Loverly:The Life and Times of My Fair Lady (Broadway Legacies) by McHugh, Dominic (e reader comics TXT) 📕

adaptation of My Fair Lady shows an unusual conscientiousness compared to the average Broadway musical regarding the retention of the literary style of its source, as well as much of its dialogue, but Lerner, Loewe, and Moss Hart deserve more credit from musical theater scholars for their many innovations.

In confirmation of this, a rehearsal script from producer Herman Levin’s papers shows that the musical went into rehearsal with a text that, if anything, contained more of Shaw than the final published script was to include. This is in direct contrast to standard views of the musical that assume it is merely a reduction of Shaw’s script, to which some songs have been added. There are in fact well over two hundred differences between these two distinct Fair Lady texts, ranging from a change of word order to the omission or addition of a whole speech. The thrust of chapter 3 is on how these late modifications resulted in subtle changes of focal point even during the rehearsal period; but before this comes a discussion of the implications of the early correspondence about Fair Lady on its book, and the four outlines of the show predating the creation of the script.

SHAVIAN SOURCES FOR MY FAIR LADY

Alan Jay Lerner described at great length in The Street Where I Live how the challenge of making a musical out of Pygmalion was intimidating. “The more we talked,” he wrote, “the more insoluble the problems seemed to become because, unfortunately, the characters in Shaw’s play also kept talking, talking and talking. Pygmalion is a drawing room comedy and no matter how hard we tried, we did not seem to be able to tear down the walls of the drawing room and allow the play to unfold in a setting and atmosphere that suggested music.”25 But as is obvious from Valerie Pascal’s memoir of her ex-husband The Disciple and his Devil, one of the overall solutions to the problem had already been supplied to Lerner and Loewe by Pascal himself, who encouraged them to see a screening of his 1938 film version.26 On March 22, Lawrence Langner (of the Theatre Guild) sent a telegram to Pascal and mentioned that “Lerner and Loewe … are seeing [the] picture soon as possible and hope to settle [a] deal with them for immediate work on [the] musical.”27 This verifies the fact that they saw the film, and we know from a letter written by Lerner to Pascal on May 10, 1952, that he had already begun to give much thought to the adaptation of the story:

Stanley Holloway (Alfred Doolittle) and Audrey Hepburn (Eliza) in the 1964 movie of My Fair Lady (Photofest/Warner Bros.)

As far as the actual conversion into musical form is concerned, there are two basic problems that I see at this moment—both of which [are] easily overcome. The first is to get it out of the drawing room and into the open; and the second is to tighten the story. By that I mean to give characters such as Mr. Doolittle a more important role in the plot and not just be a highly amusing interlude as he is now. Too, Freddie should be developed into more attractive a fellow so that he can become more of a real threat. In the first instance of getting it out of the drawing room Fritz and I have several ideas which we didn’t have time to discuss with you. The scene in Mrs. Higgins’ home for example—the “gin to her was mother’s milk” scene—could be played at the opening of Ascot. It could be extremely colourful and lend itself to great humour both musically and otherwise. The calmness of the British aristocracy at the races I always thought very funny. Now, of course, following the motion picture, there are the ball scenes and the wonderfully touching sequence when she returns to Covent Garden and nobody recognises her. A scene like that could be developed so that the second scene at Mrs. Higgins’ when the Professor finds her after his long search could be obviated. The end of the first act, of course, can be one of the great moments of any musical I can remember. It should be Liza’s preparation for the ball, her excitement, her desire to please the Prof., her dressing, her rehearsing, her manners, etc. Musically it should be one of her big, big numbers—ending with her going off with the Prof. for the great and final test. It could be really wonderful, don’t you think?28

This letter corroborates Lerner’s comment in his memoir about “getting the story out of the drawing room,” as quoted above. We can sense the desire to “open up” Shaw’s domestic story into a form that would work as a musical with a larger ensemble and the need for the “lyric moment” to clinch most scenes via song and/or dance. It also raises the issue of “tightening the story” by expanding the roles of Doolittle and Freddy. The comments on these two characters are interesting, because, excepting for his having two lengthy songs, Doolittle’s role is in some ways truncated in Fair Lady, rather than expanded—one might say a surprising treatment of a character whose wisdom and depth has been compared to Shakespeare’s Falstaff.29 Freddy, meanwhile, remains nothing but bland in the musical, even though he plays perhaps more of an active role.

From this, the decision to move the scene of Mrs. Higgins’s tea party to the races at Ascot (act 3, scene 1) seems also to have been Lerner’s invention. Richard Traubner notes the presence of a scene at the races in the German film version of Pygmalion, which was premiered in Berlin in 1935, but it should be borne in mind that it concerns a rather different incident to that which takes place in the Fair Lady Ascot scene.30 Bernard Dukore has described how Higgins and Pickering take Eliza to “visit a race track.” Bored with the race, Eliza wanders around the course and sees her friend