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

by McHugh, Dominic

  In his memoir, Lerner says that “Get Me to the Church on Time” was one of the last numbers to be composed. He claims it was finished “by the first week in December,” corroborated by the fact that the title of the song is not included in Outlines 1–4 (see chap. 3).9 The outlines do include a song at this point in the show, though—specifically, in Outline 4, a “rousing number by Doolittle and Ensemble.” Mention is also made of an important sartorial issue, signifying the oncoming matrimony and thereby Doolittle’s new social division from his former friends: “Doolittle will be in his striped trousers. Everybody else in Cockney garb, except, of course, Liza.” The song seems to have stayed almost in its original form from composition to performance, with the exception of the opening verse material. The published song has a stanza sung by Doolittle’s friends, Jamie and Harry, beginning “There’s just a few more hours.” The rehearsal script and a lyric sheet in the Warner-Chappell Collection, however, both follow this with two stanzas for Doolittle:

  If I had stayed a bachelor all my life,

  I could have had a beer in ev’ry pub in town;

  I would have met a dozen different girls a week;

  And every night put half a pint of whiskey down.

  There’s just a few more hours

  That’s left to have some fun;

  A few more hours

  For doing everything

  I would have done.

  The lyric sheet has these verses crossed out, and no musical setting of the first of them has survived.10 The autograph manuscript in the Loewe Collection might be taken to back up the view that these verses were originally set and then discarded; because the refrain is written on pages numbered 1 to 4 while the verse is marked “A” and seems to have been added to the front later, it is possible that all three stanzas of the original verse were set to music and then replaced by the single page in the Loewe Collection. On the other hand, the fact that the refrain starts on page 1 could mean that Loewe did not get round to setting the verse at all until it had been reduced to one stanza.

  The autograph gives no more than a basic piano-vocal score of a single refrain. Following standard procedure, it was left to Rittmann to draft the dance music—no mean feat at over three hundred bars in length. Both Rittmann’s autograph of this music and the photocopy of it used by the dance pianist have survived.11 Rittmann’s score is fluently written and contains various suggestions for orchestration, as well as some of the choreographic gestures; Miller’s copy contains even more of these, presumably to orientate her during rehearsals. The climax of the dance is a return to the main theme of “Get Me to the Church” in double time, and Rittmann indicates it in shorthand, adding a note to Bennett: “Russell: follow song copy, as indicated, prego. For Coda, see pg.8.” As promised, the following page contains the end of the dance, with a further message at the end: “or notes to that effect!”

  Rittmann also provides the introduction to the chorale version of the final verse (when Doolittle’s friends bid him farewell), but the vocal arrangement by Gino Smart is on a separate manuscript, showing the division of labor.12 Two different orchestrations of the number survive: the original, and the final version. Both are by Lang, but although there are numerous small changes throughout, the main difference is that the revision is kinder on Doolittle’s voice. Originally, Lang had the violins divisi doubling the melody in thirds, an octave higher than the vocal line; in the final orchestration, the violins double the vocal line in unison. The other big change is that the caesuras in the melody were punctuated by more assertive and aggressive fills from the brass and winds than is the case in the final version. To complete the texture, Lang went from having the brass play pianissimo and with mutes in the original to mezzo forte and open in the revision. There are changes in the dance section, too, but the majority concern coloristic nuance (the addition of a flute line doubling the melody, for instance); and the orchestration of the final version was simplified, removing scales and flourishes in favor of strong chords in contrary motion. Other than these, the decision to rewrite the whole orchestration seems to have been a matter of perfectionism rather than necessity, since much of it remained the same.

  On one level, the song is absolutely tragic, ample evidence that Lerner and Loewe understood the depth of Doolittle’s character. It is not merely an embellishment or divertissement but represents passage of time and depicts action. A breathtaking process of chiaroscuro (a contrast between light and dark) takes place during the course of the number. Most of the song is humorous: the beer-loving dustman ruefully drinks his way around London in the final hours before his wedding. Although the material is simple, Loewe puts in witty little touches such as the appoggiaturas on “married in the” to suggest Doolittle’s “comfortable” nature. But suddenly, after the main part of the song and Rittmann’s imaginative jig, “Dawn breaks over the Flower Market” and the revelry must end. To the music of the main refrain, Doolittle’s friends suddenly adopt a hushed tone and provide their own harmonies (with only occasional horn and harp notes to maintain the pitch) in an unexpected farewell stanza, ending with “Good luck, old chum. / Good health, goodbye.” The final four lines of the refrain are alternately marked mezzo forte and pianissimo, so that the actual “goodbye” is almost whispered. Doolittle’s journey from obscurity to fortune is now over, and he departs from the show. Like Eliza, he has been both bruised and helped by Higgins’s intervention, but in his case it is money, not education, that has caused this outcome. Through “Get Me to the Church” in particular, Lerner and Loewe make Doolittle into a figure of pathos, and they do so through both words and music.

  FREDDY’S CONSTANCY

  The supposed inspiration for the creation of “On the Street Where You Live” is the subject of a romanticized anecdote in Lerner’s memoir. He says that “When I was ten years old I had been sent to a dancing class on Sunday afternoons, white gloves and all. The prettiest girl was, of course, the most popular, but I was too shy to make my presence felt.”13 He goes on to describe how he sat outside what he believed to be her house every Saturday, only later to discover that she lived somewhere else. But in truth, other than its reference to a boy waiting outside the house of the girl he loves, Lerner’s story bears little resemblance to the scene from Fair Lady—especially in the sense that Freddy Eynsford-Hill is not exactly shy in his advances. Outline 1 shows that the number was to have been sung in a scene where the spectators are shown leaving Ascot, and its purpose was always clear: “Freddy is absolutely smitten with Liza. (He may have a song about it.)”14 This could be taken to disprove Lerner’s story, because the song had been imagined in a setting that bore no resemblance to the tale; or it could be taken to corroborate it, because its title and final conception are very much bound to the idea of a boy waiting for his beloved on a street. Outline 4 mentions the song with the name by which it was known throughout rehearsals: “On the Street Where She Lives.”15

  Later in his book, Lerner elaborates on the development of the song during the New Haven previews, describing how the whole creative team, apart from Lerner himself, wanted to cut it. It even had a lukewarm reception from preview audiences. But Lerner became conscious that “perhaps the audience did not realize [Freddy] was the same boy who had been sitting next to Eliza and talking to her during the [Ascot] scene. … So as a last-ditch effort to save the song, we changed the verse…and replaced the flowery, romantic one he was then singing with one that echoed Eliza at Ascot, beginning with: “When she mentioned how her aunt bit off the spoon / She completely done me in, etc.” Fritz changed the music accordingly and the new verse went in on Thursday night.” The number “almost required an encore,” Lerner concludes.16

  He told the same story during a concert presentation in 1971, and what he referred to as the “original version” of the verse of “On the Street” was performed.17 However, the performance was based on the published song sheet (from 1956), which contains just a section of the original verse, and in fact the number was or
iginally more extensive than even this score suggests. The original lyric is shown in appendix 3 (with the cut passages in bold text). The second and third stanzas in this original version are what was printed in the published song sheet; the only difference is that the published version changes the tense from the third person to the second (so it becomes “Darling, there’s the tree you run to,” and so on). A copyist’s piano-vocal score shows the number in its original form, complete with full verse (an extract is reproduced in exx. 6.1 and 6.2) and the whole refrain.

  It is difficult not to conclude—more straightforwardly than Lerner—that these sections were discarded simply because they were insipid. The lyricist would have us believe that the verse was changed because people might not connect the character singing the number with the character having the dialogue with Eliza at the races, but the original lyric already referred to the Ascot scene (“Love attacked me while I was at the races”). The new verse (“When she mentioned how her aunt bit off the spoon…”) also brought about an endearing comic moment in which Freddy strings together phrases from Eliza’s conversation at Ascot, leaving the audience to fill in the final word—“[move your bloomin’] arse” as a rhyme for “[a more enchanting] farce”—when Mrs. Pearce conveniently opens the front door of Higgins’s house to interrupt him. The humor is pointed in the musical word-setting with pauses after “aunt” and “father,” gentle prods in the audience’s ribs to milk the laughs.

  Ex. 6.1. “On the Street Where She Lives,” original verse.

  Ex. 6.2. “On the Street Where She Lives,” original verse.

  Lerner also makes no reference to the fact that sixteen bars were cut from the middle of the song (part of which is shown in ex. 6.3), reducing the refrain to its familiar sixty-six bars (AABA, each section consisting of sixteen bars, with an extension at the end). In itself, this evidently makes the song more rounded in form, which would have been AABCA. Furthermore, the melodic contours, harmony, and accompaniment style of this cut section do not sit easily with the rest of the song. But there is another possible reason for the cut. The section starting “Some men hate to wait and wait” bears a resemblance to the B section of Higgins’s cut song “Please Don’t Marry Me”: “Some chaps see their lady fair / Always as she looked their wedding day. / Some chaps do but this I swear: / When you’re old and ashen gray, I will see you just that way.” Higgins’s song is a declaration that he has no sympathy with women, whereas this section of Freddy’s song states the reverse. The similarity between the constructions “Some men” and “Some chaps,” and the subject in question, draws an automatic comparison between the numbers, while the messages they deliver are diametrically opposed. Had all this material remained in the show, it could have posited Freddy and Higgins more overtly as rival suitors for Eliza’s affection.

  The full score of the number reflects the changes made during rehearsals. Most of it is by Lang, and it gives the original version of the verse, but the original middle section of the refrain was cut before the song was orchestrated.18 Attached to the back of the score is an orchestration for the final version of the verse in Bennett’s hand; it also includes a revision of the orchestration of the four bars before the words “And oh, the towering feeling,” as well as the final four bars of the number.19 Lang’s part of the orchestration contains a couple of places where the harmonization has been slightly amended, but on the whole it was left as he originally wrote it. The composer’s manuscript of the song in the Loewe Collection represents a postcomposition document; it is fluently written and uses the published verse, as well as completely omitting the original middle section of the refrain.

  Ex. 6.3. “On the Street Where She Lives,” extract from cut section of original refrain.

  Of the four key players in the drama, Freddy is the only one who does not undergo any kind of transformation.20 The emotions of Eliza and Higgins veer throughout and Doolittle’s change of social class affects his life (if not his personality), but Freddy is the constant, foolish romantic. This is best represented by the fact that when his first-act song returns in act 2, it does so without modification. Freddy is silly: he sings in rhyming couplets and romantic clichés, and, with Eliza’s “I Could Have Danced,” his song is one of only two based on a conventional lyric arch. But if his constancy is comically extreme—all he wants is to stand in the street where Eliza lives—it is also the crucial representation of Shaw’s insistence that Freddy and Eliza marry after the story’s conclusion. By making sure that Freddy stays in the story and looks after Eliza in her journey from Higgins’s house to Mrs. Higgins’s, Lerner and Loewe guarantee that we know that an Eliza-Higgins union is not inevitable, even if that is where the plot’s main point of tension lies.

  SERVANTS AND LESSONS

  “The Servants’ Chorus” is one of the show’s most ingenious numbers. It allows Lerner and Loewe to give momentum to the series of lessons for Eliza—each lesson is punctuated by a single refrain, played a semitone higher and faster each time. The relationship between song and dialogue is at its most fluid here: the verses begin with one bar of introduction to give the servants their pitches, and the music fades out in every case to the middle of Higgins’s next lesson, without musical closure. This was planned from the beginning: Outlines 1–4 all mention a montage of lessons. In Outline 4, the chorus appears both before and after “Just You Wait”; it is surely better that in the published version it comes afterwards only and propels us without interruption to “The Rain in Spain.”

  The content and number of verses were decided late in the day. The rehearsal script indicates five places during the scene where the chorus was to be sung, but no lyrics for the number are included. Unusually, there are two copies of the number in Loewe’s hand: one in the Loewe Collection, and one in the Warner-Chappell Collection. Both plot out the first verse, though only the first page of the Warner-Chappell manuscript is in Loewe’s hand, and even then, Rittmann wrote both the “Moderato” tempo marking and the whole of the second page. The Loewe Collection version is in G minor—the key in which it was orchestrated and published—and is fluently written. At the top of the first page, Loewe wrote “Alan—Call Moss: How many verses?” while at the bottom of the final page he has indicated: “Each verse ½ tone higher into ‘Rain in Spain.’” That the lyric was written in pen (uniquely among the Loewe manuscripts) might, as Geoffrey Block has proposed, suggest that it was therefore a late addition, because the use of ink is a more final gesture than the more normal pencil.21

  On the other hand, it is unclear which of the two manuscripts came first. After all, the Warner-Chappell version is in A minor, whereas the composer appears to have known that the final key would be G minor when writing the Loewe Collection version. Then again, that the Loewe Collection manuscript is entirely in the composer’s hand and the Warner-Chappell one is in a mixture of both his and Rittmann’s could point toward the latter being a subsequent version. At the bottom of the second page of the Warner-Chappell score is a message in an unknown hand indicating the verses and the keys they were to be written in next to them.22 On the reverse, Loewe himself wrote more specific directions:

  (1). As is (Cup of tea) G min

  (2). 3 (blackout) Higgins continues 4-5-6 A flat min

  (3). As is. 11th bar “How kind of you” (Orch.) blend to Higg.

  (4). As is (Rain in Spain) A min.

  These slightly cryptic fragments indicate what dialogue the verses are to fade into, with a special case of enjambment in the second chorus where the servants end by counting the hours of the morning at which Higgins is working (“One a.m., / Two a.m. / Three…”) followed by a quick blackout, after which Higgins continues the numbers by counting marbles into Eliza’s mouth (“Four, five, six marbles”).

  Inserted into the score is a typed lyric sheet with four verses of the song. The published version has only three, but originally the following was the penultimate verse:

  Stop, Professor Higgins!

  Stop, Professor Higgins!


  Stop we pray

  Or any day

  You’ll drop, Professor Higgins!

  Hours fly!

  Weeks go by …!

  Keith Garebian writes that the servants “sympathise with Higgins rather than Eliza” in this number, but this early lyric (which is also used in the copyist’s piano-vocal score and Bennett’s orchestration) shows that it was originally more sympathetic to him than it is in its published form.23 In the cut verse, the servants encourage Higgins to “stop before he drops”; but Lerner and Loewe left in the far-from-sympathetic final verse, which tells him to “quit” before the servants do.

  The climax of the lessons sequence is, of course, “The Rain in Spain.” As Geoffrey Block has noted, there is a discrepancy between Lerner’s account of when it was written and Harrison’s autobiography, which names the song as one of those played by Lerner and Loewe for him at their initial meeting.24 The actor claimed that at the time this was “the only number that really whizzed along,” adding that it was “about all they had in the way of show tunes, and it was obviously a great one.” Lerner, by contrast, says that the song was written later, during auditions in the summer of 1955. It was supposedly their only “unexpected visitation from the muses” and came as the result of Lerner’s idea to write a song in which Eliza can now speak correctly all the things she has done wrong before. Since her main problem is with the letter A, Lerner suggested calling it “The Rain in Spain.” This inspired Loewe to write a tango, taking only ten minutes to finish it. Since Outline 1 mentions both the song and its function in quite a lot of detail—“In the joy of the moment the line turns into a song, a Spanish one-step, which the three sing and dance jubilantly”—Lerner’s chronology is clearly inaccurate. Furthermore, he obscures the chronological relationship between “The Servants’ Chorus” and “The Rain in Spain,” even though the latter was clearly one of the earliest songs and the former was one of the last to be finished.