I’ve written before about Lerner and Loewe’s excellent broadway play, “My Fair Lady,” the longest-running Broadway musical of its time, starring Julie Andrews and Rex Harrison. The song I first featured was “I Could Have Danced all Night,” as premiered by Julie Andrews. [Click here to read more about the back-story of how and why Audrey Hepburn was given the lead roll for the film version of the show, produced by Jack Warner and featuring — though not crediting! — Hollywood’s best-kept secret singer, Marni Nixon, as the voice of Eliza Doolittle.]
It would likely take a book to describe all the bits and pieces — stories from Greek and Roman mythology, the tradition of playwriting dating to the Greeks, as well, the very concepts of comedy and tragedy as defining features of human experience, the revival of English play-writing in the early 20th-century in Britain and the United States, the emergence of film and recording technology by which plays and music could be available to mass audiences around the world — and how all of these contributed to Frederick Loewe’s and Alan Lerner’s success in writing and producing a Tony-Award-sweeping play in 1956 and to an Oscar-sweeping film less than a decade later. Ironically, the only Academy award that “My Fair Lady” did not win in 1965 was for Best Actress. That award went Audrey Hepburn, but to Julie Andrews for “Mary Poppins,” the film she starred in after being passed over for “My Fair Lady.”
As I have mentioned before, early 20th century musical plays followed the loosely-connected form of the vaudeville revue, centering on a slight story whose main purpose was to string together a bunch of entertaining songs. But by mid-century, musical plays had risen to the level of a new art form, in which the “book” and the music work seamelessly together to tell a story, whether tragic or comic or somehwere in between. And by the 1950’s, musical plays had risen to high art indeed. Credit for “My Fair Lady” ultimately goes to the determination of Lerner and Loewe, who tried and failed (as did Rodgers and Hammerstein and others) to secure the rights to use “Pygmalion” from Shaw, who wanted no such adaptations of his play. The difference was that while other big writing teams gave up on the idea of making a musical version of Shaw’s play, Lerner and Loewe pressed on, composing a “book” and the songs for the show before any rights were given to anyone. After Shaw’s death in 1950, the lawyers for his estate were so impressed with the completed work of Lerner and Loewe that they awarded the two all rights to the play — and a musical classic was born! And wasn’t that just loverly?
And so we come to our song for this week. The version I have selected for today is from a 1956 Broadway cast appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show, taped shortly after the musical’s opening night. The cast recording of the entire musical, produced at about the same time, became the most popular recording of the year, rising to the top of the Billboard Charts, where it stayed on top for fifteen weeks, and remained on the charts for an unheard of 470 weeks total. The recording was the best-selling album of all time in the US, and the best-selling album of the year for both 1957 and 1958. It sold over 5 million copies worldwide. The show was, to use the word of the time, sensational.
To watch this clip is to be a time traveler to another world and to see exactly — well, in black and white — what patrons of the Mark Hellinger Theatre saw in person almost seventy years ago.
I hope you enjoy this remarkable song and performance from one of the best-loved Broadway musicals of all time.
Word & Song by Anthony Esolen is an online magazine devoted to reclaiming the good, the beautiful, and the true. We publish six essays each week, on words, classic hymn, poems, films, and popular songs, as well a weekly podcast, alternately Poetry Aloud or Anthony Esolen Speaks. To support this project, please join us as a free or paid subscriber.
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Much as I loverly Audrey Hepburn, it was a travesty to remove Julie Andrews from the movie. She was so authentic, and no dubbing necessary. It would have been pure gold.
Lovely, indeed, thank you!
"...by mid-century, musical plays had risen to the level of a new art form, in which the 'book' and the music work seamelessly together to tell a story..." How true. I listened to the cast album of this and other classic musicals of the era before I ever actually viewed them on stage or screen, and I was able to follow and understand the story from the musical numbers alone.