Loverly:The Life and Times of My Fair Lady (Broadway Legacies) (44 page)

150
. Letter of December 30, 1955, Levin to Lieberson, and attached billing sheet,
HLP
, 24/11.

151
. Letter of January 4, 1955, Levin to Evans,
HLP
, 25/7.

152
. Letter of December 29, 1955, Levin to Julie Andrews,
HLP
, 25/5.

153
. Lerner,
Street
, 87.

154
. Ibid.

155
. Andrews,
Home
, 193.

156
. Lerner,
Street
, 88.

157
. Ibid., 89.

158
. Ibid., 90.

159
. Andrews,
Home
, 194–95.

160
. Lerner,
Street
, 90.

161
. Ibid.

162
. Contract of January 5, 1955, between Levin and Tutrinoli; contract of January 8, between Levin and Russell Bennett,
HLP
, 23/6.

163
. Letter of February 11, 1956, Robert Russell Bennett to Levin,
HLP
, 24/2.

164
. Letter of January 9, 1956, Doris Prober of Decorative Plant Corp to Levin,
HLP
, 25/1. Letter of January 10, 1956, Philip Alder to Miss Brown of Coro Jewelry,
HLP
, 24/13. Letter of January 10, 1956, Beaton to Levin and Sales Contract between Levin and the Helene Pons Studio, January 18, 1956,
HLP
, 35/4.

165
. Contract of December 30, 1955, between The Liza Company and the New Haven Jewish Community Center,
HLP
, 24/3.

166
. Lerner,
Street
, 94.

167
. Ibid., 96.

168
. Ibid., 97.

169
. Ibid, 98.

170
. Bone, “Shows Out of Town:
My Fair Lady
,”
Variety
, February 8, 1956, 56.

171
. Letter of February 15, 1956, Hyman to Adler,
HLP
, 25/8.

172
. Letter of February 23, Weissberger to Levin,
HLP
, 24/7.

173
. Letter of June 8, 1956, Langner to Lerner,
TGC
, 83.

1
. Basic factual details about Shaw’s biography and the history of
Pygmalion
come from L. W. Conolly’s magnificent introduction to his scholarly edition of the play published in the New Mermaids series (London: Methuen, 2008) and Michael Holroyd’s seminal
Bernard Shaw
(one-volume ed., London: Chatto and Windus, 1997), unless otherwise stated.

2
. Conolly, “Introduction: The Author,” in
Pygmalion
, xiv–xv.

3
. Michael Holroyd reports on Shaw’s activities: “As early as September 1897 everything ‘has been driven clean out of my head by a play I want to write … in which [Sir Johnston Forbes-Robertson] shall be a west end gentleman and she an east end dona in an apron and three orange and red ostrich feathers.’” Holroyd,
Bernard Shaw,
415–16.

4
. Conolly,
Pygmalion
, xvii.

5
. Tree “loved to disguise himself with beards, uniforms, vine leaves, eartrumpets. In this respect, Professor Higgins was a disappointment.” Holroyd,
Bernard Shaw,
441.

6
. Conolly,
Pygmalion
, 74. Eliza’s line comes in response to Freddy’s question, “Are you walking across the park, Miss Doolittle?”

7
. Conolly,
Pygmalion,
xxiv.

8
. Ibid. 146.

9
. Shaw,
Complete Letters,
vol. 3, 227–28.

10
. Conolly,
Pygmalion,
xxvi.

11
. “Sequel,” ibid., 129.

12
.
Pygmalion
, 139–40.

13
. Ibid., 132.

14
. Ibid., 129–30.

15
. Ibid., xxvii.

16
. Ibid., 149.

17
. Ibid., 150–51.

18
. Ibid., 147.

19
. Ibid., 154.

20
. Ibid., 20.

21
. The correspondence of Shaw and Pascal has been collected into a convenient volume edited by Bernard F. Dukore, with extensive reference to
Pygmalion
. Bernard F. Dukore, ed.,
Bernard Shaw and Gabriel Pascal: Selected Correspondence
(Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1996). Dukore is also the editor of a beautiful volume of Shaw’s screenplays that discusses various versions of
Pygmalion
, including the foreign-language films. Bernard F. Dukore, ed.,
The Collected Screenplays of Bernard Shaw
(London: George Prior Publishers, 1980).

22
.
Pygmalion
, xxviii.

23
. Paul Bauschatz, “The Uneasy Evolution of
My Fair Lady
from
Pygmalion
” in Fred D. Crawford, ed.,
The Annual of Bernard Shaw Studies
, xviii (University Park, PA: Penn State University Press, 1998), 192 and 195. Curiously, Bauschatz also claims early on that “virtually all of
My Fair Lady
’s dialogue can be found in
Pygmalion
,” but then goes on to relate various departures from Shaw’s text. Bauschatz, “Uneasy Evolution,” 181.

24
. Joseph P. Swain,
The Broadway Musical: A Critical and Musical Survey
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1990), 185.

25
. Lerner,
Street
, 36.

26
. “After a private showing of
Pygmalion
, [Lerner and Loewe] became enthusiastic.” V. Pascal,
Disciple
, 219.

27
. Telegram of March 22, 1952, Langner to Pascal,
TGC
, box 137.

28
. Letter of May 10, 1952, Lerner to Pascal,
TGC
, box 137.

29
. Holroyd, 436. Holroyd also describes Doolittle as being “of Dickensian vitality.”

30
. Richard Traubner,
Operetta: A Theatrical History
(New York: Doubleday, 1983), 409.

31
. Dukore,
Complete Screenplays of Bernard Shaw
, 46.

32
. “Lady Liza—Brief Outline,”
HLP
, 34/2.

33
. One possibility is that Higgins was there doing “research,” and that Pickering simply arrived from India there, but if this was Lerner’s thinking, he does not say so here.

34
.
Pygmalion
, 69.

35
.
My Fair Lady
script, 91.

36
. Lerner,
Street
, 99.

37
. Outline 2 survives because it was included in an appendix to an early dissertation on the musical by Gerald Harold Weissman, who seems to have been given access to it by Lerner during the musical’s original Broadway run. Gerald Harold Weissman, “The musicalization of
Pygmalion
into
My Fair Lady
” (master’s thesis, Stanford University, 1957).

38
. Lerner,
Street
, 44.

39
.
My Fair Lady
, “Mimeographed Rehearsal Script,”
HLP
, 34/7.

40
. Kitty Carlisle Hart,
Kitty: An Autobiography
(New York: Doubleday, 1988), 177; Bach,
Dazzler
, 341.

41
. Page numbers in brackets in this chapter refer to the first British edition of the script of
My Fair Lady
(London, 1958). I use this edition because it contains a few corrections of typographical errors in the American first edition. References to “the published script” are to this British text.

42
.
Pygmalion
, 11.

43
. Ibid., 36.

44
. Ibid., 73.

45
. Though even after reinstating these lines, Lerner still did not merely lift the
Pygmalion
text. For instance, Shaw’s Higgins tells Mrs. Pearce to pay Eliza out of the housekeeping money, as well as reflecting tangentially about the difficulty of getting Eliza “to talk grammar.”
Pygmalion
, 37.

46
. Ibid., 45.

47
. Ibid., 78.

48
.
Pace
Swain, who opines that “the lyrics no longer convey fantasy: Eliza now has the power to do what she says.” In fact, the opposite is the case, since Eliza has to run away in order to elude Higgins’s power, rather than enacting the violence described in the song. Swain,
Broadway Musical
, 190.

49
. Ethan Mordden has noticed this aspect of the show, too: “[M]idway through Act One, there’s a sequence made of alternating song and dialogue that is generally conceded to be the point at which critics and public realized that
My Fair Lady
was not just very enjoyable but very special.” Ethan Mordden,
Coming Up Roses: The Broadway Musical in the 1950s
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), 155.

50
.
Pygmalion
, 7.

1
. See the outlines in chap. 3 for corroboration the position of these two songs. Location of the manuscripts in
FLC
: “What Is a Woman,” 5/25; “Who Is the Lady?,” 8/45; “Dear Little Fool,” 5/4; “Over Your Head,” 8/27, “Limehouse,” 8/20; and “The Undeserving Poor,” 8/40.

2
. “What’s to Become of Me?,”
FLC
, 8/44. Eliza’s speech quoted from
My Fair Lady
script, 110.

3
.
FLC
, 8/37.

4
. “Who Is the Lady?” is not substantially different from this extract. In bars 3, 7, 35, and 39, D and E are written instead of E and F-sharp, and the melody ends with bar 46.

5
. Lerner,
Street
, 57.

6
.
FLC
, 5/18.

7
.
My Fair Lady
script, 55–56.

8
. “Please Don’t Marry Me” in folder marked “Lyrics and Songs Not Used,”
HLP
, 34/8.

9
.
FLC
, 5/24.

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.