15 March: My Fair Lady

On this date in 1956 My Fair Lady opened at the Mark Hellinger Theatre. 10 facts about the show:

1. The musical, and later movie, were based on a play by George Bernard Shaw, called Pygmalion. This play in turn was based on a story from Greek mythology about a sculptor who fell in love with the statue he had created.

2. The modern story concerns Henry Higgins, a professor of phonetics, who makes a bet that he can transform cockney Flower seller Eliza Doolittle into a duchess within six months.

3. George Bernard Shaw wasn’t keen at all on his Pygmalion being turned into a musical. This was because it had been done with one of his previous plays, Arms and the Man. This had been adapted into a musical called The Chocolate Soldier. The latter was a great success but it meant that theatres would choose the musical over the original play which meant Shaw’s royalties dried up. He didn’t want that to happen again and ruled it out, saying, “Pygmalion is my most steady source of income: it saved me from ruin during the war, and still brings in a substantial penny every week.”

4. When Shaw died, however, the idea came to light again. The rights to Pygmalion passed to producer Gabriel Pascal, who engaged several writers to adapt Pygmalion into a musical. These included Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II, but they soon gave up because they felt there was too much reliance on dialogue and there wasn’t an obvious love story. Librettist Alan Jay Lerner and composer Frederick Loewe were then given a chance, but they tried and gave up, too. However, Pascal died in 1954 at just 60 years old, and Lerner and Lowe decided to give it one more go as a tribute to him. The result was My Fair Lady.

5. Rex Harrison, who played Henry Higgins, wasn’t a great singer. In fact, he’d never sung on stage. Hence he ended up speaking his lyrics to a musical beat most of the time. In fact, his lack of confidence in his vocal ability almost killed the show. At the final rehearsal before a preview showing, Harrison was required to perform with an orchestra for the first time, and had a crisis of confidence. He declared that he wasn’t ready to perform in front of an audience and may never be. Without his leading man, the producer decided he had no option than to cancel the entire show. However, there was a severe snowstorm that day and word of the cancellation failed to reach anyone, but didn’t deter those who had tickets from braving the weather and turning up at the theatre. The theatre threatened legal action if the show didn’t go ahead. Harrison was forced to get up on stage, and found his vocal style was actually a big hit. The actress playing Eliza wasn’t very confident at first, either. She was 19 years old and quite intimidated by it all at first. The producer had confidence in her, though, and cancelled a whole weekend of rehearsals with the full cast so he could give her on-to-one coaching. Her name was Julie Andrews.

6. To begin with, the show was called Liza, which in time evolved into Lady Liza. Rex Harrison didn’t like that, though as he was the main character and didn’t think the play should be named after another. Fanfaroon, a British slang word meaning “one who brags about himself” was considered but in the end Loewe and Lerner took the words “my fair lady” from the nursery rhyme London Bridge is Falling Down.

7. Rex Harrison was invited to play Henry Higgins in the film version, but Julie Andrews wasn’t considered famous enough to play Eliza. So they went with Audrey Hepburn, even though she couldn’t sing anything like as well. Despite voice coaching, it was decided that her singing should be dubbed. That didn’t go down well with Audrey, who stormed off in a huff when she was first informed that this was going to happen. She said later that she would have never accepted the role on those terms. All the same, she returned the following day and apologised for the way she’d behaved. Eliza’s singing in My Fair Lady was performed by Marni Nixon. Julie Andrews, meanwhile, was free to star in Mary Poppins, which made her a household name.

8. Rex Harrison’s mascot in the theatre was a stuffed Penguin. Harrison was a big fan of Shaw and wanted to be sure that his performance was as close to Shaw’s original as possible. To this end, he would always bring a Penguin edition of the original Pygmalion script to work with him. He would use it to check out any line of dialogue that didn’t ring true to him, and would demand, “Where’s my Penguin?” so he could look it up. One day, Lerner decided to play a prank on Harrison and purchased a stuffed penguin. Next time Harrison demanded, “Where’s my Penguin?” he rolled the stuffed bird onto the stage, much to the amusement of the cast and crew. Even Harrison took it in good part and stopped asking for his Penguin, even keeping the stuffed bird in his dressing room as a mascot.

9. The Rain in Spain isn’t mainly in the plain. Every year, Spain’s northern hills and mountains receive far more rainfall than the plains to the south.

10. To shorten the show's runtime, seven songs were deleted, including a ballad called Say a Prayer for Me Tonight. Conceived as a solo for Eliza, this song later appeared in the movie musical Gigi.