledge) to do justice to Loewe’s music, the critics’ comments on the Eliza-Higgins relationship are fascinating, not the least because there is no consensus. Atkinson refers to “love music” and describes Higgins as “a bright young man in love with fair lady.” Coleman is likewise certain that Harrison is “the Pygmalion who falls in love with his creation,” and McClain mentions Higgins’s “revelation,” hinting at a “Cinderella” romance. John Beaufort agrees, stating that Higgins’s “single-minded preoccupation with Eliza’s education makes him almost overlook Eliza until it is too late.” On the other hand, Hawkins makes no comment on the subject, focusing on “the effort to make the lady of Eliza,” and the same goes for Chapman, Kerr, and Watts; none of these critics say that the characters are in love, or even seem to hint at it. This is a useful point of reference for subsequent interpretations of the piece: from the very start, the nature of Higgins and Eliza’s relationship was never absolutely defined.
This point was continued on March 25, when Brooks Atkinson returned to the show and wrote another article, headed: “Shaw’s Pygmalion Turns into One of the Best Musicals of the Century.”4 The beginning and end of the new review refer to romance but hint that Atkinson is trying to backtrack from his firm portrayal of the supposed love between Eliza and Higgins. He admits that one of the other critics had pointed out that “the hero and heroine never kiss,” and that My Fair Lady “reflects Shaw’s lack of interest in the stage ritual of sex.” Significantly, Atkinson also discusses Shaw’s decidedly unromantic epilogue to Pygmalion, and in the phrase “Eliza’s life in an imagined future is beside the point” underlines a major issue: since these are characters rather than real people, they do not have “life” beyond the final curtain and cannot be assumed to be joined in matrimony. Aside from this, Atkinson’s overwhelming message is simple: “My Fair Lady is the finest musical play in years.”
RECORDING THE ORIGINAL BROADWAY CAST ALBUM (MARCH 25, 1956)
CBS’s financing of the original production was not merely a good investment because of the outstanding ticket sales. That their record label, Columbia Records, could put out the original cast album ultimately earned them a huge amount of money. On October 2, 1957, the New York Times reported that the album had sold over a million copies already. By March 3, 1962, Billboard Music Week was able to confirm that the LP had sold over 3.5 million copies to date; it was also the first album in history to exceed both two and three million sales. In the same article, it was estimated that the sales of the Broadway and London cast recordings had grossed over $15 million, on an investment of roughly $40,000.5 These figures attest to the fact that the album was a phenomenon in itself; as a way of disseminating the content of the show to society in general, it had even greater impact than the stage production.
Goddard Lieberson, who was the producer of many Broadway albums for Columbia in this period, took the cast into the Columbia Thirtieth Street Studios on March 25 to record the show. As was usually the case, the album was to be recorded within a single day and released as soon as possible to maximize sales. (Symptomatic of the speed of turnaround is an error on the initial batch of albums, which retained the early title of “I want to dance all night” on the sleeve covers, because they were preprinted before the lyric change was made. Stanley Holloway’s billing was also smaller than agreed, and Phil Lang’s name was omitted.)6 Also following tradition, the album was prepared based on providing the best aural experience for the listener, rather than simply recording what was heard in the theater. This had two main manifestations: changing details of the performance, and changing the text. In the former category, we can include modifications to the tempos—sometimes numbers would be done faster or slower in the theater according to the practical needs of the production, such as a scene change or accommodating a singer taking time to warm up at the start of the show—while the latter category includes increasing the number of players in the orchestra (for instance, to enhance the quality of the sound of the string section), re-arranging material, and omitting dialogue. Some of these considerations are especially interesting in relation to My Fair Lady. Although it was normal not to record an entire score, it was curious that a musical highlight like “The Embassy Waltz” went unrecorded on the album. Some of the other changes are noted in table 7.1.
Table 7.1. Examples of changes made to the text for the original cast album
CHANGING CASTS
The three principal members of the original cast continued until November 28, 1957, when Rex Harrison left the show.7 Stanley Holloway succeeded him on December 13, 1957, when he was granted permission to sever his contract early in order to be able to sail home on the Queen Mary before Christmas.8 Julie Andrews also asked to leave the show a little earlier than planned in order to have more of a break before starting rehearsals for the London production of the show. However, because Sally Ann Howes, who was to take over from Andrews,9 was not available until February 3, 1958, Herman Levin refused Andrews’s request, even though Lerner and Loewe were willing.10 This meant that she departed on February 1 as originally planned, and started rehearsals for the London version on April 7.
Sally Ann Howes as the second Broadway Eliza Doolittle in My Fair Lady (Photofest)
Filling the original cast’s distinguished shoes was by no means an easy task. As early as 1956, Levin was already in discussion with agents about possible replacements. For instance, the British character actor Bill Owen auditioned for Doolittle’s part, but after prolonged deliberation Levin balked at the idea of paying him $1,000 per week.11 Lerner and Loewe also went to London to audition stage star Douglas Byng, but eventually Ronald Radd, best known for his television appearances, was hired to replace Holloway.12 Levin also had ambitions to have major names succeeding Harrison in the role of Higgins: a letter dated March 20, 1956, indicates that the producer once more tried to interest Michael Redgrave in the show, even though it had only just opened on Broadway.13 Since Harrison was committed to the production for only twelve months, Levin was concerned about sustaining its initial success: a telegram from Lerner to Levin on November 15, 1956, indicates that they had managed to get John Gielgud to agree to portray Higgins until March 1957 if Harrison refused to extend his contract. Lerner and Levin were intending to use Gielgud’s commitment as a bargaining tool: “We can no[w] put pressure on Harrison to sign at least till June or lose London.”14 This reveals how important it was to Harrison to introduce the musical to British audiences.
A month later, Moss Hart took the role to Noël Coward, another star name who had been associated with the show at an early stage, but was again turned down.15 In the end, Harrison’s replacement was Edmund Mulhare, an Irish actor without Harrison’s star name but who had filled in for his predecessor during vacations. Robert Coote (Pickering), Cathleen Nesbitt (Mrs. Higgins) and Christopher Hewitt (Karpathy) had long left the show, so with a fresh cast to review, Brooks Atkinson wrote an extensive article about the show on March 9, 1958.16 He acknowledged that the new cast had “not been able to duplicate perfection,” but still raved about the quality of the writing, design, and production. Nothing could stop My Fair Lady now. On July 12, 1961, it became the longest-running musical in Broadway history, and through several more cast changes, plus two changes of theater (to the Broadhurst and Broadway theaters) in the final year of the run (1962), it was clear that the public had taken the show to its hearts, regardless of who was in it.17
One curious aspect of its reception was the number of parodies that were written, especially during the original run. For example, in 1957 the composer Dean Fuller and the lyricist Marshall Barer wrote a sketch titled “My Late, Late Lady” for the Ziegfeld Follies, starring Beatrice Lillie; among the references to My Fair Lady was a pastiche of “The Rain in Spain” containing the lines “the sink doesn’t stink any more” and “I had a bawth last night.”18 Another, more lasting project was a spoof re
cording put out on the Foremost record label in 1956, called My Square Laddie. This turned the Fair Lady story on its head and had Broadway veteran Nancy Walker (who had appeared in shows such as On the Town) teaching British actor Reginald Gardiner how to speak in an authentic Brooklyn dialect. Again, the references to Lerner’s lyrics are numerous, with such song titles as “What Makes a Limey Talk so Square?” “It’s De Oily Boid,” and “I’m Kinda Partial to his Puss.”19 These and other such attempts to cash in on the success of Fair Lady invoked consternation in the Levin camp, yet in retrospect they are fascinating as items that show the extent to which the musical had been absorbed into American culture.
ORIGINAL LONDON PRODUCTION (1958)
My Fair Lady was always a natural choice for London’s theater scene. As early as 1952, when Lerner and Loewe were still pursuing Mary Martin to play the role of Eliza, they even considered giving the piece its world premiere in the city of its original setting. The original London production was unusual in containing all four of the Broadway principals; notwithstanding isolated examples such as Mary Martin’s appearance in the original London South Pacific, it was almost unheard of for a major Broadway show to be brought to England with production and cast practically in tact. Evidently, Harrison, Andrews, Holloway, and Coote wanted to return home victorious after conquering Broadway. Tickets for the London production went on sale on October 1, 1957, and Reuters reported that on the first day alone, more than $15,000 was taken by the box office (which was accepting sales up to October 1959).20 Hugh Beaumont was finally able to benefit from the deal he had made with Levin in 1955 to release Harrison from Bell, Book and Candle so that rehearsals for Fair Lady could begin: the right to produce the show in London automatically gave him control over the hottest ticket in the West End. To complete the cast, he chose Betty Wolfe as Mrs. Pearce, Leonard Weir as Freddy, and Zena Dare as Mrs. Higgins. A veteran of the West End, Dare made her final stage appearance in this show. She stayed with the production for the entire five-and-a-half-year run, then going on tour with it until she decided to retire completely. Another important figure in the British production was Cyril Ornadel, a renowned West End musical director who also had considerable success as a composer of musicals.21
Loverly:The Life and Times of My Fair Lady (Broadway Legacies) Page 22