10. The lyric is also similar in mood to that of “Shy,” which is known to have been the precursor to “I Could Have Danced.”
11. Rex Harrison, Rex (London: Macmillan, 1974), 161.
12. Rex Harrison, A Damned Serious Business (London: Bantam, 1990), 140.
13. Lady Liza: Brief Outline, 4. HLP, 34/2.
14. Ibid.
15. Lerner, Street, 65–66 and 91–92.
16. Julie Andrews, Home, 201.
17. My Lady Liza: outline of scenes and musical numbers, 2. HHP, Series 4, 21/518.
18. Both versions are in FLC, 5/23.
19. My thanks to Elliot J. Cohen for sharing the transcript of his interview with Trude Rittmann (dated October 3, 1995) with me.
20. “I finished the lyric in twenty-four hours, but not to my satisfaction … I thought my lyric was earth-bound. There was one line in particular that made me blush when I sang it to Fritz. The line was: “And [sic] all at once my heart took flight.” I promised Fritz I would change it as soon as I could. As it turned out, I was never able to … [T]o this day the lyric gives me cardiac arrest.” Lerner, Street, 86.
21. A document titled “My Fair Lady: timing sheet” in the Levin Papers shows that the final version of act 1, scene 9 took 3ʹ 15ʺ to run. By contrast, the duration of “Come to the Ball” in the appendix of the Jay recording of My Fair Lady runs 3ʹ 24ʺ, which does not include the repeated choruses for the dancing; and “Say a Prayer for Me Tonight” on the original soundtrack recording of Gigi runs 1ʹ 13ʺ.
22. Lerner, Street, 76–77 and 98.
23. Loewe’s autograph and his annotated copy of a copyist’s score are in FLC, 5/2 and 5/3; the full score is in WCC, 142/1; the remaining manuscripts are in WCC, 142/3.
24. My Fair Lady script, 121–22.
25. Ibid, 123.
26. Rittmann diverges from Bennett’s orchestrated version only from bar 212 on, where her version is a minor third higher than his.
27. The location of the scores in WCC is as follows: Freda Miller’s score, 142/7; conductor’s score for “Intro to Dress Ballet” plus a copy of Rittmann’s piano score, 142/6; the copy of the piano score with the modified ending in Rittmann’s hand, 142/7; Rittmann’s autograph for the new “Intro to Dress Ballet,” 142/7; Lang’s autograph full score for the “Intro” is at the back of the autograph full score for “Come to the Ball,” 142/1; Bennett’s autograph full score, 142/5.
28. Lerner to Pascal, May 10, 1952, TGC, box 137.
29. Lady Liza—Brief Outline, 4. HLP, 34/2.
30. Untitled scenic outline, 2, HLP, 34/2.
31. My Lady Liza outline, 2. Hanya Holm Papers, New York Public Library. Series 4, 21/518. All of Hanya Holm’s notes referenced in the rest of this chapter are from this same folder, unless otherwise noted.
32. Clearly by “vanishes” Holm means “removes” with added connotations of speed and of the dancers’ disappearance.
33. “Intro to Dress Ballet,” WCC, 142/7.
34. Full score to “Intro to Dress Ballet,” WCC, 142/1.
35. Lerner, Street, 152.
36. “Say a Prayer for Me Tonight” in folder marked “Lyrics and Songs Not Used,” HLP, 34/8. The line “Gracious, proud and refine” was probably intended to read “refined.”
37. “Say a Prayer for Me Tonight” piano-vocal score, marked “FA,” WCC, 147/2. “Say a Prayer for Me Tonight” from Gigi Song Album (London, 1958), 11–13.
38. “Say a Prayer for Me Tonight” and “Bridge after Prayer” orchestrations, WCC, 151/5.
39. Jeremy Gerard, “Stars Perform in Memorial Tribute to Composer Frederick Loewe,” New York Times, March 29, 1988.
CHAPTER 5
1. The main difference is in the line “With one enormous chair,” which originally read “With one gigantic chair”; the copyist’s lyrics read “gigantic,” but the word has been struck through in pencil and replaced with “enormous.” “Wouldn’t It Be Loverly?,” copyist’s piano-vocal score, marked “Russell” in Trude Rittmann’s handwriting on the front cover, WCC, 154/5.
2. Loewe, “Overture” autograph, FLC, 5/17.
3. ‘Lang takes credit for My Fair Lady’s “With a Little Bit of Luck,” “The Ascot Gavotte,” “On the Street Where You Live,” “The Embassy Waltz,” “Get Me to the Church on Time,” and “Without You,” the remainder (including the Overture) being Bennett’s contributions. Robert Russell Bennett with George J Ferencz, ed., The Broadway Sound: The Autobiography and Selected Essays of Robert Russell Bennett, Eastman Studies in Music, (Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 1999), 228.
4. See Lerner, Street, 59–60. Lerner also says that the lyric for this song initially caused him agony, as a result of the lack of confidence he derived from Mary Martin’s negative reaction to the songs. After receiving psychiatric help, however, Lerner says that the words took him only two days to write. Street, 66–67.
5. “Wouldn’t It Be Loverly” lyric sheet, HLP, 34/8.
6. “Wouldn’t It Be Loverly” lyric sheet, WCC, 151/6.
7. There is one notational discrepancy: Loewe has a D sharp in the second beat of the two-bar introduction to the refrain, which is adhered to in Bennett’s orchestration but is left as a natural in the copyist’s vocal score and both of the published vocal scores.
8. See chap. 5. For Rodgers’s approach to song writing, see Tim Carter, Oklahoma! The Making of an American Musical (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2007), 118–20. “As is typical of Rodgers’s sketches, the Oklahoma! ones are presented on a single stave, with the melody, some indications of one or more inner parts, and, very occasionally, roman numerals to indicate the harmony.” This is almost the same as Loewe’s apparent evolution of “Say a Prayer for Me Tonight” (and a large number of non-My Fair Lady songs), though the roman numerals are less of a feature of his method than they are of Rodgers’s.
9. Lerner, Street, 49–50.
10. “Just You Wait”: lyric sheet, HLP, 34/8; copyist’s score, WCC, 148/3.
11. The score is initialed “R.B.” in the top righthand corner.
12. “Musical Synopsis (2),” envelope titled “Franz Allers Lyrics,” WCC, 151/6.
13. Lerner, Street, 84.
14. Julie Andrews confirms this chronology. Andrews, Home, 201.
15. Lerner, Street, 86.
16. Marni Nixon is well known as the singing voice for Audrey Hepburn in the film version of My Fair Lady and also sang for Deborah Kerr in The King and I and Natalie Wood in West Side Story. Her story does not fit in with the facts at all: we know that Lerner and Loewe were not writing My Fair Lady in the first half of 1954 and that the song was one of the last to be composed. Marni Nixon, I Could Have Sung All Night (New York: Billboard Books, 2006), 139.
17. “I Could Have Danced All Night” from folder marked “Vocal Score” in HLP, 30/1.
18. “I Want to Dance All Night,” copyist’s score with title in Loewe’s hand, WCC, 146/8. That the score has also been marked “Peter”—indicating Peter Howard, the conductor’s assistant—also suggest that this title was used during rehearsals rather than as the original title of the song.
19. Script, HLP, 34/4.
20. Script, HLP, 34/3.
21. Copies of the playbills and the early pressing of the album are in the author’s collection.
22. My Fair Lady script, HLP, 34/5.
23. Her lines are: “I understand, dear. / It’s all been grand, dear. / But now it’s time to sleep.”
24. There is also an amusing copying error in the second refrain: instead of writing “[Why all at once] my heart took flight,” Bennett has put “my heart stood still,” probably an unconscious reference to the Rodgers and Hart song “My Heart Stood Still.”
25. We saw in chap. 5 that in the New Haven version of the show, Eliza had an additional solo, “Say a Prayer for Me Tonight,” before setting off to the ball, but it was cut during the first week of tryouts. The return of “Just You Wait,” therefore, has all the more impact.
26. The same can probably be said of “The Rain in Spain,” whose use of habanera rhythms is connected simply to the reference to Spain in the song’s title.
27. “Just You Wait,” Rittmann’s autograph, WCC, 148/3.
28. “On the Street Where You Live” reprise, original orchestration, WCC, 148/1.
29. “Street Reprise,” Rittmann’s autograph, WCC, 148/3.
30. “Show Me,” Loewe’s autograph, FLC, 5/22.
31. Lerner, Street, 92–94.
32. “Without You,” various scores, WCC, 153/7. The autograph in FLC, like so many of the others, presents only the final version of the text. FLC, 5/29.
33. It is partly a performance issue, too: Rex Harrison brings appeal to the part in the film, which other actors might not do on the stage.
34. Lerner, Street, 77. Lerner specifies “In Norway there are legions / Of literate Norwegians” as an example of a short, Cowardesque lyric.
35. Harrison, Rex, 164.
36. Letter of November 29, 1955, Lerner to Harrison, HLP, 25/7.
37. The pages from this manuscript are divided between four other songs in the Loewe Collection and used as covers to bind them: “Show Me,” “I Could Have Danced All Night,” “The Street Where She Lives,” and the final version of “Why Can’t the English?”
38. However, it is clear that while Rittmann wrote the eighth notes in the melody line in bars 2, 3, 5, 9, 10, and 11, Loewe contributed those in bars 6, 7, and 8; Rittmann’s eighth notes are smoothly rounded while Loewe’s tend to have a distinctive groove in the tail.
39. Lerner, Street, 92–94.
40. Curiously, a copy of this score was registered with the Library of Congress for copyright on April 3, 1956, (three weeks after the show opened), rather than the final version. “Why Can’t the English?,” WCC, 152/8; Library of Congress copyright deposit, Eu 432970.
41. The new couplet reads: “Make one slip in German and, Good Lord, how the Germans roar! / In fact, you’ll be lucky if they all don’t go to war.” The words “you’ll be lucky if they” are set to a new descending F-major scale of sixteenth notes to fit in the extra words.
42. The three differences are: the use of the past tense in relation to the Hebrews (who “learnt” it backwards in this lyric but “learn” it backwards in its published form); a witty mention of ancient Greek (“But soon proper English will be dead as ancient Greek!”); and a line asking why the English can’t use “decent English.”
43. “The English,” WCC, 152/8.
44. The only difference is that “The Scotch and Irish” later became “The Scotch and the Irish” in the final song, necessitating the modification of an eighth note into two sixteenths. Both the early autograph and the copyist’s score for the initial version of the song feature a clumsier melody and harmonic rhythm at this point.
45. The front indicates that the copy belonged to Franz Allers, the conductor, though it is difficult to determine whether he was responsible for the modifications. Loewe’s autograph score for “Why Can’t the English?” is located in FLC, 5/26.
46. The lyric sheet is with the other “Why Can’t the English?” documents in WCC, 152/8.
47. Lerner, Street, 68.
48. Ibid., 68–69 and 77.
49. It reads “With no eccentric whim” instead of “Of no eccentric whim,” “Who wants to live his life” instead of “Who likes to live his life,” “For let a woman in your life” instead of “Oh, let a woman in your life” (in two places), and instead of ending “Oh, let a woman in your life … / Let a woman in your life. … / Let a woman in your life,” the original lyric read “For let a woman in your life … / But let a woman in your life. … / Just let a woman in your life … ”
50. As an aside, the original American edition of the script omitted the line “Just a very gentle man” at the end of the relevant verse—apparently an oversight, because the English edition reinstates the line, as do the published scores.
51. This is based on the lyric from the rehearsal script, not the published lyric.
52. The autograph full score for the scene change music is also in Bennett’s hand, but it is titled “New No. 5a (Ordinary Man),” suggesting that something different might originally have been planned.
53. Lerner, Street, 87.
54. Harrison, Rex, 166.
55. “A Hymn to Him,” WCC, 146/4.
56. Loewe wrote “They’re nothing but exasperating, irritating, agitating, calculating, aggravating, maddening and infuriating hags,” but the published version modifies “agitating” to “vacillating” and “aggravating” becomes “agitating” instead.
57. Further discussion of Lang’s orchestration is not made here because it contains no changes or additions other than during the final four bars, which have evidently been rewritten. Since they are firmly taped down, it is not possible to see what was originally written.
58. Letter of November 29, 1955, Lerner to Harrison, HLP, 25/7.
59. Lerner, Street, 85–86.
60. “I’ve Grown Accustomed to Her Face,” copyist’s vocal score and choral score, WCC, 147/5.
61. In another difference, the original has “She rather makes the day begin” instead of the published version’s “She almost makes the day begin.”
62. “New Intro to I’ve Grown Accustomed,” WCC, 147/3.
63. There were a couple of other small differences. Later, when Higgins sings “Poor Eliza! How simply frightful! How humiliating! How delightful!” the original version had an extra exclamation, “How ghastly!” after “Poor Eliza!” The spoken section that follows was also slightly different—“How shall I react on that inevitable night … ” rather than “How poignant it will be … ”—and the underscoring was more extensive.
64. Originally it read “I will slam the door and let the villain freeze” rather than “let the hellcat freeze.”
65. The manuscript has “Finale Ultimo” on the front and “Incidental Insert Into: Accustomed to her Face” as the title inside.
66. “Tempo di Rodgers—ma molto espressivo!!” is evidently a joke (about Richard Rodgers’s preference for slightly slow tempi) between Rittmann and Bennett, both of whom worked on the musicals of Rodgers and Hammerstein.
67. Bennett’s score says “rather makes the day begin” instead of “almost,” and “villain” instead of “hellcat”; the former case has then been corrected in pencil but the latter still says “villain.”
CHAPTER 6
1. For the reprise in act 1, scene 4, the autograph full score is the only existing primary source.
2. This lyric is common to both the Warner-Chappell Collection and the rehearsal script.
3. Another example is “To tend his needs and see his food is cooked,” which becomes “To share his nest and see his food is cooked.”
4. The reprise of the song in act 1, scene 4, also contains a small deviation from the published lyric: Lerner writes “[A man was made to help support his children; /] Which is the proper thing for him to do” rather than “Which is the right and proper thing to do” (Jack Mason’s full score also uses this “original” lyric). Again, the change is small but the addition of the word “right” helps to assert the image of the “correctness” of taking fatherhood seriously in contrast to the end of the verse when Doolittle sings of his hope that “They’ll go out and start supporting you.”
5. “With a Little Bit of Luck,” FLC, 5/27.
6. It is possible that Loewe was reusing an old piece of manuscript paper, which had contained a completely different piece of music. Based on a survey of all the manuscripts in the Loewe Collection, many of which contain fragments from more than one song (sometimes from more than one show), this seems to have been standard procedure for him, either in other to save paper or because he had to use whatever paper was available.
7. This is corroborated by the copyist’s fair copy of the orchestration, which starts simply with the first fully accompanied bar and misses out “The Lord a-.
” “With a Little Bit of Luck,” copyist’s full score, WCC, 153/1.
8. Also included in the folder with the song is Lang’s full score for the scene change music (No. 4a).
9. Lerner, Street, 85.
10. “Get Me to the Church on Time,” lyric sheet, WCC, 151/6.
11. “Get Me to the Church on Time,” Rittmann’s piano score and Miller’s photocopy, WCC, 145/4.
12. “Get Me to the Church II,” choral arrangement, WCC, 145/3.
13. Lerner, Street, 76.
14. Lady Liza, Brief Outline, HLP, 34/2.
15. The New Haven playbills give the song its final title, but the copyists scores in the Warner-Chappell Collection all direct the lyric to the third person.
16. Lerner, Street, 98.
17. The presentation was given on December 12, 1971, as part of the Lyrics and Lyricists series at the Kaufmann Concert Hall of the 92nd Street Y in New York. It is now available on CD as An Evening with Alan Jay Lerner, DRG Records 5175 (1977).
18. This backs up the idea of a link with “Please Don’t Marry Me,” which had been cut long before the orchestration was made.
19. Unusually for Bennett, it is written in pencil rather than in pen.
20. The other key players are, clearly, Eliza, Higgins, and Doolittle. I discount Pickering, Mrs. Pearce, and Mrs. Higgins here because they do not have a significant solo numbers and are mostly on the periphery of the drama.
21. Geoffrey Block, Enchanted Evenings (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), 379. n.28.
22. They are written in Roman numerals, starting with “I—Gm.”
23. Keith Garebian, The Making of My Fair Lady (Toronto: ECW Press, 1993), 108. Bennett’s full score is relatively free of corrections, although the cut verse is crossed out.
24. Lerner, Street, 83–84. Harrison, Rex, 161. Block compares the accounts in Enchanted Evenings, 379, n.26.
25. “Dance—Rain in Spain,” WCC, 151/3.
26. A copy of the published sheet music (New York: Belwin, Inc.) for this song is found in FLC, 8/36.
27. “Ascot Gavotte,” FLC, 5/1.
28. “Gavotte Repr.,” Untitled manuscript starting “Presto furioso” with a message from Rittmann to Bennett, WCC, 141/3. “Intro to Gavotte” and “Gavotte Dance,” WCC, 144/1.
Loverly:The Life and Times of My Fair Lady (Broadway Legacies) Page 30