My Fair Lady is a musical with a book and lyrics by Alan Jay Lerner and music by Frederick Loewe. The story, based on George Bernard Shaw's 1913 play Pygmalion and on the 1938 film adaptation of the play, concerns Eliza Doolittle, a Cockney flower girl who takes speech lessons from professor Henry Higgins, a phonetician, so that she may pass as a lady. Despite his cynical nature and difficulty understanding women, Higgins grows attached to her.
The musical's 1956 Broadway production was a notable critical and popular success, winning six Tony Awards, including Best Musical. It set a record for the longest run of any musical on Broadway up to that time and was followed by a hit London production. Rex Harrison and Julie Andrews starred in both productions. Many revivals have followed, and the 1964 film version won the Academy Award for Best Picture.
Plot Act I In Edwardian London, Eliza Doolittle is a flower girl with a thick Cockney accent. The noted phonetician Professor Henry Higgins encounters Eliza at Covent Garden and laments the vulgarity of her dialect ("Why Can't the English?"). Higgins also meets Colonel Pickering, another linguist, and invites him to stay as his houseguest. Eliza and her friends wonder what it would be like to live a comfortable life ("Wouldn't It Be Loverly?").
Eliza's dustman father, Alfred P. Doolittle, stops by the next morning searching for money for a drink ("With a Little Bit of Luck"). Soon after, Eliza comes to Higgins's house, seeking elocution lessons so that she can get a job as an assistant in a florist's shop. Higgins wagers Pickering that, within six months, by teaching Eliza to speak properly, he will enable her to pass for a proper lady.
Eliza becomes part of Higgins's household. Though Higgins sees himself as a kindhearted man who merely cannot get along with women ("I'm an Ordinary Man"), to others he appears self-absorbed and misogynistic. Eliza endures Higgins's tyrannical speech tutoring. Frustrated, she dreams of different ways to kill him ("Just You Wait"). Higgins's servants lament the stressful atmosphere ("The Servants' Chorus").
Just as Higgins is about to give up on her, Eliza suddenly recites one of her diction exercises in perfect upper-class style ("The Rain in Spain"). Though Mrs Pearce, the housekeeper, insists that Eliza go to bed, she declares she is too excited to sleep ("I Could Have Danced All Night").
For her first public tryout, Higgins takes Eliza to his mother's box at Ascot Racecourse ("Ascot Gavotte"). Though Eliza shocks everyone when she forgets herself while watching a race and reverts to foul language, she does capture the heart of Freddy Eynsford-Hill. Freddy calls on Eliza that evening, and he declares that he will wait for her in the street outside Higgins' house ("On the Street Where You Live").
Eliza's final test requires her to pass as a lady at the Embassy Ball. After more weeks of preparation, she is ready. ("Eliza's Entrance"). All the ladies and gentlemen at the ball admire her, and the Queen of Transylvania invites her to dance with the prince ("Embassy Waltz"). A Hungarian phonetician, Zoltan Karpathy, attempts to discover Eliza's origins. Higgins allows Karpathy to dance with Eliza.The original book of the musical, and original productions, placed the ball scene at the end of Act I. Some later productions have moved it to the beginning of Act II.
Act II The ball is a success; Karpathy has declared Eliza to be a Hungarian princess. Pickering and Higgins revel in their triumph ("You Did It"), failing to pay attention to Eliza. Eliza is insulted at receiving no credit for her success, packing up and leaving the Higgins house. As she leaves she finds Freddy, who begins to tell her how much he loves her, but she tells him that she has heard enough words; if he really loves her, he should show it ("Show Me").
Eliza and Freddy return to Covent Garden but she finds she no longer feels at home there. Her father is there as well, and he tells her that he has received a surprise bequest from an American millionaire, which has raised him to middle-class respectability, and now must marry his lover. Doolittle and his friends have one last spree before the wedding ("Get Me to the Church on Time").
Higgins awakens the next morning. He finds himself out of sorts without Eliza. He wonders why she left after the triumph at the ball and concludes that men (especially himself) are far superior to women ("A Hymn to Him"). Col. Pickering is concerned about Eliza's well-being, calling the police as well as contacting an old chum he believes will help them track her down.
Higgins despondently visits his mother's house, where he finds Eliza. Eliza declares she no longer needs Higgins ("Without You"). As Higgins walks home, he realizes he's grown attached to Eliza ("I've Grown Accustomed to Her Face"). At home, he sentimentally reviews the recording he made the day Eliza first came to him for lessons, hearing his own harsh words. Eliza suddenly appears in his home. In suppressed joy at their reunion, Professor Higgins scoffs and asks, "Eliza, where the devil are my slippers?"
Characters and original Broadway cast The original cast of the Broadway stage production:"'My Fair Lady' Synopsis, Cast, Scenes and Settings and Musical Numbers" guidetomusicaltheatre.com, accessed December 7, 2011.
Eliza Doolittle, a young Cockney flowerseller – Julie Andrews Henry Higgins, a professor of phonetics – Rex Harrison Alfred P. Doolittle, Eliza's father, a dustman – Stanley Holloway Colonel Hugh Pickering, Henry Higgins's friend and fellow phoneticist – Robert Coote Mrs. Higgins, Henry's socialite mother – Cathleen Nesbitt Freddy Eynsford-Hill, a young socialite and Eliza's suitor – John Michael King Mrs. Pearce, Higgins's housekeeper – Philippa Bevans Zoltan Karpathy, Henry Higgins's former student and rival – Christopher Hewett
Musical numbers
Act I "Overture" – The Orchestra "Busker Sequence" – The Orchestra "Why Can't the English?" – Professor Higgins "Wouldn't It Be Loverly?" – Eliza and Male Quartet "With a Little Bit of Luck" – Alfred Doolittle, Harry, Jamie and Company "I'm an Ordinary Man" – Professor Higgins "With a Little Bit of Luck" (reprise) – Alfred Doolittle and Ensemble "Just You Wait" – Eliza "The Servants' Chorus (Poor Professor Higgins)" – Mrs. Pearce and Servants "The Rain in Spain" – Professor Higgins, Eliza, and Colonel Pickering "I Could Have Danced All Night" – Eliza, Mrs. Pearce, and Servants "Ascot Gavotte" – Ensemble "On the Street Where You Live" – Freddy "Eliza's Entrance/Embassy Waltz" – The Orchestra
Act II "You Did It" – Colonel Pickering, Professor Higgins, Mrs. Pearce, and Servants "Just You Wait" (reprise) – Eliza "On the Street Where You Live" (reprise) – Freddy "Show Me" – Eliza with Freddy "The Flower Market/Wouldn't It Be Loverly?" (reprise) – Eliza and Male Quartet "Get Me to the Church on Time" – Alfred Doolittle and Ensemble "A Hymn to Him" – Professor Higgins and Colonel Pickering "Without You" – Eliza and Professor Higgins "I've Grown Accustomed to Her Face" – Professor Higgins "I Could Have Danced All Night" (reprise) / "Finale" – The Orchestra
Background In the mid-1930s, film producer Gabriel Pascal acquired the rights to produce film versions of several of George Bernard Shaw's plays, Pygmalion among them. However, Shaw, having had a bad experience with The Chocolate Soldier, a Viennese operetta based on his play Arms and the Man, refused permission for Pygmalion to be adapted into a musical. After Shaw died in 1950, Pascal asked lyricist Alan Jay Lerner to write the musical adaptation. Lerner agreed, and he and his partner Frederick Loewe began work. But they quickly realised that the play violated several key rules for constructing a musical: the main story was not a love story, there was no subplot or secondary love story, and there was no place for an ensemble.Lerner, p. 36. Many people, including Oscar Hammerstein II, who, with Richard Rodgers, had also tried his hand at adapting Pygmalion into a musical and had given up, told Lerner that converting the play to a musical was impossible, so he and Loewe abandoned the project for two years.Lerner, p. 38.
During this time, the collaborators separated, and Pascal died. Lerner had been trying to musicalize Li'l Abner when he read Pascal's obituary and found himself thinking about Pygmalion again.Lerner, p. 39. When he and Loewe reunited, everything fell into place. All of the insurmountable obstacles that had stood in their way two years earlier disappeared when the team realized that the play needed few changes apart from (according to Lerner) "adding the action that took place between the acts of the play".Lerner, pp. 43–44. They then excitedly began writing the show. However, Chase Manhattan Bank was in charge of Pascal's estate, and the musical rights to Pygmalion were sought both by Lerner and Loewe and by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, whose executives called Lerner to discourage him from challenging the studio. Loewe decided, "We will write the show without the rights, and when the time comes for them to decide who is to get them, we will be so far ahead of everyone else that they will be forced to give them to us."Lerner, p. 47. For five months Lerner and Loewe wrote, hired technical designers, and made casting decisions. The bank, in the end, granted them the musical rights.
Various titles were suggested for the musical. Dominic McHugh wrote: "During the autumn of 1955, the show [was] typically referred to as My Lady Liza, and most of the contracts refer to this as the title." Lerner preferred My Fair Lady, relating both to one of Shaw's provisional titles for Pygmalion and to the final line of every verse of the nursery rhyme "London Bridge Is Falling Down". Recalling that the Gershwins' 1925 musical Tell Me More had been titled My Fair Lady in its out-of-town tryout, and also had a musical number under that title, Lerner made a courtesy call to Ira Gershwin, alerting him to the use of the title for the Lerner and Loewe musical.
Noël Coward was the first to be offered the role of Henry Higgins, but he turned it down, suggesting the producers cast Rex Harrison instead.Morley, Sheridan. A Talent to Amuse: A Biography of Noël Coward, p. 369, Doubleday & Company, 1969. After much deliberation, Harrison agreed to accept the part; his music was written without sustained notes and with natural tonal patterns – a spoken part that happens to have a melody. Mary Martin was an early choice for the role of Eliza Doolittle, but declined the role."Extravagant Crowd: Mary Martin" , Beinecke Library, Yale University, accessed December 9, 2011. Young actress Julie Andrews was "discovered" and cast as Eliza after the show's creative team went to see her Broadway debut in The Boy Friend. Moss Hart agreed to direct after hearing only two songs. The experienced orchestrators Robert Russell Bennett and Philip J. Lang were entrusted with the arrangements, and the show quickly went into rehearsal.
The musical's script used several scenes that Shaw had written especially for the 1938 film version of Pygmalion, including the Embassy Ball sequence and the final scene of the 1938 film rather than the ending for Shaw's original play. The montage showing Eliza's lessons was also expanded, combining both Lerner's and Shaw's dialogue. The artwork on the original Broadway poster (and the sleeve of the cast recording) is by Al Hirschfeld, who drew the playwright Shaw as a heavenly puppetmaster pulling the strings on the Henry Higgins character, while Higgins in turn attempts to control Eliza Doolittle.
Productions
Original Broadway production