Loverly:The Life and Times of My Fair Lady (Broadway Legacies) (5 page)

In reply to Langner on June 20, Helburn reported that Gertrude Lawrence’s performance in
The King and I
was currently drawing so many complaints from audiences about her flat singing that Rodgers and Hammerstein wanted her to leave the show, and the Guild should not therefore consider her for the role of Eliza.
²⁵
Helburn also revealed that Lerner and Loewe were haggling over their royalties for the show and that they were “spreading the report that they will have the complete charge of the show and no one else
will have anything to do with it!” At that time, Shaw’s
Pygmalion
was staged by the Guild, with Dolores Gray as Eliza; Loewe attended the opening night and was impressed with Gray by the end of the show, laying the ground for casting her as Eliza if Martin turned down the role. Finally, the letter mentions that Lerner and Loewe had already approached Rex Harrison, who was very much interested.

Then, on June 25, Langner sent a telegram to Helburn confirming that Mary Martin was attracted to the role but would do nothing until she had heard some music, just as she had heard some of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s songs for
South Pacific
before agreeing to play Nellie Forbush. At that time a contract was drawn up but left unsigned.
²⁶
The telegram also mentioned that Maurice Evans (an English actor noted for his Shakespearean performances and who would go on to star in Bock and Harnick’s musical
Tenderloin
) was interested in playing the part of Higgins and that Langner would see Michael Redgrave on the same subject the next day. Less than an hour later, Langner sent a second telegram, saying that “On second thoughts, don’t advise awaiting Mary.”
²⁷
He went on to urge Helburn to settle the deal with Lerner and Loewe at 6 percent using Dolores Gray instead of Mary Martin, since to use a male star of the caliber of Redgrave or Harrison would also cost them percentages, adding to the production’s financial risk. Eventually, this would be the cause of a rift between the producers and writers.

Langner wrote again to Helburn on June 27 to report that Lerner and Loewe were willing to go to London (though they ultimately did not go) to play some of the songs they had written, and went on to say that Maurice Evans was interested in the role of Higgins if it fitted in with his other plans (he was about to star in
Dial M for Murder
on the stage).
²⁸
He also intended to speak with Harrison, but Redgrave was no longer a possibility because he had commitments for the foreseeable future. Cecil Tennant of the British agency MCA was to seek out other actors for the smaller roles, and Cecil Beaton confirmed he was interested in doing the designs, though Langner “preferred the American ones better.” In terms of a director, three names are mentioned: Peter Brook, who was thought to be “a great gamble, knowing so little of American musical plays”; John C. Wilson, who was Langner’s preference; and Noël Coward, who seems to have been a suggestion of Martin’s, but who, according to Langner, “never directs any plays except his own.”

The beginning of July brought new concerns for the Guild. Helburn wrote to Langner on July 1 about her worries regarding Lerner, who had caused problems for producer Cheryl Crawford the previous year during the creation of
Paint Your Wagon
by making executive decisions about such issues as casting behind her back.
²⁹
The letter also reports that “The haggling still goes
on over the Lerner-Loewe royalties, but they are very keen to do it and will probably come down eventually. I think they are down to 7 percent now so there is only one more percent to go.” According to David Mark D’Andre, “Soon her fears began to materialize as rumors reached her that Lerner and Loewe were claiming to be solely in charge of the production. When Helburn challenged them, both men backed down, and a nasty situation was averted.”
³⁰

On July 18 Langner relayed Rex Harrison’s remarks about the show, following the Guild’s decision to approach him for the part of Henry Higgins: “I think it is only fair to you and myself … to wait until some music and lyrics are completed, so that I can hear them and possibly record them myself. After this we could decide whether or not to continue the idea.”
³¹
Harrison himself wrote to Langner on August 7 to say how much he was looking forward to hearing the score.
³²
Thus the first choice for Higgins would eventually be the last, though other names later came up in the interim.
³³

Lerner and Loewe continued to work on the show and on October 28, 1952, they signed a contract with the Theatre Guild.
³⁴
However, having made such an apparently final decision, they suddenly withdrew. Lerner’s explanation of this decision in
The Street Where I Live
is that he met Oscar Hammerstein II at a political rally, discovered that Hammerstein’s difficulties with the script when he had tried to write the show with Rodgers coincided with his own, and decided to withdraw on this basis.
³⁵
In the absence of any further evidence, we might more tentatively say that a problem with the book was probably the reason for the decision to abandon the show. This is confirmed by a letter sent by the Guild to Lerner on October 20, 1954, in which Helburn and Langner state that “You withdrew from the project because you said you were unable to lick the book.”
³⁶
But it is also worth bearing in mind that the severing of the contract also coincided with the dissolution of the Lerner and Loewe partnership for the time being, as each went to work with another collaborator on another project, so it seems likely, as Steven Bach has suggested, that they quarreled with each other and the script was not the only issue.
³⁷

Following this, the Theatre Guild and Pascal started pursuing other composers and lyricists, the names on their list including Arthur Schwartz (
The Band Wagon
), Harold Rome (
Wish You Were Here
), Richard Adler and Jerry Ross (
The Pajama Game
), André Previn (one of MGM’s staple conductors
and composers), and Harold Arlen (
House of Flowers
).
³⁸
According to D’Andre, “Pascal offered to contact Burton Lane and Yip Harburg [of
Finian’s Rainbow
fame], but Helburn and Langner thought it would be better to try Leonard Bernstein, Betty Comden, and Adolph Green. Pascal was very enthusiastic about this idea and met with Bernstein two times. Bernstein gave a verbal agreement that he would start work on
Pygmalion
in the fall.”
³⁹
On February 8, 1953, the
Times
confirmed that “the Theatre Guild has not forgotten about its proposed project to present a musical version of Shaw’s
Pygmalion
. True, the team of Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe no longer is trying to do the book, score and lyrics. However, overtures now are being played elsewhere.”
⁴⁰

But at this point Theresa Helburn started to wonder whether the idea of turning
Pygmalion
into a musical was quite as felicitous as it had at first seemed. A musical version of J. M. Barrie’s play
What Every Woman Knows
had opened at New York’s National Theatre under the title
Maggie
and had been condemned by Brooks Atkinson in the
New York Times
.
⁴¹
On February 20, 1953, Helburn wrote to Langner that the review “makes me feel more than ever the difficulty of making an almost classic play as a musical. Isn’t
Pygmalion
really fundamentally more difficult than Barrie’s play? I think we should consider this carefully before concluding the contract, unless the writers have terrific ideas.”
⁴²
It is difficult to know whether Bernstein, Comden, and Green—the dream team of
On the Town
(1944) and
Wonderful Town
(which opened in February 1953 less than a week after Helburn’s letter)—actually got around to writing anything for
Pygmalion
, but according to D’Andre, the Theatre Guild relinquished the rights to the play in May, seemingly bringing an end to the projected musical.
⁴³

In the meantime, Lerner and Loewe had both moved on. For the first time since joining forces with Lerner in the early 1940s, Loewe started to write with a different lyricist. In 1953 he set to work with Harold Rome on a musical to be called
A Dancin’ Day
, based on Sir Alexander Korda’s 1949 film, itself adapted from the play
Saints and Sinners
by Paul Vincent Carroll. On May 27, the
New York Times
ran a story by their correspondent Sam Zolotow saying that Loewe was to write the music for a new show based on
Saints and Sinners
, with Jerome Chodorov and Joseph Fields to write the book (fresh from their success in writing the book for Bernstein’s
Wonderful Town
) and Leo Robin
(lyricist of Jule Styne’s
Gentlemen Prefer Blondes
) to write the lyrics.
⁴⁴
Loewe, Chodorov, and Fields went on to be involved with the project, but Robin was soon replaced by Harold Rome, composer and lyricist of the shows
Call Me Mister
and
Wish You Were Here
. Rome’s papers at Yale University reveal some details of the progress of
Saints and Sinners
. On July 8 an agreement was entered into with Alexander Korda and Paul Carroll for the rights to the show.
⁴⁵
Then on August 28 Zolotow reported in his column that Moss Hart was to read the script and that if he agreed to direct the show (as he would later take charge of
My Fair Lady
) his brother Bernard Hart and Joseph H. Hyman would produce it together, just as they had done with several plays directed by Hart during the 1940s including
Dear Ruth, Christopher Blake
, and
The Secret Room
.
⁴⁶

By September 18 circumstances had changed. Zolotow again wrote about the show, this time saying that Moss Hart had read the book and was interested, but because Chodorov and Fields were busy with their new show,
The Girl in Pink Tights
, the
Saints and Sinners
project had been deferred until the next season.
⁴⁷
In fact, a letter from October shows that Loewe’s lawyer was encountering trouble with the rights to
Saints and Sinners
. The composer had been negotiating with Paul Carroll on the understanding that he was the sole rights holder for the material. But it seems that British Lion Productions, the studio that made the 1949 film, was objecting to the deal, so the first of many delays was incurred.
⁴⁸
On December 9 Zolotow once again turned his attention to
Saints and Sinners
, reporting that Jack Hylton, the British producer of the London productions of classic musicals such as
Call Me Madam
and
Kiss Me, Kate
, would be in charge of the show.
⁴⁹

By January 26, 1954, a financial deal had been reached between all parties. It is interesting to observe that Loewe was clearly the driving force behind the musical at this stage—a big difference from the traditional depictions of the Lerner-Loewe collaboration, in which Lerner is usually made out to be the more active of the two. For
Saints and Sinners
the composer had paid the initial $1,000 to Carroll, which Jack Hylton (who is confirmed as the producer) was to repay, along with any further money payable to the British Lion Film Corporation.
⁵⁰
Within a few months, however, Hylton had withdrawn from the show. On June 11, Zolotow reported that although composition was almost complete, Hylton would no longer produce, with Harold Prince a possible replacement; he again commented on the ongoing search on July 21, now mentioning Burgess Meredith as a possible producer.
⁵¹
But there was still none in place by September, leading Benjamin Aslan, Loewe’s lawyer, to request that Carroll’s representatives accept a smaller payment for the rights to the show than he was ultimately owed, since it was conventionally the producer’s job to pay this sum and no one had yet been found.
⁵²

At this point, Lerner and Loewe reunited on the
Pygmalion
project, and no further work seems to have been carried out on
Saints and Sinners
until 1956. It was not completely abandoned, though. The
New York Times
reported on January 8, 1955, that Fields and Chodorov had “not forgotten
Dancin’ Day
” but that Rome and Loewe must complete the score first. Rome’s papers indicate that the project was revived in September 1956, six months after the opening of
My Fair Lady
, when the four collaborators had to pay up or relinquish the rights to Carroll’s play. In October it was decided that the musical would be made into a film, rather than a stage show, something that was later mentioned in the
New York Times
; and by March 1957 a deal had been reached with Romay Pictures Inc., which would make the film.
⁵³
Nothing more seems to have come of it, however—perhaps because of the gradual demise of the movie musical in the 1950s, or perhaps because Loewe was busy on his new musical with Lerner,
Gigi
—and there is no further mention of it in the Rome papers. An undated typescript for the show has survived, though; some of Loewe’s manuscripts for the songs were sold at an auction at Christie’s in Los Angeles in 1999; and the Library of Congress possesses a thirty-minute composer’s “demo” recording of ten numbers from the show.
⁵⁴
Therefore, more time was evidently spent on this project than has been previously acknowledged, and it would even be theoretically possible to piece the material together to produce some kind of liberal realization of the work. Both script and composer’s demo indicate that the score inclines toward the earlier style of the Loewe of
Brigadoon
, however, and one can see why the composer of
My Fair Lady
and
Gigi
decided to let it go.