One day, Lerner decided to have a little fun with this. Whenever a line of My Fair Lady’s dialogue didn’t seem right to Harrison, he’d look up and shout “Where’s my Penguin?” At rehearsals, he habitually brought along a Penguin edition copy of the Pygmalion script. A DEAD PENGUIN WAS THE ORIGINAL RUN’S BACKSTAGE MASCOT.Ī dedicated Shaw fan, Harrison wanted My Fair Lady to resemble its source material as closely as possible. A number of alternatives were then tossed around-including Fanfaroon, a British slang term meaning “one who brags about himself.” Finally, Loewe and Lerner lifted the words my fair lady from the nursery rhyme “London Bridge is Falling Down.” This three-word title satisfied Harrison, and the rest is history. However, Harrison didn’t care for either name because he felt that they both relegated his character to second fiddle status. THE SHOW HAD A NUMBER OF WORKING TITLES.Īt first, the show went by Liza, which eventually evolved into Lady Liza. “For those two days,” she recalls, “… hammered through each scene-everything from Eliza’s entrance, her screaming and yelling, to her transformation into a lady at the end of the play.” All that hard work really paid off: Once normal rehearsals resumed, just about everyone noticed a dramatic boost in Andrews’ confidence. To help his star find her footing, Hart canceled a weekend of full-cast rehearsals and gave Andrews step-by-step assistance. “ became obvious … that I was hopelessly out of my depth as Eliza Doolittle,” she said. When Julie Andrews, then just 19, was cast as Eliza Doolittle, the young actress found herself intimidated by the part. MALE LEAD REX HARRISON GOT THROUGH HIS SONGS WITH A FLEXIBLE “TALK-SINGING” STYLE. Deciding that the project was worth one more try, they painstakingly began writing what was to become My Fair Lady. His untimely death returned Lerner and Loewe’s thoughts to Pygmalion. Then, in 1954, Pascal passed away at the age of 60. Both said “yes,” but just half a year later, they also gave up. In 1952, he asked if these two would be interested. Undeterred, Pascal turned to the creative minds behind Paint Your Wagon: librettist Alan Jay Lerner and composer Frederick Loewe. Apart from its heavy reliance on dialogue, the play-unlike most Rodgers and Hammerstein shows-didn’t come with an overt love story. But despite their past successes, the challenge of Pygmalion proved too great. On paper, they looked like the perfect men for the job: The ingenious duo had defined and re-defined the American musical with classic shows like Oklahoma!, South Pacific, and The King and I. At one point, Pascal handed the assignment off to Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II. Over the next few years, he asked several writers if they could develop a musical adaptation. When Shaw died in 1950, producer Gabriel Pascal held the rights to Pygmalion. RODGERS & HAMMERSTEIN TRIED (AND FAILED) TO MAKE A PYGMALION MUSICAL. As Shaw told Austro-Hungarian composer Franz Lehar, “A Pygmalion operetta is quite out of the question … 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.” Having been burned before, Shaw swore he’d never “allow a comic opera to supplant it.” 3. During The Chocolate Soldier’s run, few theaters were willing to produce Arms and the Man-and Shaw’s wallet took a hit.ĭuring his lifetime, several producers and directors told Shaw that Pygmalion might make for a terrific musical, but financial considerations kept him from letting anybody take a crack at converting it into one. But the success of this adaptation ultimately hurt the creator of its source material. In 1908, composer Oscar Straus amazed audiences with The Chocolate Soldier, an operetta based on Shaw’s 1894 play Arms and the Man. GEORGE BERNARD SHAW DIDN’T WANT PYGMALION TO GET THE MUSICAL THEATER TREATMENT. Similarly, the male lead in Shaw’s Pygmalion-phonetics professor Henry Higgins-tries to “sculpt” a lower-class working girl into a well-spoken English lady. A product of ancient Greek folklore, this character would later be immortalized by the Roman poet Ovid, who wrote about him in Book 10 of The Metamorphoses. Pygmalion is named after a mythical artist who supposedly sculpted an ideal woman-only to fall in love with the statue. Adapted from Shaw’s masterpiece, the new show dazzled critics and audiences alike-and, a few years later, was turned into an award winning movie featuring Audrey Hepburn. Here are a few facts about the crowd pleaser in honor of its birthday. Sixty years ago today, My Fair Lady made its Broadway debut. Then, in 1956, it was adapted into the definitive musical. For decades, George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion looked like a play that could never be turned into a musical.
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