Loverly:The Life and Times of My Fair Lady (Broadway Legacies) (3 page)

Though the road from Ovid’s
Pygmalion
to Shaw’s was a long one, we can already see in the original tale the roots of Henry Higgins’s personality. Both Pygmalion and Higgins feel nothing short of contempt for the opposite sex, and yet—or perhaps as a result of this—they both lavish their special talents on creating the ideal image of a woman. At the same time, there is a major divergence
from the original myth in the final scene of Shaw’s play. The birth of Paphos after the union of Pygmalion and Galatea is the conclusion of the legend, but the end of the play leaves the audience with an unanswered question: Do Henry Higgins and Eliza Doolittle form a romantic union after the curtain has come down?

When creating their 1956 musical adaptation of
Pygmalion
as
My Fair Lady
, Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe’s greatest challenge was to deal with the complex nuances of the Higgins-Eliza relationship. Although the current study is far-reaching in the topics it embraces, the evolution of this aspect of the show is a unifying theme. It is hardly surprising that Shaw’s
Pygmalion
should be compared to Ovid’s version, or that
My Fair Lady
should be compared to both; since Ovid and his successors bring the lead characters together, it is natural to expect this to be reflected in Shaw’s version. Yet the fact that the playwright himself was so vehement in his rejection of the romantic union of Eliza and Higgins—famously writing an epilogue to clarify what he intended by the final scene—means that we are left with a compelling ambiguity in the text that can be played one way or another, according to the preferences of the reader, director, or performer.

From initial planning to the opening night in March 1956, it took Lerner and Loewe almost five years to work out how to maintain this ambiguity while employing the paraphernalia of 1950s musical comedy. To have Higgins and Eliza marry would be too conventional, but to rob their relationship of romance would take away the intrigue and tension that were to prove part of the musical’s winning formula. The pages that follow describe the
My Fair Lady
story, starting with the approach of various composers to Shaw with the idea of turning
Pygmalion
into a musical and his persistent refusal, through Lerner and Loewe’s two separate attempts to write the show before finally getting it right and bringing it to the stage. Although the precise details of how they molded the musical and dramatic material are discussed in later chapters, it is striking even from the narrative in this chapter and those following that Lerner and Loewe were initially thinking along more conventional lines, right down to pursuing Mary Martin, one of Broadway’s most in-demand musical comedy stars after her success in Rodgers and Hammerstein’s
South Pacific
(1949), for the role of Eliza Doolittle. But in the end, imagination rather than convention was what made
My Fair Lady
special.

My Fair Lady
was the most successful musical of its day, yet surprisingly little is known about the creation of the piece. Although the story of its genesis has
often been retold, the main source of information for most accounts until now has been Alan Jay Lerner himself. The first third of his memoir,
The Street Where I Live
, is devoted to a highly entertaining report of how he came to write
My Fair Lady
with Frederick Loewe and the journey that team undertook to bring it into being.
²
However, Lerner’s story was written after a significant lapse of time, and the author was prone to romanticize events or completely omit them from his book. Furthermore, little has been said in print about the attempts of other composers to write about the show or of the contribution of the Theatre Guild (producers of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s
Oklahoma!
and
Carousel
) in trying to get the project off the ground.

Rather than regarding Lerner’s autobiography as the primary source of information about the genesis of the show, this book depends largely on contemporary documentary sources, acknowledging Lerner’s version of events only where no other source exists. While there is no major collection of correspondence belonging to either Lerner or Loewe currently held in any public collection, the Theatre Guild’s role in the musical is illustrated by the company’s papers at Yale University, which also houses details of Loewe’s projected show with Harold Rome during 1953–54. Background on Cecil Beaton was obtained from his diaries and correspondence at St John’s College, Cambridge, and similar information about Michael Redgrave was found at the Victoria and Albert Museum. Hanya Holm’s personal notes and correspondence at the New York Public Library brought new insights into the choreography for the show, especially the creation of the ballet; and the bulk of the story was constructed from the papers of Herman Levin, the producer of
My Fair Lady
, held by the Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater Research (also home to Moss Hart’s papers).

Some of these sources have been written about previously. In particular, Steven Bach’s excellent biography of Moss Hart takes advantage of the Levin and Hart papers, and the riveting epilogue of David Mark D’Andre’s doctoral dissertation on the Theatre Guild gives by far the most detailed account of Lerner and Loewe’s initial attempt to write the show.
³
Both of these sources remain problematical, largely due to a reliance on Lerner’s book to fill in the gaps, and no attempt has been made to marry up all the currently available documentary evidence on the genesis of
My Fair Lady
until now.

Although it would be a mistake to focus too sharply on Shaw when assessing Lerner and Loewe’s musical, an account of the genesis of
My Fair Lady
must begin with his
Pygmalion
, the play on which it is based. The first two chapters of this book deal with two key phases, with the summer of 1954 as the cut-off point between them. The first period concerns the approaches of various parties to Shaw to turn
Pygmalion
into a musical and his persistent
refusal to allow this; his giving the screen rights for his plays to Gabriel Pascal, the Hungarian film maker; Pascal’s decision to make
Pygmalion
into a musical in the wake of the success of his 1938 film version of the play; his joining forces with the Theatre Guild to commission various composers to attempt to write the piece; the signing of a contract by Lerner and Loewe to write the musical, with the hope of having Mary Martin as Eliza Doolittle; Lerner and Loewe’s backing out of their contract, having failed to find a way to do the piece; and finally, the Theatre Guild’s eventual abandonment of the project in early 1953.

The second period, discussed in
chapter 2
, involves Lerner and Loewe’s decision to try again with the show during the early autumn of 1954, following Pascal’s death; their hiring of Herman Levin to produce it instead of the Theatre Guild, and the latter’s unsuccessful battle to wrest the rights to
Pygmalion
back from them; Lerner and Loewe’s drawn-out search for an actor to play Henry Higgins, as well as other cast and production team members; the creation of the score and script in the background of all these practical dealings; and the mounting of the piece on the Broadway stage on March 15, 1956 after a rehearsal period in New York and tryouts in New Haven and Philadelphia. A brief account is also given of Lerner and Loewe’s activities between late 1952 and the middle of 1954, when they each attempted to write one or more shows with another collaborator. In a sense, then, this is the story of two
My Fair Ladies
: one aborted version, and one completed version. By clarifying the genesis of the show in this way, we can understand more fully how the piece came into being and also see how certain decisions—such as the shift of focus from writing a vehicle for Mary Martin to creating a vehicle for Rex Harrison—ultimately changed the content of the script, score, and lyrics.

While Oscar Straus’s 1908 adaptation of George Bernard Shaw’s
Arms and the Man
(1894) as
Der tapfere Soldat
(
The Chocolate Soldier
) proved that a musical based on a Shaw play had the potential for popular success, it merely confirmed the playwright’s opinion that his works should be left well alone. To Theresa Helburn’s suggestion in 1939 that he should give the Theatre Guild permission to allow Kurt Weill to turn
The Devil’s Disciple
into a musical, Shaw declared that after
The Chocolate Soldier
, “nothing will ever induce me to allow any other play of mine to be degraded into an operetta or set to any music except its own.”
⁴
Nor had Shaw been impressed in 1921 when Franz Lehár had
the notion that
Pygmalion
would be an excellent basis for a musical work. In his response, Shaw mentioned the Straus adaptation and stated firmly that “A
Pygmalion
operetta is quite out of the question.”
⁵
Yet the playwright was not against the idea for whimsical reasons. As he explained, during the time of
The Chocolate Soldier
’s domination of the stage, nobody wanted to produce
Arms and the Man
. He continued: “
Pygmalion
is my most steady source of income: it saved me from ruin during the war, and still brings in a substantial penny every week. To allow a comic opera to supplant it is out of the question.” Shaw’s eagerness to protect himself financially should be borne in mind when considering his refusals to allow more of his works to be set to music. Anxiety over the potential loss of money was Shaw’s main concern from the very moment he heard of the proposed
Chocolate Soldier
project in 1907.
⁶

Rehearsal for the Broadway production of
My Fair Lady,
January 1956 (Photofest)

The Shaw estate would ultimately receive a huge sum of money from
My Fair Lady
, however, and his objections often seemed to be more on artistic than practical grounds. For instance, a musical
Pygmalion
was also the subject of RAF serviceman E. A. Prentice’s request to Shaw in 1948. A stern reply was dispatched, forbidding “any such outrage” and adding that “If
Pygmalion
is not good enough for your friends with its own verbal music, their talent must be altogether extraordinary.” He advised instead that they might put on Mozart’s
Così fan tutte
, or Offenbach’s
La Grande-Duchesse de Gérolstein
.
⁷
At around the same time, Gertrude Lawrence approached Shaw about a potential musical adaptation of
Pygmalion
, following her success as Eliza Doolittle in the play. Noël Coward was to write the score, and Fanny Holtzmann, the New York attorney for both Lawrence and Coward, communicated with Shaw
on their behalf. Again, the playwright was sharply dismissive, calling it “crazy nonsense” and saying that “Noël could not conceivably interfere in my business.”
⁸

These refusals came even after he had entrusted the cinematic adaptation of his plays to Gabriel Pascal, who made his film of
Pygmalion
in 1938, so we may take it that Shaw was firm in disliking the idea of his works being set to music, regardless of who approached him. But it is apparent from these letters that various people thought
Pygmalion
was excellent material for a musical. The initial obstacle was the playwright himself, but on his death in 1950 the possibility arose again, this time with a more realistic hope of it being brought to fruition.

The first public mention of a musical adaptation of
Pygmalion
for Broadway came in the
New York Times
on May 20, 1951. In a gossip column dealing with show business, the journalist Lewis Funke wrote about Mary Martin’s immediate plans to take her hit 1949 show
South Pacific
to London. Funke went on to write that Cheryl Crawford, who had previously produced Weill’s
One Touch of Venus
for Martin, “has spoken to her about a musicalized version of
Pygmalion
… [I]t is understood that “feelers” have been put out to the Shaw estate on the subject. Miss Crawford, understandably, might even be nurturing the idea that she could interest Rodgers and Hammerstein in the project.”
⁹
The story was taken up on October 5, 1951, by another
Times
columnist, Sam Zolotow, who wrote that “In Richard Rodgers’ opinion, the chances are ‘fairly good’ for him and his team-mate, Oscar Hammerstein II, to acquire the rights to
Pygmalion
from the Shaw estate. Their objective, of course, would be to convert the celebrated play into a musical.… Mr. Rodgers conceded that Mary Martin was a possibility [for the lead role].” The article continues by explaining that although an identical project had already been considered jointly by Mary Martin and Cheryl Crawford, the latter would no longer be part of the production.
¹⁰