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

letters from various archives around the world, most notably the papers of Herman Levin, who produced the show. Chapter 1 describes Lerner and Loewe’s early frustrated attempts to adapt Shaw’s Pygmalion into a musical in 1952, and chapter 2 goes on to show how they eventually managed it in 1954–56. In chapter 3 I take a brief look at the background to Shaw’s play and try to clear up some of the confusion about the 1938 film of Pygmalion, which contains some changes: for instance, although the play does not show Eliza’s lessons with Higgins, the film does. The Pygmalion movie is also the source of the reunion of Higgins and Eliza at the final curtain and is not a “happy ending” appended by Lerner to the musical; he just adopted it. I then explore Lerner’s draft outlines for the show, which document his developing thoughts as to the show’s structure, and go on to look closely at changes made to the script that was used during My Fair Lady’s rehearsals. What begins to emerge is a shift of focus, even this late in the day, from a show depicting a conventional Broadway romance to a story with a much more ambiguous center. Lerner went out of his way to make the relationship between Eliza Doolittle and Henry Higgins as ambiguous as possible, and a great many of the changes to the script made during the final weeks before the show opened in previews served this specific purpose. Chapters 4, 5, and 6 point toward the same purpose in the development of the score. I examine in great detail the unusual wealth of music manuscript material available for My Fair Lady in the Library of Congress’s Frederick Loewe and (in particular) Warner-Chappell Collections, which contain everything from the composer’s sketches for unused songs to the dance arranger’s scores for the cut ballet. By showing the relationships between different manuscripts, I aim to give a flavor of how much of a collaboration the development of a Broadway musical’s score is; it involves arrangers and orchestrators in as much of an authorial role as the composer is, though there is no doubt that Loewe took a keen interest in everything that was being written and orchestrated. Again, various changes of lyric hint at an obscuring of the Higgins-Eliza relationship (though, sadly, Lerner destroyed all his lyric sketches for the show, depriving us of a complete portrait of the lyrics’ composition), as do the rejection of numerous conventional love songs well before they reached even the rehearsal process. In chapter 7 I examine the musical’s complex legacy on stage, which has been unusual in the number of attempts to re-create the original production. Finally, in chapter 8 I visit some of the secondary literature on the show and in particular examine the nature of the ambiguous relationship between Eliza and Higgins. Just as some of the famous stories about the show are not included in the opening chapters, I do not scrutinize the show from every possible angle here, but rather hope to open up the debate for the future.

If My Fair Lady’s primary message is that education can change your life, I certainly owe a debt of gratitude to the numerous people who have taught me everything I know. First, thanks are due to the librarians at the many archives I visited, including Charles Perrier at the New York Public Library; Harry Miller and the staff at the Wisconsin Historical Society; the staff at Yale University Library; the Special Collections Librarian at St John’s College, Cambridge; Ned Comstock at USC; and most especially Mark Eden Horowitz, Walter Zvonchenko, and their colleagues at the Music and Theatre Divisions of the Library of Congress. Mark’s generosity with his time and help knows no bounds, and I have benefited both from his intimate acquaintance with his collections and his extraordinary knowledge of the musical theatre in general. His friendship has been a guiding force of this book.

Special thanks go to Jerold Couture of the Loewe estate and David Grossberg of the Lerner estate: by giving me permission to copy original musical materials they have allowed me to go into far more depth with this study than would otherwise have been the case, as well as lending support and enthusiasm along the way. Alan Jay Lerner material is reproduced by permission of the copyright owners, the estate of Alan Jay Lerner and family. Thanks to Alfred Music and Warner-Chappell for allowing me to publish extracts from the score. Quotations from the papers of Herman Levin are reproduced by kind permission of his daughter, Gabrielle Kraft. Passages from Hanya Holm’s notes are used with permission of the estate of Hanya Holm, thanks to her granddaughter, Karen M. Trautlein. Quotations from Theresa Helburn’s papers are used with thanks to the family of her niece, Margaret Kocher. Material from Sir Cecil Beaton’s diary is reproduced by kind permission of Hugo Vickers, Beaton’s Literary Executor. Many thanks are also due to Rosaria Sinisi for allowing me to reproduce passages from Oliver Smith’s letters.

I’m honored to count Liz Robertson (Lerner’s widow) as a close friend and enthusiastic supporter. Helpful hints about the Theatre Guild Collection at Yale came from Tim Carter of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. I’m also grateful to the distinguished Broadway orchestrator, composer, and conductor Larry Blank for sharing his years of experience and giving me the benefit of his wisdom and musicianship, not to mention his friendship. The staff of the Music Department at King’s College, London, have been supportive throughout my seven-year education there, and thanks are due especially to John Deathridge and Christopher Wintle. Ever since attending his lectures on Mozart and eighteenth-century music performance practice as an undergraduate, I have admired and been inspired by the scholarship of my PhD supervisor, Cliff Eisen. Without question, by coaxing me into following his footsteps down the path of primary research (albeit in the opposite direction across the Atlantic) he enabled me to make