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

Redgrave in the show, even though it had only just opened on Broadway.13 Since Harrison was committed to the production for only twelve months, Levin was concerned about sustaining its initial success: a telegram from Lerner to Levin on November 15, 1956, indicates that they had managed to get John Gielgud to agree to portray Higgins until March 1957 if Harrison refused to extend his contract. Lerner and Levin were intending to use Gielgud’s commitment as a bargaining tool: “We can no[w] put pressure on Harrison to sign at least till June or lose London.”14 This reveals how important it was to Harrison to introduce the musical to British audiences.

A month later, Moss Hart took the role to Noël Coward, another star name who had been associated with the show at an early stage, but was again turned down.15 In the end, Harrison’s replacement was Edmund Mulhare, an Irish actor without Harrison’s star name but who had filled in for his predecessor during vacations. Robert Coote (Pickering), Cathleen Nesbitt (Mrs. Higgins) and Christopher Hewitt (Karpathy) had long left the show, so with a fresh cast to review, Brooks Atkinson wrote an extensive article about the show on March 9, 1958.16 He acknowledged that the new cast had “not been able to duplicate perfection,” but still raved about the quality of the writing, design, and production. Nothing could stop My Fair Lady now. On July 12, 1961, it became the longest-running musical in Broadway history, and through several more cast changes, plus two changes of theater (to the Broadhurst and Broadway theaters) in the final year of the run (1962), it was clear that the public had taken the show to its hearts, regardless of who was in it.17

One curious aspect of its reception was the number of parodies that were written, especially during the original run. For example, in 1957 the composer Dean Fuller and the lyricist Marshall Barer wrote a sketch titled “My Late, Late Lady” for the Ziegfeld Follies, starring Beatrice Lillie; among the references to My Fair Lady was a pastiche of “The Rain in Spain” containing the lines “the sink doesn’t stink any more” and “I had a bawth last night.”18 Another, more lasting project was a spoof recording put out on the Foremost record label in 1956, called My Square Laddie. This turned the Fair Lady story on its head and had Broadway veteran Nancy Walker (who had appeared in shows such as On the Town) teaching British actor Reginald Gardiner how to speak in an authentic Brooklyn dialect. Again, the references to Lerner’s lyrics are numerous, with such song titles as “What Makes a Limey Talk so Square?” “It’s De Oily Boid,” and “I’m Kinda Partial to his Puss.”19 These and other such attempts to cash in on the success of Fair Lady invoked consternation in the Levin camp, yet in retrospect they are fascinating as items that show the extent to which the musical had been absorbed into American culture.

ORIGINAL LONDON PRODUCTION (1958)

My Fair Lady was always a natural choice for London’s theater scene. As early as 1952, when Lerner and Loewe were still pursuing Mary Martin to play the role of Eliza, they even considered giving the piece its world premiere in the city of its original setting. The original London production was unusual in containing all four of the Broadway principals; notwithstanding isolated examples such as Mary Martin’s appearance in the original London South Pacific, it was almost unheard of for a major Broadway show to be brought to England with production and cast practically in tact. Evidently, Harrison, Andrews, Holloway, and Coote wanted to return home victorious after conquering Broadway. Tickets for the London production went on sale on October 1, 1957, and Reuters reported that on the first day alone, more than $15,000 was taken by the box office (which was accepting sales up to October 1959).20 Hugh Beaumont was finally able to benefit from the deal he had made with Levin in 1955 to release Harrison from Bell, Book and Candle so that rehearsals for Fair Lady could begin: the right to produce the show in London automatically gave him control over the hottest ticket in the West End. To complete the cast, he chose Betty Wolfe as Mrs. Pearce, Leonard Weir as Freddy, and Zena Dare as Mrs. Higgins. A veteran of the West End, Dare made her final stage appearance in this show. She stayed with the production for the entire five-and-a-half-year run, then going on tour with it until she decided to retire completely. Another important figure in the British production was Cyril Ornadel, a renowned West End musical director who also had considerable success as a composer of musicals.21

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