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

for production by Levin, The Girl Who Came to Supper (1963).

5. HLP, 26/6.

6. Ibid.

7. Lerner, Street, 60. Certainly Lerner, Loewe, and Levin met with Beaton in London, but Lerner leaves the reader with the impression that all discussions about the show took place there rather than having started in New York with Levin.

8. HLP, 23/5.

9. Ibid.

10. Diary, 1955. Michael Redgrave Papers, Theatre Museum Archive, Victoria and Albert Museum, TH 17/31/41/12. The “Clurman-Giraudoux” project was a play about the Trojan wars called Tiger at the Gates, in which Redgrave would play Hector.

11. Memo of telephone conversation with Richard Halliday, December 14, 1954, TGC, Box 137.

12. D’Andre, “Theatre Guild,” 253. I was not able to access the interoffice memos D’Andre cites for this information.

13. Letter of December 27, 1954, Langner to Paul Ramsay, TGC, 137.

14. Theatre Guild Memo of January 18, 1955, TGC, 137.

15. Summary of conversations with Rodgers and Hammerstein, February 9, 1955, TGC, 137.

16. HLP, 25/8.

17. Lerner, Street, 81. In the end, Hanya Holm’s choreography received unanimous praise, but the cutting of the ballet—which would have been her great moment—meant that the amount of choreography was reduced even further.

18. Ibid. Lerner finished the story: “Moss had nothing to say and obviously could not wait for the meeting to end. After Mike left, Moss looked at Fritz and me and from his lips came an over-articulated, ‘No.’”

19. In a letter of June 13, 1955, Levin wrote to Laurence Evans: “We have made a deal with Moss Hart to direct the show,” HLP, 25/7. Hart’s contract, dated June 18, 1955, is also in HLP, 25/8.

20. Telegram of January 25, 1955, Lerner to Levin, HLP, 25/7. Letter of April 1, 1955, Levin to Laurence Evans, HLP, 25/7. Letter of April 1, 1955, Levin to Beaton, HLP, 24/7.

21. HLP, 26/6. One assumes that the reference to Show Boat is sarcastic rather than the person referred to in the phrase “I’m meeting him today …,” if nothing else because Sammy Lee, the choreographer of the original Show Boat, did no further work on Broadway after 1932.

22. Lerner, Street, 81.

23. HLP, 25/7. In his book on Moss Hart, Steven Bach cites an interview he carried out with production assistant Bud Widney by way of explaining Holliday’s brief connection with the show, Bach, 343–44.

24. HLP, 26/6.

25. Agreement between Levin and Andrews of March 31, 1955, to which are attached various riders of May-June 1955, HLP, 25/5.

26. Julie Andrews, Home (New York: Hyperion, 2008), 180–81.

27. Lerner, Street, 52.

28. Andrews, Home, 182.

29. HLP, 23/5.

30. Letters of February 7, 1955, Levin to Martin Jurow and David Hocker, HLP, 23/5.

31. Letter of April 11, 1956, Basil Geoffrey of Renée Stepham Ltd. to Levin, HLP, 23/5. Geoffrey had read about My Fair Lady in the Daily Express and wrote to Levin to suggest three of his artists: Barry Sinclair for Higgins, Stanley Beard for Doolittle, and Petula Clark for Eliza.

32. Lerner, Street, 54.

33. Ibid.

34. Ibid., 49.

35. Ibid., 60.

36. Ibid., 62–63.

37. HLP, 23/5.

38. Lerner, Street, 53.

39. Letter of April 1, 1955, Levin to Beaton, HLP, 24/7. Beaton was designing both costumes and sets for Selznick’s production of Enid Bagnold’s play The Chalk Garden, which was to open on Broadway in October 1955 and star Gladys Cooper (who later played Mrs. Higgins in the 1964 movie version of My Fair Lady)

40. Letter/agreement of March 18, 1955, Levin to Harrison and countersigned by the latter, HLP, 25/7.

41. See, for instance: Jared Brown, Moss Hart: A Prince of the Theatre (New York: Crown, 2006), 338.

42. Letter of February 24, 1955, Lillian Aza to Herman Levin, HLP, 25/9.

43. Lerner, Street, 60.

44. Letter of March 14, 1955, Aza to Levin, HLP, 25/9.

45. Letter of March 25, 1955, Levin to Aza, HLP, 25/9.

46. Letter of March 31, 1955, Aza to Levin, HLP, 25/9.

47. Letter of April 6, 1955, Levin to Aza, HLP, 25/9.

48. Lerner writes: “We … promised him that we would fly over to see him to show him his songs as we wrote them, to make certain he felt comfortable with them,” Lerner, Street, 62–63.

49. Letter of April 1, 1955, Levin to Laurence Evans, HLP, 25/7.

50. Letter of April 1, 1955, Levin to Smith, HLP, 26/6.

51. Four telegrams between Levin and Van Druten. Only Van Druten’s first telegram is dated (April 6), so the dates of the others remain conjectural.

52. Memorandum of Telephone Message, Monica McCall to Herman Levin of May 9, 1955, HLP, 25/7.

53. Letter of April 14, 1955, Aza to Levin, HLP, 25/9.

54. Letter of April 29, 1955, Aza to Levin, HLP, 25/9.

55. Letter of May 6, 1955, Levin to Aza, HLP, 25/9.

56. Letter of May 12, 1955, Aza to Levin, HLP, 25/9.

57. Letter of May 17, 1955, Levin to Aza, HLP, 25/9.

58. Letter of May 31, 1955, Aza to Levin, HLP, 25/9.

59. Telegram of June 13, Levin to Aza, HLP, 25/9.

60. Letter of June 27, Aza to Levin, HLP, 25/9.

61. Telegrams of July 13, 1955 between Levin and Aza, HLP, 25/9.

62. Letter of April 4, 1955, Evans to Levin, HLP, 25/7.

63. Letter of April 20, 1955, Levin to Evans, HLP, 25/7.

64. Letter of April 25, 1955, Evans to Levin, HLP, 25/7.

65. Letter of May 2, 1955, Evans to Levin; letter of May 6, 1955, Levin to Evans, HLP 25/7.

66. Letter of May 9, 1955, Evans to Levin, HLP, 25/7.

67. Letter of May 17, 1955, Levin to Evans, HLP, 25/7.

68. Letter of May 18, 1955, Evans to Levin, HLP, 25/7. Lerner describes how Harrison was having an affair with Kay Kendall at the time Harrison was appearing onstage with Lilli Palmer. Lerner, Street, 55.

69. Letter of May 23, 1955, Evans to Levin, HLP, 25/9.

70. Letter of May 27, 1955, Levin to Evans, HLP, 25/9.

71. Letter of April 6, 1955, Beaton to Levin, HLP, 25/9.

72. Letter of May 13, 1955, Arnold Weissberger to Levin, HLP, 24/7.

73. Letter of May 24, 1955, Weissberger to Levin, HLP, 24.7.

74. Letter of June 13, 1955, Weissberger to Levin, HLP, 24/7. On June 17, Levin wrote to Beaton to inform him that he had received the contracts the previous day. Letter