29. “Ascot Gavotte,” annotated “Freda” on front, with associated loose photocopies of “Intro to Gavotte” and “Gavotte Dance,” WCC, 141/1.
30. This version also appears in two separate lyric sheets in the Warner-Chappell Collection, a lyric sheet in Levin’s papers, and the rehearsal script.
31. Lyric sheet in envelope titled “Franz Allers Lyrics,” WCC, 151/6.
32. “Ascot Gavotte,” choral score, 141/6; “Gavotte,” conductor’s score, WCC, 141/3.
33. Untitled original “End of Ascot” music and “Gavotte Repr.,” WCC, 141/3.
34. This is demonstrated by the orchestration of this original ending to the Ascot Scene, housed in the Warner-Chappell Collection. “Fainting Music” and “End of Ascot (out),” WCC, 144/3 and 141/1.
35. “Ballroom Intro,” WCC, 141/7.
36. Block, Enchanted Evenings, 231.
37. Unnumbered folder titled “The Embassy Waltz: parts,” WCC, box 143.
38. Bennett’s orchestration, titled “The Embassy Waltz,” is in the WCC, 143/2.
39. “Promenade,” orchestration, WCC, 150/1.
40. “Entr’acte,” Rittmann piano score, WCC, 143/8.
41. Clearly, the “glorious Russell Bennett finish” was in fact to be a “glorious Phil Lang” one.
42. “Finish of Entr’acte,” Lang’s full score, WCC, 143/6.
43. Lerner, Street, 77 and 81.
44. Ibid., 100.
45. As was the case with several earlier numbers, the version of the song in FLC contains Loewe’s handwriting only in the music of the first three systems of the first page and all the lyrics; Rittmann is responsible for all the remainder of the music. FLC, 5/31.
46. Although the published vocal scores contain this section and indicate that it was not performed on Broadway, the British first edition of the published libretto does not include it nor do the original cast albums (Broadway and London).
47. One of the copyist’s scores has the word “Silly” crossed out and replaced by “Utter” at this point, perhaps to avoid the alliteration with so many “s” sounds in the line. WCC, 155/3.
48. Geoffrey Block correctly refers to “the uncharacteristically inconsiderate Pickering” in his analysis of the number, but the Colonel was in fact even more inconsiderate in the original version of the number. Block, Enchanted Evenings, 236.
49. William Zinsser, Easy to Remember: The Great American Songwriters and Their Songs (Jaffrey, NH: David R. Godine Publisher, 2000), 229.
CHAPTER 7
1. “Shows Out of Town: My Fair Lady, ” Variety (February 8, 1956), 56. My thanks to Richard C. Norton for providing me with a copy of this and various other reviews.
2. “Lady Fair Cut 15 Mins. During New Haven Bow,” Variety, February 15, 1956, 67.
3. Unless otherwise stated, the reviews from this section are quoted from Rachel W. Coffin, ed., New York Theatre Critics’ Reviews 17, no.7: 345–48.
4. Brooks Atkinson, “My Fair Lady: Shaw’s Pygmalion Turns into One of the Best Musicals of the Century,” New York Times, March 25, 1956, Arts and Leisure supplement, X1.
5. Bob Rolontz, “Exit a Winner: My Fair Lady Leaves Mark on Disk Mkt. as well as the Theater,” Billboard Music Week, March 3, 1962, 5.
6. Copy in the author’s collection.
7. Sam Zolotow, “Huxley Disowns Staging of Novel,” New York Times, November 29, 1957, 33. My thanks to Richard C. Norton for pointing out this article.
8. Letter, Herman Levin to Lillian Aza (November 4, 1957); agreement between Herman Levin and Stanley Holloway (November 4, 1957). HLP, 25/9.
9. Letter, Levin to Howes (January 31, 1959), 25/11. Howes played the role on Broadway for twelve months, leaving on January 31, 1959.
10. Letter, Charles Tucker to Herman Levin (August 27, 1957); reply, Levin to Tucker (August 30) HLP, 25/5.
11. Letter, Levin to Felix de Wolfe (August 21, 1957), 23/5.
12. Letter, Levin to Lerner and Loewe in Paris (July 19, 1957), HLP, 23/5.
13. Letter, Michael Redgrave to Levin (March 20, 1956), HLP, 26/1.
14. Telegram, Lerner to Levin (November 15, 1956), HLP, 23/5.
15. Telegram, Moss Hart to Coward (December 4, 1956), HLP, 23/5. In a letter to Laurence Olivier on January 12, 1957, Coward confirmed that he had “refused haughtily but graciously to play My Fair Lady for three months.” Quoted in Barry Day, ed., The Letters of Noël Coward (London: Methuen, 2007), 618.
16. Brooks Atkinson, “Two Fair Years: Shavian Musical Is Still a Delightful Show,” New York Times, March 9, 1958, X1.
17. After Julie Andrews and Sally Ann Howes, Eliza was played by Pamela Charles, and in January 1961 Margot Moser became the first American girl to play the role. Higgins was played by Edward Mulhare, Michael Evans, and Michael Allison.
18. Quoted in Robert Baral, Revue: A Nostalgic Reprise of the Great Broadway Period (New York: Fleet Publications, 1962), 98.
19. The recording is now available on CD via Sepia Records (SEPIA 1090).
20. Reuters, New York Times, October 2, 1958, 28.
21. His scores for the West End include Pickwick (his greatest success), 1963; Treasure Island, 1973; and Great Expectations, 1975. London productions for which he had served as musical director include Wonderful Town, Pal Joey, Kismet, Call Me Madam, and Lerner and Loewe’s own Paint Your Wagon.
22. Loewe’s illness is related in Andrews, Home, 237–38 and Lerner, Street, 112–13.
23. Drew Middleton, “Londoners Greet Their Fair Lady; Spiritual Home of Musical Discovers It Is as Good as the Yanks Said It Was,” New York Times, May 1, 1958, 34.
24. K. Hart, Kitty, 191. Hart was present at the Royal Gala and accompanied her husband, Moss, to the Royal Box during the intermission, making for an amusing anecdote in her book.
25. Andrews, Home, 255.
26. For a list of the countries in the years immediately following the premiere, see Sam Zolotow, “Israeli Players to do Fair Lady, ” New York Times, December 18, 1963, 46. For this section of the chapter, I am particularly indebted to Richard C. Norton for allowing me to read the unpublished manuscript of his forthcoming book on Loewe.
27. Howard Traub, “Soviet Union Asks for a Troupe to Sing Fair Lady,” New York Times, May 6, 1959, 1.
28. Philip Benjamin, “Fair Lady Faces Russian Pirating,” New York Times, May 1, 1959, 1.
29. Max Frankel, “Moscow Sizes Up a Grand Lady,” New York Times, April 3, 1960, X1.
30. Osgood Carruthers, “Fair Lady Hailed by Moscow Critic,” New York Times, April 24, 1960, 85.
31. Anonymous, “My Fair Lady Ending Its North American Run,” New York Times, December 13, 1963, 39.
32. Sam Zolotow, “Eliza Doolittle to Dance Again,” New York Times, January 30, 1964, 25.
33. John Canaday, “Audience as well as Cast Has Grand Time at My Fair Lady,” New York Times, May 21, 1964, 43.
34. Richard F. Shepard, “My Fair Lady Wins Again,” New York Times, June 14, 1968, 42.
35. Memorandum by Levin, February 10, 1955. HLP, 24/8.
36. Testimony of Herman Levin, May 15, 1960, HLP, 27/14.
37. Handwritten notes, HLP, 25/12.
38. See Hugh Fordin, MGM’s Greatest Musicals (New York: Da Capo Press, 1996), 517, for more information on Warner’s position. The refusal of the first bid in September 1961 is discussed in a telegram from Levin to the studio’s negotiator, HLP, 23/8.
39. Details of Harrison’s deal are described in Alexander Walker’s excellent biography of the actor, Fatal Charm: The Life of Rex Harrison (London: Orion, 2002), 307.
40. In his diary, Beaton wrote that after one clash, “it took George Cukor two hours to recover from his displeasure with me enough to continue.” Richard Buckle, ed., Self-Portrait with Friends: The Selected Diaries of Cecil Beaton (London: Pimlico, 1981)367. In turn, Cukor acknowledged in an interview that “As everyone knows, we didn’t get on very well.”
41. Murray Schumach, “Fair Lady to Set a Film-cost M
ark,” New York Times, June 5, 1963. Gavin Lambert, On Cukor (New York: G. P. Putnam, 1972; rev. ed. New York: Rizzoli, 2000), 186.
42. Lambert, On Cukor, 192.
43. Block, Enchanted Evenings, 323–27.
44. Lambert, On Cukor, 192.
45. Reviews quoted in Jerry Vermilye, The Complete Films of Audrey Hepburn (New York: Citadel, 1995), 178–80.
46. Letter, Lerner to Cecil Beaton, April 21, 1967, Cecil Beaton Papers, St. John’s College, Cambridge.
47. Much later, Diehl wrote a detailed reminiscence of working with Holm for a specific dance publication. Crandall Diehl, “My Fair Lady and other Broadway Memories,” Choreography and Dance 2, pt. 2, 73–87.
48. Robert Berkvist, “Will this Fair Lady be as Loverly?,” New York Times, March 21, 1976, 57.
49. Richard Eder, “Levin Back on Street Where She Lived,” New York Times, March 22, 1976, 21.
50. Mel Gussow, “Richardson Finds ’Iggins a Lovely Change of Pace,” New York Times, March 31, 1976, 29.
51. Patrick Garland, The Incomparable Rex (London: Macmillan, 1998).
52. Anonymous, “Fair Lady Understudy Is Going On,” New York Times, August 18, 1981, C8.
53. Garland, Incomparable Rex, 205.
54. Mel Gussow, “My Fair Lady Returns,” New York Times, August 19, 1981, C17.
55. Garland, Incomparable Rex, 206.
56. Ibid., 205.
57. Glenn Collins, “On Stage and Off,” New York Times, July 2, 1993, C2.
58. Bruce Weber, “Fighting for the Soul of Eliza Doolittle,” New York Times, December 15, 1993.
59. David Richards, “My Fair Lady: A Darker Side to the Fable of a Flower Girl,” New York Times, December 10, 1993.
60. Copy in the author’s collection.
61. Sheridan Morley and Ruth Leon, Hey, Mr Producer! The Musical World of Cameron Mackintosh (London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 1998), 52–53.
62. See Gene Lees’s Inventing Champagne: The Musical Worlds of Lerner and Loewe. (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1990), 288–89.
63. Quotation from an article on Conran’s website, http://www.jasperconran.com/performing-arts/my-fair-lady/#nav=path_%252Fperforming-arts%252Fmy-fair-lady%252Fmy-fair-lady-press%252C7%252CSLS.html%253Fid%253D953%2526module%253Dgallery (accessed November 19, 2010).
64. See, for instance, Charles Spencer’s review of the production in the Daily Telegraph, February 19, 1992.
65. The day before the revival opened, Nunn published an article in the Guardian, containing the headline “In George Bernard Shaw’s original play, Eliza and Henry don’t even get it together. No wonder My Fair Lady is miles better than Pygmalion.” Guardian, March 14, 2001, accessed online at http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/2001/mar/14/artsfeatures.georgebernardshaw on November 19, 2010. In an article in the program booklet for the production (copy in the author’s collection), the choreographer Matthew Bourne referred to Nunn’s addition of lines from Pygmalion.
66. Michael Billington, review of My Fair Lady, Guardian, March 17, 2001. Accessed online at http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/2001/mar/17/theatre.artsfeatures1, November 23, 2010.
67. Rhoda Koenig, review of My Fair Lady: “Cockney Charmer is Set Fair for Success,” Independent, March 2011. Accessed online at http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatredance/reviews/cockney-charmer-is-set-fair-for-success-687653.html, November 23, 2010.
68. See Hugh Davies, “Martine Will Soon Be Back on Song,” Daily Telegraph, April 13, 2001. Accessed at http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1316079/Martine-will-soon-be-back-on-song.html, November 23, 2010. Jonathan Pryce commented on the situation in an interview connected with the Drury Lane transfer: Dominic Cavendish, “Life With Lots of Doolittles,” Daily Telegraph, July 24, 2001. http://www.telegraph. co.uk/culture/4724679/Life-with-lots-of-Doolittles.html, November 23, 2010.
69. Edward Seckerson, review of Our House and My Fair Lady, Independent, May 19, 2003. Accessed at http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatredance/reviews/our-house-cambridge-theatre-london-brmy-fair-lady-theatre-royal-druary-lane-london-590799.html, November 24, 2010.
70. Charles Spencer, “New Eliza is just loverly,” Daily Telegraph, March 26, 2003. Accessed at http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/theatre/3591872/New-Eliza-is-just-loverly.html, November 24, 2010.
CHAPTER 8
1. These characteristics can also be found in “You Wash and I’ll Dry” and “You’ve Got a Hold on Me” from What’s Up?, most of whose score is currently lost.
2. Sections of “Katherine receives advice” were later reworked for “The Contract,” one of Lerner and Loewe’s new additions to the score of Gigi when it was adapted for the stage in 1973.
3. MGM bought the rights to The Day Before Spring, but in spite of several attempts it never reached the screen.
4. Lerner, Street, 35.
5. Quoted in Steven Suskin, Opening Night on Broadway: A Critical Quotebook of the Golden Era of the Musical Theatre (New York: Schirmer, 1990), 470.
6. Scott McMillin, The Musical as Drama (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2006), 91.
7. Thomas L. Riis and Ann Sears, “The Successors of Rodgers and Hammerstein from the 1940s to the 1960s,” in William A Everett and Paul R Laird, eds., The Cambridge Companion to the Musical (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 149.
8. Pygmalion and My Fair Lady (New York: Signet Classics, 1969). My Fair Lady (London: Penguin Readers, 1999, repr. 2008).
9. Quoted in Suskin, Opening Nights, 470.
10. Rowland Field, “Musical Shaw: Fair Lady Is a Rare Inspiration,” Newark Evening News, March 16, 1956.
11. Anonymous, “A Memorable Musical,” Newsweek, March 26, 1956; anonymous, “New Musical in Manhattan,” Time, March 26, 1956.
12. Edward Jablonski, Alan Jay Lerner: A Biography (New York: H. Holt and Co., 1996), 106–45; Stephen Citron, The Wordsmiths: Oscar Hammerstein 2nd and Alan Jay Lerner (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), 240–80; Geoffrey Block, Enchanted Evenings, 231–34; McMillin, Musical as Drama.
13. Richard Traubner, Operetta, 378.
14. Ibid., 407.
15. Riis and Sears, “The Successors of Rodgers and Hammerstein from the 1940s to the 1960s,” in Everett and Laird, Cambridge Companion to the Musical, 149.
16. Gervase Hughes, Composers of Operetta (London: Macmillan, 1962), 249.
17. Zinsser, Easy to Remember, 229.
18. Mordden, Coming Up Roses, 155.
19. These are all in FLC and include “Cath’rine” (1925) (FLC, 8/6); “Love is Blind” (1924) (8/23); and “Sag’ ja” (1923) (8/33).
20. See Lees, Zinsser, and Block’s accounts of Loewe’s life as typical examples of the emphasis placed on Loewe’s early life in Europe.
21. Zinsser, Easy to Remember, 229.
22. Lerner himself said that “Luck” was intended to be “an English music hall song.” Alan Jay Lerner, “Creation of a Lady,” Alpha RHO Journal 1, no. 2 (Fall, 1960): 7.
23. Ibid., 10.
24. Ibid., 11.
25. Lerner once wrote an article mentioning “the deep and true influence of Oklahoma! … [S]ince that spring of 1943, no musical could ever again aspire to success with a sketchbook foundation, and no amount of unrelated choreographic virtuosity could rescue a raggedy second act.” Alan Jay Lerner, “Oh What a Beautiful Musical,” New York Times Magazine, May 12, 1963, 29–33. When he later wrote a book on the history of the genre, Lerner devoted an entire chapter to the importance of Oklahoma! Alan Jay Lerner, The Musical Theatre: A Celebration (London: Collins, 1986), 150–53.
26. Margaret Landon’s part-novel, part-biography Anna and the King of Siam was published in 1944 and filmed in 1946. The novel was based on Anna Leonowens’s two memoirs, The English Governess at the Siamese Court (1870) and Romance of the Harem (1872).
27. Page numbers in parentheses refer to the published script. Ultimately, of course, the fact that Eliza’s desire to better herself has been over-satisfied—bec
ause she is fit to be “a consort to a king” (again Higgins’s words, 147)—means that this ambition is now too modest, and perhaps impossible now that she has entered high society. One of the tensions of the story, indeed, is that Eliza’s ambition to become a lady is realized by the end of act 1. The remainder of the story concerns the resolution of the Eliza-Higgins relationship, but in truth Eliza’s question to Higgins—“What’s to become of me?” (110)—is never really answered.
28. Hobe Morrison, review of “My Fair Lady, ” Variety, March 21, 1956.
29. John Beaufort, “My Fair Lady from Pygmalion,” Christian Science Monitor, March 24, 1956.
30. Letter of March 2, 1959, Levin to Kenneth Allen, ed., Tribune, HLP, 33/6. The exact same wording is used in numerous letters to similar journalists and editors contained in this folder, which is marked “Editorial Campaign.”
31. Swain, Broadway Musical, 199.
32. Ibid., 197.
33. Ibid., 200.
34. Block, Enchanted Evenings, 231 and 234.
35. Ibid., 242.
36. Raymond Knapp, The American Musical and the Performance of Personal Identity (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2006), 284–93.
37. Lerner, “Creation of a Lady,” 9.
38. Ibid., 12.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
PUBLISHED SCRIPTS
Lerner, Alan Jay. My Fair Lady. New York: Coward-McCann, 1956.
Lerner, Alan Jay. My Fair Lady. London: Signet, 1958.
Lerner, Alan Jay. My Fair Lady. London: Penguin 1999, repr. 2008.
Shaw, George Bernard, and Alan Jay Lerner. Pygmalion and My Fair Lady. New York: Signet Classics, 1969.
PUBLISHED SCORES
Loewe, Frederick. My Fair Lady. London: Warner-Chappell, 1956.
Loewe, Frederick. My Fair Lady. New York: Chappell/Intersong, 1969.
SECONDARY LITERATURE
Loverly:The Life and Times of My Fair Lady (Broadway Legacies) Page 31