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

by McHugh, Dominic

  Loewe was unable to attend the London opening because he had suffered a heart attack on February 26 before he was due to leave New York. Hart, Levin, and Lerner had to go to London and open the show without him.22 The premiere took place on April 30 at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, and the success of the Broadway run was repeated. In spite of such high expectations, arguably heightened because of the reverence for Shaw in England, the London critics were largely very positive: the New York Times described it as “triumphant,” the Evening News said that it “came near perfection,” and the News Chronicle even went so far as to note that “the critics themselves looked excited for once.”23 Kitty Carlisle Hart commented that “In London everyone was in a fever of excitement. The British felt that it was Shaw and Eliza Doolittle coming home.” After a triumphant premiere on April 30, the Queen and Prince Philip attended a Royal Command Performance on May 5, coming backstage to meet the cast following the show.24

  The production went on to run for 2,281 performances, again a huge achievement, especially given the much larger capacity of the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane (with more than 2,000 seats), compared to the Mark Hellinger on Broadway (approximately 1,500 seats). So successful was the London incarnation of the show that Columbia decided to record the British version, even though the four principals were the same. The introduction of two-track stereo recording equipment had taken off since the mono recording of the Broadway cast was made, so the opportunity to make a stereo version was irresistible. The recording took place on February 1, 1959, again under the direction of producer Goddard Lieberson. In general, the vitality and spontaneity of the original is not quite present on the London cast album, no doubt because the stars had performed it so many times, but Julie Andrews has recently declared her preference for the stereo version (which she describes as being “light years better than the original”).25

  RUSSIAN TOUR OF 1960

  The international distribution of My Fair Lady was extraordinary for its time. Although it was by no means the first show to travel beyond the English-speaking peoples, it achieved an unprecedented success in important cities all over the globe, the only major exception being Paris. Australia was the first of many countries to follow the West End production in replicating the Broadway original in January 1959, and it was followed by locations as diverse as Germany (1961), Iceland (1962), Vienna (1963), Japan (1963), Italy (1963), and Israel (1964).26 By far the most curious, though, was the ten-week tour of Russia undertaken in 1960. Never before had a musical been the subject of international diplomacy in the way that My Fair Lady became at this time. On May 6, 1959, the New York Times published an article indicating an interest in seeing the show travel to Moscow. Nikolai N. Danilov, Soviet Deputy Minister of Culture, had issued an invitation to bring the production to Russia as part of an ongoing series of Soviet-American cultural exchanges designed to foster better relations between the two nations during a difficult period of the Cold War. Levin had not been involved in the talks at this stage, but he was eager to be in charge of the tour, which he viewed as the beginning of a European tour that would then visit major cities all over the Continent.27

  Initially, these plans were delayed as Lerner and Loewe objected publically to a separate Russian production of the show, to be given in translation, for which the authors would receive no royalties. The mastermind behind the production was a thirty-year-old Russian called Victor Louis, who thought nothing of requesting the orchestration from Lerner and Loewe while openly admitting that they would receive nothing in return.28 This was front-page news in the New York Times, but instead of bringing the Russian Fair Lady to an end, it encouraged Danilov—only a few days later—to go ahead and invite the Broadway company to take their production to Russia. Taking a production of Fair Lady’s complexity (including the two turntables for Oliver Smith’s set) to Moscow, Leningrad and Kiev, each with very different theaters, caused numerous logistical problems for Jerry Adler and Samuel Liff, the stage manager and production supervisor respectively. Ironically, Lerner and Loewe waived their royalties for the tour, in order to offset spiraling costs—a sign of how important the tour had become to them.29

  But it became a triumphant success. The eighty-one-person company was greeted enthusiastically by the Russians, and all fifty-six performances were sold out. Franz Allers went with them to conduct the orchestra, which was drawn from the Bolshoi Theatre, and both the show itself and the cast (including Edward Mulhare as Higgins, Lola Fisher as Eliza, and Charles Victor as Doolittle) all received a rave review in the Soviet Culture newspaper from Grigory M. Yaron, a leading actor and director of the Moscow Operetta Theatre. The New York Times deemed it a landmark event in Russian-American relations, representing a new step in the development of Fair Lady’s growing international reputation.30

  NEW YORK REVIVALS AT CITY CENTER IN THE 1960S

  My Fair Lady had the longest consecutive road tour in musical theater history up to that time, crossing the continent five times since its launch in March 1957 and earning an estimated $21.5 million in its six years around the United States.31 It finally ended its North American run on December 14, 1963, in Toronto. But the show had not been absent from Manhattan for eighteen months before plans were underway for its return. On January 30, 1964, the New York Times announced plans for a revival at City Center in May of the same year.32 The revival opened on May 20 for a six-week run. It starred Marni Nixon as Eliza, a role that she sang in place of Audrey Hepburn’s vocals in the movie version of the show, due out in October of the same year. Ironically, given that he had appeared in the putative Henry Higgins role in the spoof My Square Laddie, Reginald Gardiner played Doolittle in the City Center revival, while the part of Higgins went to Myles Eason, an Australian-born actor of Shakespearean pedigree. John Canaday in the New York Times said the opening-night performance got off to a “hesitant start” but took fire during “The Rain in Spain,” and went on to praise Gardiner in particular. Nixon and Eason got more mixed notices, but overall there was enthusiasm for the production, which used the original settings and costumes.33

  Four years later, the production returned to City Center with an all-new cast. In the lead roles were Inga Swenson and Fritz Weaver, who had been seen playing opposite each other in the 1965 Sherlock Holmes–themed Broadway musical Baker Street; Doolittle was played by the British character actor George Rose, and it would later become his signature role. Richard F. Shepard in the New York Times raved about the entire experience, describing it as “delightful,” referring to Swenson as “marvelous,” Weaver as “splendidly vinegary,” and Rose as “magnificently earthy.” He concluded: “The style of the Broadway production has been kept, and who is to complain? … [W]e’ve grown accustomed to her face.”34 This statement is part of an emerging trend in the mid-1960s whereby the show was beginning to be discussed with an air of nostalgia. Six years after the end of the original Broadway run, the show had already become an important part of theater history—one which audiences had taken to their heart and turned into a classic.

  THE 1964 MOVIE ADAPTATION

  Even before it opened, Lerner and Loewe were hoping for a movie version of the show. In fact, before CBS came in and backed the whole production, the team had first approached Paramount Pictures in February 1955 with a view to their investing in the stage show in exchange for exclusive motion picture rights.35 This fell through, but after the successful opening of the show the following year, many of the major studios and producers started approaching Levin, Lerner, and Loewe about a possible screen adaptation. These included Samuel Goldwyn, William Goetz, Columbia Pictures, and, most prominently, 20th Century-Fox, who wanted to cast Cary Grant as Henry Higgins.36 Since the show was such a commercial success on the stage, though, the film version was postponed for the time being. Then in 1961, Jack Warner (of Warner Bros.) and Arthur Freed (of MGM) both became determined to produce the movie version. Lerner seems to have favored the MGM team who were behind his enormously successful movie Gigi, and lined up its dire
ctor, Vincente Minnelli, to helm the project. Additionally, he wanted Julie Andrews and Richard Burton—stars of the most recent Lerner and Loewe stage show, Camelot—to play the lead roles.37

  But although Warner’s initial bid for the project was turned down, his determination to “outbid any offer by a million dollars” meant that in 1962, Warner Bros. won the rights to produce the movie for $5.5 million.38 In June 1963, the New York Times announced that it was to be the most expensive film ever made, with a total cost of around $12 million. Contrary to Lerner’s hopes of having the original Eliza (Julie Andrews) and a new Higgins (Richard Burton), Warner elected to retain Rex Harrison from the Broadway production and hire Audrey Hepburn—a bigger box office draw than Andrews—as Eliza. To Harrison’s dismay, he earned only a fifth of Hepburn’s deal—$200,000 to her $1 million—and neither of them was to participate in the movie’s profits, although he went on to earn royalties from the soundtrack album.39 Hepburn, however, received none, because her singing was dubbed by Marni Nixon. Hepburn had previously sung in a movie musical—Funny Face (1957)—as well as performing the Oscar-winning song “Moon River” in Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1961), but her vocal ability was deemed inadequate for the lyric demands of Fair Lady’s score, and Nixon was called in to replace her voice, just as she had done for Deborah Kerr in The King and I (1956) and Natalie Wood in West Side Story (1961). Stanley Holloway returned to play Doolittle, and Warner hired George Cukor to direct, best known for his work on classics such as The Philadelphia Story (1940) and A Star Is Born (1954). Cecil Beaton was brought in to reconceive his stage costumes for film, though the set designs were executed by Gene Allen, who is credited only for art direction; by all accounts (including their own), there was tension between Beaton and Cukor.40 Rehearsals began on June 17, 1963, and the film was completed in about four months.41

  Even though the movie is often cited for its fidelity, and (with some justification) even described as “stage-bound” or something similar, Lerner’s screenplay is far from a literal transposition of the stage script. Indeed, Cukor himself later commented, “We used even more of Shaw’s screenplay than the stage version did.”42 It is striking that when comparing the stage show’s rehearsal script with the film, many of the lines that were cut before the Broadway opening were put back to their original version. Perhaps this is one reason why some portions of the film can seem overlong: the contraction and polishing done during rehearsals for the stage version was sometimes overlooked in the screen adaptation. On the other hand, bearing in mind that Lerner’s stage script is based on Shaw’s screenplay for Pygmalion, the movie of My Fair Lady returns the material to its source medium. Geoffrey Block has usefully summarized the changes to Fair Lady in its film adaption, which include everything from contracting Doolittle’s first two appearances into one scene (so that the reprise of “Little Bit of Luck” is heard in the same scene as its first sounding) to showing Eliza’s protestations in the bath while Higgins’s servants try to clean her on the night of her arrival. The Ascot scene is expanded and elaborated so that we see the racecourse from more angles and also observe a brief conversation between Higgins and his mother after Eliza’s gaffe. That said, the staging of this scene is the most stylized of the movie, and Block (among many others) considers it “a lost opportunity for cinematic extravagance.”43 Cukor said that “There was really no other way we could have done it. There’s a big number sung during the sequence, so it couldn’t be realistic. Nor could the picture as a whole. It had to take place in a kind of dream world.” Perhaps for this reason, the movie was not filmed realistically on location but in a stylized reinvention of Edwardian London.

  There are, however, a few moments where Cukor uses cinematic techniques, such as the reprise of “Wouldn’t It Be Loverly?” being heard as a voice-over to represent Eliza’s emotional memory, and we see much more of the geography of Higgins’s house, Wimpole Street, the Embassy, and the market locations than is possible on the stage. The movie also moves the intermission to the end of the scene of Eliza and Higgins’s departure for the ball (in which he shows her a newfound respect by extending his arm for hers), throwing further emphasis on their relationship by ending the first half of the film with a gesture about their ambiguous feelings toward one another. Another unusual feature of the movie was the decision to have Harrison perform his numbers “live” on set rather than pre-record the vocals as was traditional with movie musicals. Cukor commented that this technique allowed “certain laughs in the lyrics that Rex said himself he could never get on the stage”; the director considered Harrison’s performance “dazzling” and “even better on the screen than on the stage.”44

  The movie was first shown in New York on October 21, 1964, and garnered many fine reviews. The New York Times called it “superlative,” the New York Journal-American said it was “enchanting,” and the New York World-Telegram commented that Hepburn “must be the most delightful in the long procession of Elizas.”45 It went on to win eight Oscars, including best picture, director, actor, art direction, cinematography, sound, costume design, and original music score (for the musical director, André Previn). Additionally, Lerner’s screenplay, Holloway’s Doolittle, Gladys Cooper’s Mrs. Higgins, and William Ziegler’s film editing were nominated, but Hepburn’s performance was completely overlooked. In spite of having written the screenplay and been present for much of the filming, Lerner was unhappy with the results of the film, as he acknowledged numerous times in public. Privately, too, he quipped to Cecil Beaton: “I know how sad you will be to hear that George Cukor has not worked since My Fair Lady. As far as I’m concerned, since before My Fair Lady.”46

  1976 BROADWAY REVIVAL

  It was inevitable that the show would return to Broadway for a full-fledged revival before long. In spite of the disparate directions the genre had taken during the first half of the 1970s—including such wide-ranging fare as Company (1970), Grease (1971), and A Chorus Line (1975)—My Fair Lady was a show for which there would always be a firm demand. So in 1976, Levin brought to bear a twentieth-anniversary revival at the St. James Theatre that would, in another sign of growing nostalgia about the show, aim to reinstate the original sets, costumes, and orchestrations. Jerry Adler, one of the stage managers of the 1956 production, was brought in to direct, while the original dance captain, Crandall Diehl, reproduced the choreography.47 According to an article in the New York Times, Rex Harrison was approached to appear again as Higgins, but said he would do so only if Julie Andrews would return as Eliza; her availability at this point allowed for just “four to six weeks,” so Levin turned, on Lerner’s advice, to British actor Ian Richardson. Robert Coote returned to his original role of Pickering, while George Rose reprised his Doolittle from the 1968 revival. After many months of auditions, the role of Eliza was given to Christine Andreas, who had previously worked with Adler on the 1974 Sammy Cahn revue Words and Music. Hoping to follow their financial success with the original staging, CBS invested $500,000 in the production, which cost $750,000 overall.

  Not everything was the same, though: Adler reported that Beaton’s costumes had been reproduced with the exception of Eliza’s ball gown, which had to be modified because Andreas was shorter than Andrews; the groupings in the choreography had to be changed because the St. James Theatre was shallower than the Mark Hellinger Theatre had been; and some of Oliver Smith’s designs were reconceived. Adler also noted that Richardson’s Higgins was “more mature” and “more intellectual,” and was at great pains to emphasize the many different nuances being brought to their roles by the other leads in the new production.48 Confirming the impetus for the revival, Levin commented in a separate article that “This is the classical musical show of the American theater. I think a classical musical has every right to be done over, just as a classical play is done.”49 A couple of weeks later, Richardson reported that the first-night audience agreed with Levin’s view—“So electric was the audience, so desperately was it eager to have the show back,” he said.50
The revival opened on March 25 and ran until December 5, before transferring to the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre on December 9 for a brief run to February 20, 1977 (377 performances). In light of the success of the original production, this was a disappointment, but both Richardson and Rose were nominated for the Tony Award for best actor and Rose won.

  1981 BROADWAY REVIVAL

  The excitement was palpable when Rex Harrison announced that he would return to play Higgins on Broadway for a short run in 1981, following a U.S. tour. “There was a sense of expectation in the air” remarked Patrick Garland, the revival’s director, who wrote a memoir about working with Harrison on the production.51 The pre-Broadway tour was extensive and took in New Orleans, San Francisco, Detroit, Los Angeles, Chicago, and other major American cities. Garland recounts how, having given fine performances and inspired good reviews for much of the tour, Cheryl Kennedy, the British actress who played Eliza, developed vocal problems. Because of Harrison’s extreme reluctance to play opposite her official understudy (“None of the others can play the comedy”), Kennedy was forced to perform through her illness until, after missing some of the latter part of the tour and performing only one of the New York previews, she was forced to withdraw due to laryngitis and nodes on her vocal cords. She was replaced by Nancy Ringham, a member of the company who had been the unofficial second understudy for the role of Eliza. The New York Times noted that Harrison had been adamant to have an English actress as Eliza, which explains his reticence about Ringham, who was American; the first cover for the role, Kitty Sullivan, was the wife of Milo O’Shea, who played Doolittle in the production, but Harrison refused to work with her, and she left the production the week before the Broadway opening.52