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by Julie Andrews

  Alan was more often present at rehearsals than Fritz. Fritz was the cavalier who loved the good life, loved the ladies, and was by far the easiest of the three men to get along with because he was always laid back and charm itself.

  Alan was very highly strung. He, too, was incredibly charismatic, gifted, and highly intelligent. He wore glasses, and the skin on his face was taut, revealing the good bones beneath. He smoked heavily and permanently held a cigarette—lit or unlit—between his thumb and third finger, twirling it constantly with his second finger.

  As we moved further into rehearsals, I became aware that he sometimes wore white cotton gloves. He had a terrible habit of nail biting—not that I ever saw him do it, but apparently he bit his nails down to the quick until his fingers actually bled, and the gloves helped prevent him from doing that.

  Rex became increasingly demanding and desirous of Moss’s attention. He double-checked every line in the play, insisting that we stick to Shaw’s original dialogue. If he suspected Alan had injected a line, Rex would shout, “Where’s the Penguin? Where’s the Penguin?” He would then pore over the Penguin paperback edition of Pygmalion while everyone waited patiently. “See!” he would say. “This is the correct line. This is what it should be.”

  Alan and Moss wisely allowed Rex his head in these matters, and Rex was undoubtedly right to tout the preservation of the original play, which is what gives My Fair Lady such a strong core.

  “Where’s the Penguin?” became such an oft-repeated cry that one day Moss and Alan presented Rex with a full-sized taxidermist-stuffed penguin, which made everybody laugh and eased the tensions.

  I began blocking some of the musical numbers with Hanya Holm, our choreographer, a sweet-faced, slightly rotund little lady, who turned out to be extremely kind and rather a comfort to me, the only woman in the male-dominated production team.

  Once I started learning the choreography and setting “Loverly” and other songs with her, I found her to be encouraging and warm, as were the dancers around me, and it was the one time I didn’t feel inadequate.

  But about two weeks into rehearsals, it became obvious to me and to everyone, that I was hopelessly out of my depth as Eliza Doolittle.

  I watched the original film of Pygmalion with Wendy Hiller and Leslie Howard a couple of times, searching for clues that would help me with this character. I still had not mastered the cockney accent, and I’m not sure I ever got it completely right. I adapted to the songs easily, and if it hadn’t been for them, I honestly think I would have been dismissed and sent home. I had heard of people being fired on the spot and replacements being brought in, and I dreaded that mortification.

  I got the feeling from Rex’s cold and ungenerous attitude that I wasn’t making inroads with him and that he was, quite rightly, making a stink about this silly little English girl who couldn’t manage the role. Apparently he once said something like “If you don’t get rid of that c—, you won’t have a show.” Thank God, it was many years before I knew of that remark.

  I wondered if Moss would have the time to focus his attention on me. Did he know how much I yearned for guidance? I was a blank slate looking out at the world—no knowledge, no assurance or opinion, no concept of how to create a character, how to shape it, form it, bring it alive. Right or wrong, it would have been good to have an idea, but I had nothing to draw on. I was inexperienced and painfully aware of it. The only thing I felt was that there was something inside me—some awareness of “smarts” and a yearning to be set free. I felt I could be Eliza, could find and understand her, if only someone would gently unravel the knotted ball of string in my stomach and pull it up and out of my head.

  And that’s where Moss’s humanity came in.

  Dear Moss. He later told me that he said to his wife, Kitty Carlisle, “You know, if this were the old days, I’d have taken her to the penthouse at the Plaza Hotel, locked the door, made passionate love to her all weekend, and she’d have emerged Monday morning—a STAR!”

  Kitty apparently replied, “Well, darling, we know we love each other. If you think it’ll do any good—go ahead.”

  Moss decided instead to dismiss the company for forty-eight hours and to work solely with me. How he came to believe that I was worth the effort, I will never know. Perhaps my singing and a certain stage presence—or the fact that I was English and an appropriate age for Eliza—gave him cause for optimism. Certainly he was no fool, and couldn’t afford to waste time or be indulgent. I do have a sense that he recognized and empathized with a lost soul. He came from a background of poverty and difficult circumstances. He knew what it was like to yearn for a way out, and he had received help from mentors who cared. I suspect that his instincts were so attuned, so generous, that he understood and reached out to give me one big chance, in hopes that I had the equipment to cut it.

  On the way to rehearsals on that fateful weekend, I felt like someone going to the dentist with an agonizing toothache. You dread the experience, yet things have gone so far that you must deal with the pain. You hope you may feel better when it’s over.

  Moss said to me, “Julie, you and I have some work to do, but there isn’t much time for niceties. If we are to accomplish anything at all, this is going to be hurtful and difficult.” I knew that his words were chosen out of care and decency, and I braced myself for whatever was coming my way.

  For those two days, alone in the rehearsal theater with only Biff and Jerry to assist, Moss and I hammered through each scene—everything from Eliza’s entrance, her screaming and yelling, to her transformation into a lady at the end of the play. Moss bullied, cajoled, scolded, and encouraged.

  He yelled from the floor, “No! You’re saying it like a schoolgirl! Give me more.” And then again, “Louder! I want that angrier.”

  I screamed the lines at him.

  He leapt onto the stage to show me what he wanted. He snatched Eliza’s purse from my grasp and whacked an imaginary Higgins. He showed me how Eliza might sit in the scene at Ascot, teacup held high, pinky finger extended.

  There were moments when I became angry at him, hated him, in fact. Then I became tearful from sheer frustration or despair. But I fought back the tears, and Moss would give me a little break, after which we would return and have at it again.

  By the end of the forty-eight hours, that good man had stripped my feelings bare, and disposed of my girlish inadequacy; he had molded, kneaded, and helped me become the character of Eliza. He made her part of my soul. We were both exhausted.

  Later I learned that at the end of that weekend, when Moss returned home, Kitty asked him how I responded.

  “Oh, she’ll be fine,” Moss replied wearily. “She has that terrible British strength that makes you wonder how they ever lost India.”

  ON MONDAY MORNING, we ran through the whole show with the principals. I knew that Rex and everyone else were watching me to see what the weekend had produced. I probably fell back 50 percent from nerves, but I also gained 50 percent, and from then on I was on my way. Rex appeared somewhat mollified.

  I was now able to move forward with the foundation that Moss had given me, and little by little, I cemented the role. Once I gained confidence, I began to add my own touches and flourishes. But for every single performance of the two years that I played on Broadway, I never stopped working on Eliza. She is such a character, and I have never in my life had as good an acting lesson as Moss gave me that weekend.

  THIRTY-TWO

  POOR STANLEY HOLLOWAY had been waiting for his own chance to work with Moss, and he finally had a bit of a meltdown, even threatening to quit the show.

  Moss spoke with him. “Look, Stanley, I’ve had my hands full with a leading man who’s never done a musical before and a leading lady who’s never played a dramatic role. You’ve done both, so take it as a compliment that I didn’t get to you immediately.”

  We traveled to New Haven to break the show in. Our theater, the Shubert, was right next door to the hotel where the principal members o
f the company were staying.

  The weather was terrible—snowy, blustery, frigid—and indoors, we were mired in the out-of-town madness that comes from the technical demands of putting a big show on its feet. Oliver Smith’s sets were phenomenal, but his designs called for two large turntables, which were the bane of Biff ’s, Moss’s, and the company’s existence, because they were slow and lumbering and they seldom lined up properly.

  Hanya Holm had created a ballet at the end of the first act—the grooming of Eliza: the manicuring of her nails, the styling of her hair, the fitting of her costume, the queue of tailors presenting fabrics. Eliza becomes more and more exhausted, pushed here and shoved there. It so mirrored my own experience—the fittings with Cecil, the work with Moss, musical rehearsals—that it was easy for me to identify with the ballet, but it was a gargantuan sequence to manage in the midst of an already physically challenging role.

  It wasn’t until we were in New Haven that we met and heard our orchestra. Needless to say, hearing the score with a full complement of musicians for the first time was thrilling beyond words. The overture alone will forever give me goose bumps. When I hear it now, it takes me straight back to the nights I sat in my dressing room listening to it, putting finishing touches to my makeup and anticipating the weight of the show ahead of me.

  There are eight unison notes as the overture begins. Every time I heard them I would think, “Oh my God, we’re committed now.” I could sense the excitement of “I Could Have Danced All Night” or “Show Me” or “On the Street Where You Live.” As the overture ends, the horns herald the curtain going up, and the set of Covent Garden and the Opera House is revealed, with patrons of the opera milling with cockney street vendors, all in their incredible Beaton costumes. The audience nearly always broke into applause.

  Our Austrian maestro, Franz Allers, was a task master. He would tell the chorus, “I want it tuk-tuk-tuk-tuk,” as in “Every-Duke-and-Earl-and-Peer-is-here; Every-one-who-should-be-here-is-here”—a staccato pronunciation. Everything had to be exact and clearly enunciated. He kept the show in immaculate shape, calling a vocal rehearsal every week during the run on Broadway, and he always had endless notes for the principals. When conducting, however, he was a gentle, benign presence in the orchestra pit, and his instincts were infallible as to what any performer needed on any given day.

  The rehearsals in New Haven were a nightmare for Rex. Kitty had forewarned Moss that singing with the orchestra would knock Rex sideways—and it did, because suddenly he couldn’t hear his melodies, everything sounded new, and he didn’t know where his cues lay. Franz Allers worked with him almost to the exclusion of anybody else, but Rex was panicked and created a great deal of fuss.

  Actually, he was innately musical. Though he didn’t truly sing in My Fair Lady, he performed the songs in an original “speak/sing” voice—a first for Broadway, I believe—and he had an ability to float across the rhythm of his songs in a unique way. His panic stemmed from the fact that he had never done a musical, never sung with an orchestra.

  We inched our way through the interminable tech rehearsals, which are all about the sets and lighting and getting it right so that stage management can cement the show and make precision calls night after night. Finally, we came to the first preview, a performance that is indelibly printed on my memory.

  Word was out about the show, and all manner of agents, VIPs, and special guests were planning to attend. It was such a highly anticipated production that anyone who was connected in any way with a member of the company or with the industry was coming up to New Haven.

  That afternoon a huge and unexpected blizzard hit the East. It snowed and snowed and snowed. Inside the theater, chaos reigned. The turntables on the stage were not working—maybe they never would work. Rex was frozen with panic. Hair, wigs, costumes, and quick changes were being worked on. Ernie Adler, our diminutive and forever up-beat theatrical hairstylist, was flitting from room to room, crowns and bejeweled hair-pieces temporarily perched upon his head, clips between his teeth, combs in his hands.

  My own hair was long, and pieces were added to it throughout the show as necessary. My first costume called for long, straggly curls beneath my shabby straw hat. Once Eliza was accepted into the Higgins household, I wore a long “fall” at the back of my head, attached with a velvet bow, followed later by a beautiful twisted chignon for the ballroom scene. I not only had costume changes, quick changes, the underdressing, but also hairpiece and hat changes, too.

  On the afternoon of that first preview, Rex suddenly declared he wasn’t ready to do the show. He was adamant. There was nothing to be done except to postpone due to “technical difficulties.” The company was dismissed and told to go home or have a good meal or whatever. The annoying turntables continued to be worked on, as they still were not functioning.

  The problem was that people were already on their way up to New Haven. In order to alert everyone who had left early to brave the storm, hourly bulletins were broadcast on the radio, advising theatergoers of the cancellation. Nevertheless, by six o’clock, hundreds of people had arrived and were waiting to collect their tickets at the box office.

  The house manager of the Shubert threatened to expose the true reason for the cancellation, and Rex’s agent persuaded his terrified client that if he intended to continue in the business, it was in his best interest to get onstage, do the show, and be done with it. Rex finally agreed. There was a mad dash to get the word out to the company that the show was going on after all. The stage management went crazy, for members of the cast had disseminated all over town. By performance time every one of them had been located.

  REX WAS A basket case. I, on the other hand, went from not having known how to cope during rehearsals to finding my true strength. The old vaudeville training kicked in. The show must go on? I rose to the occasion.

  It was a monumental effort, but I honestly feel that I spearheaded the company through the entire performance that night. I encouraged, pushed, and motivated Rex and did everything I could to help make the show work. Miraculously, the turntables grumbled but didn’t falter, and, miraculously, the audience simply loved it. The show ran about three and a half hours, but we got through it.

  When the curtain came down, I went to my dressing room utterly spent, and sat in front of the mirror, eyes glazed, in total silence.

  Everyone rushed to Rex’s dressing room to congratulate him. I slumped in my chair, thinking, “I don’t believe we did it…,” at which point my door was flung open and Cecil Beaton flew in. The little hat that I wore with the yellow suit was lying on my dressing table. It was an oval shape and flat like a saucer. In the haste of pinning up my hair and the hat going on my head in the quick change, it had been put on back to front. It was the only thing that night that hadn’t been done correctly. Beaton picked up the hat and slammed it onto my head. “Not that way, you silly bitch—this way!” he snapped. I nearly burst into tears.

  Within two or three days, to my enormous relief, Eliza’s transformation ballet was cut, along with one of Rex’s songs, entitled “Come to the Ball,” and a lovely ballad for Eliza called “Say a Prayer for Me Tonight.” The latter was subsequently used in the film Gigi.

  My entrance in the beautiful ball gown had originally been in the middle of the ballroom scene, with everyone waltzing and swirling in their own magnificent costumes. Consequently, my lovely gown wasn’t having any impact.

  Moss and Alan made a deep cut in the first act—the only piece of major surgery in the entire show. Instead of the ballet, Alan wrote a small scene, which perfectly—and brilliantly—solved the problem. Pickering and Higgins are in his study, dressed and ready for the ball, waiting for Eliza. They discuss how hard Higgins has been on the young girl, and Pickering wonders if she will manage the evening ahead. The door at the top of the study stairs opens and Eliza appears dressed in the shimmering gown, and to orchestral accompaniment, she walks slowly down the steps. Both men watch, mesmerized. Higgins is holding Eli
za’s wrap, and as she gets to the bottom of the stairs he drapes it over his arm, offers Eliza his other arm, and escorts her out of the study with Pickering following. The turntables revolve, the study splits open to reveal the ballroom.

  The replacement of all the effort that had gone before with this one little scene was inspirational. It is the defining moment of Eliza’s transformation.

  I should mention one other important change that went into the show long before previews began. I had a very pretty song called “Shy,” and originally Eliza sang it to show her feelings for Higgins. Alan Lerner realized that in Shaw’s original play, the main characters never once speak of love. Therefore, he and Fritz created another song, the famous “I Could Have Danced All Night,” which conveys all the affection and emotion Eliza feels, yet never once mentions the word.

  WE OFFICIALLY OPENED in New Haven on February 4, 1956. Just before the show, I went to my hotel room in the late afternoon, and in my mailbox was a bulky envelope with a little note from Moss:

  “Darling Julie, I think these belong more to you than to me.”

  Inside were two brass discs—a pair of ticket tokens to the Covent Garden Opera House that Moss had found many years ago and had converted into cuff links. In the old days, if one had a box at the opera, one presented a token and was shown to the appropriate seat.

  The gift almost brought me to my knees. It was so unbelievably touching and appropriate. Not only were the tokens from my home country and the famous opera house featured in our play, but they were also from Moss—and I knew how much he treasured them. The fact that he had chosen to give them to me was the greatest accolade I could have imagined. I cherish them to this day.