My Fair Lady

My Fair Lady (1956), a musical comedy by Alan Jay Lerner (book, lyrics), Frederick Loewe (music). [Mark Hellinger Theatre, 2,717 perf.; Tony Award.] Coming from a performance at Covent Garden, Professor Henry Higgins ( Rex Harrison) meets a fellow scholar, Colonel Pickering ( Robert Coote), and a somewhat raucous Cockney flower girl, Liza Doolittle ( Julie Andrews). Higgins casually mentions to Pickering that given a little time he could turn her into a lady, so when Liza appears later at his residence asking him to make good on his boast, Higgins accepts Pickering's wager on the affair. It is a long, hard struggle, but by the time Liza can properly enunciate “The Rain in Spain” and Higgins takes her to the Ascot races, her pronunciation is perfect, even if her conversation is not. Later she is successfully passed off as a lady at a ball; and her father, the dustman Alfred P. Doolittle ( Stanley Holloway), inherits a fortune and must conform to middle‐class morality. Eliza is wooed by the lovesick Freddy Eynsford‐Hill ( John Michael King), but she has deeper feeling for the unfeeling Higgins so she leaves to set out on her own. But Eliza soon returns, only to have Higgins ask, “Where the devil are my slippers?” Notable songs: I Could Have Danced All Night; Wouldn't It Be Loverly; An Ordinary Man; Just You Wait; On the Street Where You Live; Show Me; I've Grown Accustomed to Her Face. Considered by many the finest of all American musicals, the Herman Levin production was a triumph not only for its performers and writers, but for its director, Moss Hart, its set designer, Oliver Smith, and its costume designer, Cecil Beaton. Unlike The Chocolate Soldier, an earlier musical version of Shaw's Arms and the Man, this lyric version of Pygmalion managed to retain all of Shaw's irreverence, wit, and intellectuality while maintaining an unerring sense of style and tone in its own contributions. Popular all over the world, the musical was revived in New York in 1964, 1968, 1976, 1981 (with Harrison), and 1993.