My Fair Lady ranks among the most popular musicals in theater history. The show opened on Broadway in New York City in 1956 and ran for 2,717 performances, a record for a musical up to that time. Another production toured the United States for almost seven years. Frederick Loewe composed the music, and Alan Jay Lerner wrote the book (dialogue) and lyrics.
My Fair Lady is based on the comedy Pygmalion (1913) by the British playwright George Bernard Shaw. Shaw’s play is an ironic Cinderella story. Henry Higgins, a professor of phonetics (speech sounds), demonstrates the absurdity of class distinctions by teaching Eliza Doolittle, an uneducated Cockney girl, to speak and act like a duchess. Loewe’s melodic music and Lerner’s witty lyrics blended perfectly with the sparkling dialogue, much of it retained from Shaw’s original play.
The British stage and screen actor Rex Harrison played Henry Higgins. Harrison was not a natural singer. Lerner and Loewe tailored their score so Harrison spoke as much as sang his songs, setting a new style of musical comedy performing. A 20-year-old English actress named Julie Andrews played Eliza and became an immediate international star. The veteran English character actor Stanley Holloway played Eliza’s father, Alfred P. Doolittle.
The score featured many hit songs, including “With a Little Bit of Luck,” “The Rain in Spain,” “I Could Have Danced All Night,” “On the Street Where You Live,” “Get Me to the Church on Time,” and “I’ve Grown Accustomed to Her Face.” Moss Hart directed the production, and Hanya Holm was the choreographer (creator of dances).
Harrison and Holloway repeated their roles in a 1964 motion-picture version of the musical directed by George Cukor. Audrey Hepburn played Eliza. The movie won eight Academy Awards for 1964, including the Academy Award for best picture of the year. Harrison won the Oscar for best actor, and Cukor won best director.
