Lerner and Loewe's My Fair Lady - PDF free download eBook

Introduction

This book takes a new look at "My Fair Lady" as a romantic musical comedy. It presupposes that readers are familiar with the back story about George Bernard Shaw s staunch refusal (after...

Some brief overview of this book

This book takes a new look at "My Fair Lady" as a romantic musical comedy. It presupposes that readers are familiar with the back story about George Bernard Shaw s staunch refusal (after the 1908 musical adaptation of "Arms and the Man")" "to permit any other play of his "to be degraded into an operetta or set to any music except its own". Consequently, any idea to allow " This book takes a new look at "My Fair Lady" as a romantic musical comedy.

It presupposes that readers are familiar with the back story about George Bernard Shaw s staunch refusal (after the 1908 musical adaptation of "Arms and the Man")" "to permit any other play of his "to be degraded into an operetta or set to any music except its own". Consequently, any idea to allow "Pygmalion "to be supplanted by a comic opera was decidedly out of the question. The show generated several legends: Julie Andrews, the original Eliza Doolittle, became the toast of Broadway at twenty-one; Rex Harrison was so widely considered to be the perfect Henry Higgins that when the show was being turned into a film, there were actors who thought it heresy that anyone other than Harrison be offered the movie role; and the musical famously reverses Shaw s ending in "Pygmalion", thereby establishing what generally passes for a romantic conclusion.

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