Loverly:The Life and Times of My Fair Lady (Broadway Legacies), McHugh, Dominic [fantasy books to read TXT] 📗

when Robert Coote’s final contract was also signed).136 Richard Maney was hired as the company’s Press Agent on November 26, commencing on January 9, 1956; he would be an active participant throughout the show’s original Broadway run, as a lengthy folder of material in Levin’s papers proves.137 An agreement was drawn up with Trude Rittman on November 30 to be the Dance Arranger, and on December 2, Ernest Adler was signed on to create “all hair stylings and coiffures” for the production.138 The signing of Rittman was especially important: she had arranged the dance music for Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Oklahoma!, Carousel, and South Pacific, and the “Small House of Uncle Thomas” ballet from The King and I. After working together on Brigadoon, Loewe brought her in again for Paint Your Wagon as well as the later stage adaptation of Gigi (1973). In Fair Lady, she was so completely trusted by the composer that he allowed her to create the lengthy choreographic sequences without his intervention, nor was her work confined merely to the dance music.139

The recording of the original cast album, with (left to right) Robert Coote, Rex Harrison, and Julie Andrews (Photofest/Columbia Records)

Meanwhile, although Cecil Beaton had successfully ordered the costumes he required for Rex Harrison, there was a question of how to get them from England to the United States. Beaton felt it was awkward for him to ask Harrison to take them there himself as a favor and suggested that Levin should ask the actor.140 Levin replied that since Harrison was traveling by plane, this was impossible, and asked whether it would be possible to send them by “some other means, perhaps air express or air freight?”141 The producer also made a suggestion regarding Julie Andrews’s hair: “It occurs to me that it might be a good idea if it were made an auburn shade.” Within the following week the problem with Harrison’s clothes was solved, as the actor himself volunteered to carry them in his luggage; the producer wrote to Harrison to thank him and to promise to pay the excess baggage, which came to around $450.142 To Beaton, Levin also followed up his comment about Andrews’s hair: “My idea was only a suggestion,” he informed Beaton. “I gather from your letter that you have brightened the tone of her hair considerably. I thought that her own hair seemed rather drab.”143 During December, Levin also approached several companies regarding the construction of the scenery for the show. The contract went to the Nolan Brothers of West Twenty-fourth Street, who provided the sets for $65,000.144

A TITLE AND REHEARSALS

December 1955–March 1956

The year’s correspondence ends with letters from Levin to the key actors in which “the Pygmalion musical” is finally referred to as My Fair Lady; that to Robert Coote on December 28 appears to be the earliest example.145 The question of what to call the show was one of the most important decisions to be made. Lerner addresses the issue in his autobiography, saying that the early suggestions Liza and My Lady Liza “went to their final resting places in the trash basket” because “it would have seemed peculiar for the marquee to read: ‘Rex Harrison in Liza.’”146 He claims that My Fair Lady was considered and discarded because “it sounded like an operetta” and that Loewe liked Fanfaroon as a title “primarily I believe because it reminded him of Brigadoon.” Come to the Ball was also considered. Later, Lerner claims that “toward the second week of rehearsal,” Levin came to the theater and demanded that Lerner, Loewe, and Hart decide on a title, at which point they agreed to choose My Fair Lady because it was the one they disliked the least.147

But this chronology is difficult to corroborate with documentary evidence. During the autumn of 1955, the show is typically referred to as My Lady Liza, and most of the contracts refer to this as the title. Then on November 29 Lerner wrote a long letter to Harrison, in which he mentioned the issue of the title in the postscript: “Fanfaroon has not been abandoned, although there is stiff opposition,” he wrote. “But My Lady Liza will definitely not be it. I know this will break your heart, because you seem so terribly fond of it.”148 Although Lerner claims in The Street Where I Live that the final decision was made during the second week of rehearsals, in fact it must have happened between December 16 and 28.149My Fair Lady it was to be, and on December 30 Levin sent the record producer Goddard Lieberson an outline of the billing sheet for the show for use on the cover of the Original Cast Album with the new title stamped proudly across the middle.150

Not surprisingly, the primary documentary sources for the remainder of the time leading up to the opening night on Broadway are less detailed than that for the preceding months. With the cast and crew in the same place for most of the time between the start of rehearsals (January 3), the opening night in New Haven (February 4), the Philadelphia tryout (February 15) and the Broadway opening (March 15), there was little need for written correspondence between the key players. This means that we have to fall back on the memoirs of figures such as Lerner, Andrews, Harrison, Holloway, Kitty Carlisle Hart (the director’s wife), and Doris Shapiro (Lerner’s assistant) to fill in many of the gaps, as well as newspaper reports and playbills. Nevertheless, a number of letters from this period remain, because Levin kept things ticking over while the show was being staged and rehearsed.

On January 4, he wrote to Laurie Evans in London to tell him that “Rex arrived in good shape; rehearsals started yesterday; and everyone is working hard.”151 The cast was working upstairs at the New Amsterdam Roof, 214 West Forty-second Street in New York for the first four weeks until embarking for New Haven at the end of the month.152 The entire ensemble gathered onstage for