Shaw's characters were varied enough to provide musical contrast.
Then, in the summer of 1954, Lerner opened his morning newspaper to find an obituary for Gabriel Pascal, and his thoughts returned to "Pygmalion." He realized that a subplot wasn't necessary.
When Lerner and Loewe abandoned "Pygmalion," they separately moved on to other projects. The writers couldn't figure out how to open up the story to add a chorus or how to contrive a subplot which they felt was needed to take pressure off the main plot. "Pygmalion" didn't allow them to conform to the conventions of the musical stage. But only a half-year later, they gave up. Still, Lerner and Loewe decided to take on the challenge. So I doubt if he would have ever allowed us, or anyone, to do an adaptation of it." "Somebody once asked him about doing "Pygmalion" as a musical, and he said only Mozart was capable of doing it.
Indeed, in 1978, Alan Jay Lerner told the BBC that even Shaw had expressed his doubts about it. Shaw's 1914 drawing-room comedy of class differences about the misogynistic linguist Henry Higgins, who teaches Cockney flower girl Eliza Doolittle to use proper English, didn't seem on the surface to be fertile ground for a musical. Pascal owned the rights to the late George Bernard Shaw's "Pygmalion," and wanted to know if Lerner and Loewe would be interested in turning it into a musical. Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe, who had written the hit shows "Brigadoon" and "Paint Your Wagon," were approached by Hollywood producer Gabriel Pascal in the spring of 1952 with an intriguing proposition. They don't come along that often."Īnd in the case of My Fair Lady, they almost didn't come along at all. "It's a perfect marriage of story and music and lyrics. "This is a perfect musical," says Kitty Carlisle Hart, wife of the late Moss Hart, who directed My Fair Lady. Together with director Moss Hart, movie and theatrical star Rex Harrison and a teen-age stage ingenue called Julie Andrews, they created a classic: My Fair Lady. But librettist Alan Jay Lerner and composer Frederick Loewe wanted to try. It was too wordy, they said not romantic it would just never work as a musical. Rodgers and Hammerstein, Cole Porter, "Yip" Harburg-every one of those great songwriters turned down the opportunity to adapt George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion into a musical comedy. Recordings Used: My Fair Lady – original cast recording, featuring Rex Harrison and Julie Andrews – Sony Classical/Columbia/Legacy (Overture, "Just You Wait," "Why Can't The English?," "Wouldn't It Be Loverly?," "The Rain In Spain," "I'm An Ordinary Man," "Show Me," "I've Grown Accustomed To Her Face," "You Did It" and "I Could've Danced All Night" Interviewees: Kitty Carlisle Hart (DAT available) Alan Jay Lerner (archival), Rex Harrison (archival)
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