Perhaps the most popular musical of the 1950s, My Fair
Lady came into being only after Hungarian film producer Gabriel
Pascal devoted the last two years of his life to finding writers
who would adapt George Bernard Shaw's
1914 play Pygmalion into a musical. Rejected by the likes
of Rodgers and Hammerstein and Noël Coward, Pascal finally
turned to the younger but very talented duo of Frederick Loewe
and Alan Jay Lerner.
The story revolves around Eliza Doolittle, a coarse little
peddler of flowers in Covent Garden who agrees to take speech
lessons from phonetician Henry Higgins in order to fulfill her
dream of working in a flower shop. Eliza succeeds so well, however,
that she outgrows her social station and--in a development added
by librettist Lerner--even manages to get Higgins to fall in
love with her.
My Fair Lady opened at the Mark Hellinger Theatre on
March 15, 1956 and enjoyed a run of 2,717 performances which
lasted more than nine years. The original production featured
Rex Harrison as Henry Higgins and Julie Andrews as Eliza. The
1964 film version starred Rex Harrison, Stanley Holloway and
Audrey Hepburn.
Other musical adaptations of Shaw plays include Her First
Roman (adapted from Caesar and Cleopatra) and Chocolate
Soldier (adapted from Arms and the Man.)
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