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I remember saying sad good-byes to the family at Heathrow Airport and boarding the huge Stratocruiser with Lou Wilson, who had been in London and was accompanying me back.

As our flight took off, I wept as if my heart would break. Lou seemed puzzled at first, then became quite concerned. I sat beside him and bawled my eyes out. I couldn’t explain why, and I couldn’t stop. It was a tidal wave of emotion.

The flight took about eleven hours, I think. The plane had fore and aft seating sections with stacked sleeping quarters in the center, much like berths on a train. I sat beside Lou and tearfully hiccuped my way through dinner, which I barely touched. I was grateful to climb into the narrow bunk, pull the curtains closed, and once more let go of my emotions.

D
URING MY BRIEF
stay at home, Alan and Fritz had come over to London, and I’d gone to see them in a hotel just off Bond Street. It was there that I first met Rex Harrison, who was to play the leading role of Henry Higgins. He was tall and thin, his clothes exquisitely tailored. He was sophisticated, with a clear sense of himself, albeit somewhat egocentric. He was definitely the center of attention.

We listened to the new songs that had been added to the show.
My Fair Lady
was taking shape wonderfully.

Alan Lerner told me that
My Fair Lady
was originally entitled
Fanfaroon—
a man who blows his own horn. The title
My Fair Lady
comes from the song “London Bridge Is Falling Down,” those three words being the very last line of the ditty. Its melody can be heard briefly in the overture of the show.

I had been working on the music with Madame Stiles-Allen. She had recently donated the Old Farm outside Leeds to the Yorkshire College of Music and Drama, and had moved south to a pretty cottage in West Kingsdown, Kent. She prepared me for “Just You Wait,” which is a dangerous song for the voice because it has to be sung so angrily, even shouted at times. Madame taught me, as always, to emphasize the consonants for vocal clarity and safety.

REHEARSALS FOR
My Fair Lady
were held at the New Amsterdam Theater on 42nd Street. Lou escorted me there the first day. I was once again staying at the Park Chambers Hotel, this time in a room of my
own. I remember scanning the streets as we drove down Broadway, superstitiously looking for a sign, some omen that would give me the much-needed confidence to begin the marathon. Strangely, I saw not one, but three.

There was the “My Fair Lady Nail Salon,” “Pygmalion Clothiers,” and “Andrews Coffee Shop.” Good!

The New Amsterdam had once been a grand and glorious theater, home to the famous
Ziegfeld Follies
. In its upper reaches there was a smaller rooftop theater.

I learned that when the
Follies
played in the main theater below, the chorus ladies went upstairs after the performance, removed most of their already scant costumes, and paraded on a glass catwalk above the tables of the elite club.

By the time we began rehearsals in 1956, both theaters were in terrible shape; the larger one was now a cinema. The upstairs was never used, run-down, filled with dust, an old empty space, though the little stage and remains of the catwalk were still there. But it allowed us enough room to put the show on its feet, and it afforded some seats on the floor area for the creative team to observe the rehearsals. It also gave us complete privacy. I believe our company was the first to use it after it had been shut for so many years. Since then it has been magnificently restored by the Disney Company and is the linchpin of the 42nd Street rejuvenation.

AND SO I
come to Moss Hart. The great Moss Hart, the director of
My Fair Lady,
and later
Camelot
. The man who created six plays with George S. Kaufman; the man responsible for
Winged Victory
and for
Lady in the Dark
with Gertrude Lawrence; the man who worked with Irving Berlin, Cole Porter, Richard Rodgers, Kurt Weill, and wrote the screenplays of
Gentleman’s Agreement
and the original
A Star Is Born
, to mention but a few of his many accomplishments.

There has hardly been a day since that era of my life when my thoughts haven’t turned to dear Moss. He has been much in my mind during the writing of this autobiography. At times I have invoked his name aloud, asking for his guidance. I still sense him as a constant presence. How does
one adequately describe a man who, over time, completely captured my heart? Hopefully, as these pages continue, he will emerge, and the reader will understand why it was that everyone loved him.

Simply, he was a well-built man, with dark, receding hair, full, gentle lips, piercing brown eyes, well-defined eyebrows, and surprisingly large ears. In retrospect, he looked a little like George Gershwin; they could have been brothers.

Moss’s aura was compelling, his intellect witty and sharp, his nature endearing. He was a unique and magnetic man. He had a slight stoop and, during rehearsals, would pad to and fro in the “earth shoes” he had specially made for him. He often clenched a pipe between his teeth, though, to my knowledge, it was never lit. He had a penchant for antique cuff links and wore a gold signet ring. He was warm, friendly, funny, and he embraced us all. Indeed, he embraced the world, and all the good things in it.

On that first day of rehearsals, the upstairs theater at the New Amsterdam had been made ready for the initial reading of the play.

The cast members were seated on rows of chairs, arranged in a shallow semicircle, the principals sitting in the front. I sat with Rex, Stanley Holloway (playing Eliza’s father, Alfred Doolittle), Robert Coote (Colonel Pickering), lovely Cathleen Nesbitt (Henry Higgins’s mother), and Michael King (Freddy Eynsford-Hill).

Opposite us, long tables and chairs had been set up for the production team: Moss sat in the center, and Herman Levin (our producer), Hanya Holm (choreographer), Oliver Smith (designer of the glorious sets), Cecil Beaton (creator of the exquisite costumes), Abe Feder (lighting), and Franz Allers (maestro of the orchestra) sat either side of him—plus members of the production and stage management staff.

In retrospect, I cannot think of a more celebrated, talented, awesome team to helm one show. Almost everyone connected with the musical that day had a distinguished biography that would fill several pages in
Who’s Who
.

Oliver Smith’s sketches for the sets and some of Beaton’s costume designs had been put on display for the company to see. Alan and Fritz sat at the piano to one side of the stage.

After some initial press photos were taken, we began the business of the first read-through. Moss read the stage directions; Lerner sang the songs. He wasn’t exactly a singer, and one was never sure he was going to make the higher notes (“…and ohhhh, the towering fee-ling” from “On the Street Where You Live” was a big hazard!). But he sang with conviction, and it is always riveting to hear a score interpreted by its author. Fritz played with enormous panache and gusto, smiling benevolently at everyone.

Our production stage manager, a bear of a man with a warm voice and comforting manner by the name of Samuel “Biff” Liff, was friendly, supremely professional, and patient. His two assistants, Jerry Adler and Bernie Hart (Moss’s brother), were affable and gracious, and sat next to him.

I was acutely aware that Rex appeared at home in his role already. All the cast members read well. I, on the other hand, was absolutely unsure of a single line I uttered. I remember feeling oddly distant, like an onlooker watching the proceedings from afar.

I had no idea how to do a cockney accent. I don’t know why I hadn’t thought to study it before we began. Some idiotic part of me must have thought that I could wing it. A man called Alfred Dixon was hired as a dialect coach for me. I saw the irony of taking English cockney lessons from an American professor of phonetics—my own personal Henry Higgins!

Costume fittings for the show began almost immediately. I knew more about Cecil Beaton than I knew of Moss or Fritz or Alan. I knew that he was British, highly esteemed, and considered very grand; that he had created costumes for many British productions, including several Noël Coward plays; and that he was also a celebrated portrait photographer long favored by members of the Royal Family. I was pretty intimidated by him at first.

The costumes were being made at the Helene Pons Studio on West 54th Street. Helene was a diminutive Italian woman, very busy, very pressured, full of energy, and a little mother to me.

At one point in the show, I had to wear one costume over another in preparation for a very quick change between scenes. When Eliza returns
from the glamorous ball, she is wearing a full-length black velvet cape, and one supposes she has her ball gown beneath it, but I was in fact underdressed with the skirt and blouse of a yellow suit. Eliza has a fiery argument with Higgins and storms out. There is barely time in the quick scene change to don the suit jacket and shoes and add a new hairpiece and hat for the scene that immediately follows.

The Helene Pons Studio was on the thirteenth floor of a skyscraper, and whenever there was a high wind, the building really swayed. One day in early February, I was fitting the yellow suit and the velvet cloak on top of it. Beaton was a taskmaster, and I had been standing a long time on a small dais while the hemlines were marked and the cloak pinned. Several seamstresses had been jostling and poking me. I felt the building swaying and I suddenly became unbearably hot. Then
I
began to sway, and I knew I was about to faint. I broke out in a sweat and had to lie down on Helene’s couch. Beaton was not sympathetic.

“Oh
dear,
” he complained, flapping his long, delicate hands in a helpless fashion. “Somebody
do
something. Get her some water or a fan.”

AFTER MY BEAUTIFUL
ball gown was made ready for the show, Beaton requested a photo session with me. I tried to give it my all—leaning against the balustrade in his studio as gracefully as I could, while he took lots of pictures.

“Lovely, lovely, lovely,” he murmured in a slightly bored voice, his camera clicking continuously. Then again, “Lovely…
yes,
lovely.”

I thought maybe I was making some headway and beginning to impress.

“Now give me a profile. Yes. Now look at the camera.
Lovely!
…Of course you are the most hopelessly
un
-photogenic person I have ever met.”

Beaton sort of got my goat. Because we were both British, I quickly picked up on something: he was grander than he had any right to be. Maybe I sensed arrogance or hidden ambition. Certainly he acted like a snob.

I began to tease him a little, using my developing cockney accent to good effect when I felt he was being condescending or indifferent. And
he liked it! I would glimpse the teeniest crack of a smile on his pursed lips and a slight twinkle in his eye when I deliberately flaunted a lower-class attitude. Eventually I believe we came to appreciate each other, and his glorious costumes made one forget everything else, anyway.

MOSS CHOSE A
late afternoon and evening rehearsal schedule, which allowed time in the morning for all the other things we had to do. We began working every day at 2:00
P.M
., took a break for dinner at 5:30
P.M
., and then reassembled from 7:00 until 11:00 in the evening. Stanley Holloway and I kept up the British tradition of a cup of tea at 4:00 in the afternoon, and soon everyone was enjoying that welcome little break.

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.