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

Fordin, MGM’s Greatest Musicals (New York: Da Capo Press, 1996), 517, for more information on Warner’s position. The refusal of the first bid in September 1961 is discussed in a telegram from Levin to the studio’s negotiator, HLP, 23/8.

39. Details of Harrison’s deal are described in Alexander Walker’s excellent biography of the actor, Fatal Charm: The Life of Rex Harrison (London: Orion, 2002), 307.

40. In his diary, Beaton wrote that after one clash, “it took George Cukor two hours to recover from his displeasure with me enough to continue.” Richard Buckle, ed., Self-Portrait with Friends: The Selected Diaries of Cecil Beaton (London: Pimlico, 1981)367. In turn, Cukor acknowledged in an interview that “As everyone knows, we didn’t get on very well.”

41. Murray Schumach, “Fair Lady to Set a Film-cost Mark,” New York Times, June 5, 1963. Gavin Lambert, On Cukor (New York: G. P. Putnam, 1972; rev. ed. New York: Rizzoli, 2000), 186.

42. Lambert, On Cukor, 192.

43. Block, Enchanted Evenings, 323–27.

44. Lambert, On Cukor, 192.

45. Reviews quoted in Jerry Vermilye, The Complete Films of Audrey Hepburn (New York: Citadel, 1995), 178–80.

46. Letter, Lerner to Cecil Beaton, April 21, 1967, Cecil Beaton Papers, St. John’s College, Cambridge.

47. Much later, Diehl wrote a detailed reminiscence of working with Holm for a specific dance publication. Crandall Diehl, “My Fair Lady and other Broadway Memories,” Choreography and Dance 2, pt. 2, 73–87.

48. Robert Berkvist, “Will this Fair Lady be as Loverly?,” New York Times, March 21, 1976, 57.

49. Richard Eder, “Levin Back on Street Where She Lived,” New York Times, March 22, 1976, 21.

50. Mel Gussow, “Richardson Finds ’Iggins a Lovely Change of Pace,” New York Times, March 31, 1976, 29.

51. Patrick Garland, The Incomparable Rex (London: Macmillan, 1998).

52. Anonymous, “Fair Lady Understudy Is Going On,” New York Times, August 18, 1981, C8.

53. Garland, Incomparable Rex, 205.

54. Mel Gussow, “My Fair Lady Returns,” New York Times, August 19, 1981, C17.

55. Garland, Incomparable Rex, 206.

56. Ibid., 205.

57. Glenn Collins, “On Stage and Off,” New York Times, July 2, 1993, C2.

58. Bruce Weber, “Fighting for the Soul of Eliza Doolittle,” New York Times, December 15, 1993.

59. David Richards, “My Fair Lady: A Darker Side to the Fable of a Flower Girl,” New York Times, December 10, 1993.

60. Copy in the author’s collection.

61. Sheridan Morley and Ruth Leon, Hey, Mr Producer! The Musical World of Cameron Mackintosh (London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 1998), 52–53.

62. See Gene Lees’s Inventing Champagne: The Musical Worlds of Lerner and Loewe. (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1990), 288–89.

63. Quotation from an article on Conran’s website, http://www.jasperconran.com/performing-arts/my-fair-lady/#nav=path_%252Fperforming-arts%252Fmy-fair-lady%252Fmy-fair-lady-press%252C7%252CSLS.html%253Fid%253D953%2526module%253Dgallery (accessed November 19, 2010).

64. See, for instance, Charles Spencer’s review of the production in the Daily Telegraph, February 19, 1992.

65. The day before the revival opened, Nunn published an article in the Guardian, containing the headline “In George Bernard Shaw’s original play, Eliza and Henry don’t even get it together. No wonder My Fair Lady is miles better than Pygmalion.” Guardian, March 14, 2001, accessed online at http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/2001/mar/14/artsfeatures.georgebernardshaw on November 19, 2010. In an article in the program booklet for the production (copy in the author’s collection), the choreographer Matthew Bourne referred to Nunn’s addition of lines from Pygmalion.

66. Michael Billington, review of My Fair Lady, Guardian, March 17, 2001. Accessed online at http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/2001/mar/17/theatre.artsfeatures1, November 23, 2010.

67. Rhoda Koenig, review of My Fair Lady: “Cockney Charmer is Set Fair for Success,” Independent, March 2011. Accessed online at http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatredance/reviews/cockney-charmer-is-set-fair-for-success-687653.html, November 23, 2010.

68. See Hugh Davies, “Martine Will Soon Be Back on Song,” Daily Telegraph, April 13, 2001. Accessed at http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1316079/Martine-will-soon-be-back-on-song.html, November 23, 2010. Jonathan Pryce commented on the situation in an interview connected with the Drury Lane transfer: Dominic Cavendish, “Life With Lots of Doolittles,” Daily Telegraph, July 24, 2001. http://www.telegraph. co.uk/culture/4724679/Life-with-lots-of-Doolittles.html, November 23, 2010.

69. Edward Seckerson, review of Our House and My Fair Lady, Independent, May 19, 2003. Accessed at http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatredance/reviews/our-house-cambridge-theatre-london-brmy-fair-lady-theatre-royal-druary-lane-london-590799.html, November 24, 2010.

70. Charles Spencer, “New Eliza is just loverly,” Daily Telegraph, March 26, 2003. Accessed at http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/theatre/3591872/New-Eliza-is-just-loverly.html, November 24, 2010.

CHAPTER 8

1. These characteristics can also be found in “You Wash and I’ll Dry” and “You’ve Got a Hold on Me” from What’s Up?, most of whose score is currently lost.

2. Sections of “Katherine receives advice” were later reworked for “The Contract,” one of Lerner and Loewe’s new additions to the score of Gigi when it was adapted for the stage in 1973.

3. MGM bought the rights to The Day Before Spring, but in spite of several attempts it never reached the screen.

4. Lerner, Street, 35.

5. Quoted in Steven Suskin, Opening Night on Broadway: A Critical Quotebook of the Golden Era of the Musical Theatre (New York: Schirmer, 1990), 470.

6. Scott McMillin, The Musical as Drama (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2006), 91.

7. Thomas L. Riis and Ann Sears, “The Successors of Rodgers and Hammerstein from the 1940s to the 1960s,” in William A Everett and Paul R Laird, eds., The Cambridge Companion to the Musical (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 149.

8. Pygmalion and My Fair Lady (New York: Signet Classics, 1969). My Fair Lady (London: Penguin Readers, 1999, repr. 2008).

9. Quoted in Suskin, Opening Nights, 470.

10. Rowland Field, “Musical Shaw: Fair Lady Is a Rare Inspiration,” Newark Evening News, March 16, 1956.

11. Anonymous, “A Memorable Musical,” Newsweek, March 26, 1956; anonymous, “New Musical in Manhattan,” Time, March 26, 1956.

12. Edward Jablonski, Alan Jay Lerner: A Biography (New York: H. Holt and Co., 1996), 106–45; Stephen Citron, The Wordsmiths: Oscar Hammerstein 2nd and Alan Jay Lerner (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), 240–80; Geoffrey Block, Enchanted Evenings, 231–34; McMillin, Musical as Drama.

13. Richard Traubner, Operetta, 378.

14. Ibid., 407.

15. Riis and Sears, “The Successors of Rodgers and Hammerstein from the 1940s to the 1960s,” in Everett and Laird, Cambridge Companion to the Musical, 149.

16. Gervase Hughes, Composers of Operetta (London: Macmillan, 1962), 249.

17. Zinsser, Easy to Remember, 229.

18. Mordden, Coming Up Roses, 155.

19. These are all in FLC and include “Cath’rine” (1925) (FLC, 8/6); “Love is Blind” (1924) (8/23); and “Sag’ ja” (1923) (8/33).

20. See Lees, Zinsser, and Block’s accounts of Loewe’s life as typical examples of