I had the great pleasure and privilege of being in the singing ensemble of the first Broadway revival of My Fair Lady in 1976 directed by Jerry Adler and starring Ian Richardson, Christine Andreas, George Rose, and Robert Coote (wow - just off the bus, my first job in New York - thank you, Jerry!). As I remember it, on opening night, the applause started even before the curtain went up as each glorious Lerner and Lowe song segued into the next during the overture. And what a thrill to be in the wings during the lesson scene that night when the audience erupted at the end of The Rain In Spain, stopping the show again 20 years later (Ole!).
One of the many joys of having been part of this wonderful company was hearing Jerry Adler's backstage accounts of the original MFL and other shows. He's the greatest storyteller. What a treat to see his stories recounted so well in the New York Times decades later. Thank you! Please tell us some more!
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A lovely reminiscence from the golden age of culture in New York... which I was born a year too late (and three thousand miles too far away) to see but have always enjoyed vicariously.
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I enjoyed My Fair Lady so much in London years ago that I almost hesitated to buy tickets for the Lincoln Center production. But I did -- and oh, it was loverly! Such a great show and I really enjoyed this bit of history too. Thank you!
The Shubert Theater in 1930.? Try 1958; that troubled production is legendary.
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Great story. But, is there a reason for it? A news peg at all? I kept looking for it.
The Lincoln Center Theatre's revival of "My Fair Lady" is opening this coming Thursday, April 19th. This is in conjunction with that - the past and the present.
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What a great story. As a small child I listened many times to the Broadway Cast album inducing in me a great love of musical theater.
I have seen My Fair Lady the movie many times, and have some a couple of small theater presentations, as well.
I can't imagine anyone as 'Enry 'Iggins but Rex Harrison. I really wish I had seen Julie Andrews in the part.
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I should have mentioned in my earlier post about Noel Coward's story "Star Quality" that Coward and Harrison were long time friends and professional colleagues. Coward once described Harrison as "the second-best high comedian in the country." Needless to say Coward saw himself as number one.
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I give a lot of credit to Cary Grant who famously turned down the Professor Higgins role saying only "Rex Harrison should play it." I loved Audrey Hepburn but in the role but I always thought she should have done the same for Julie Andrews. Julie got gypped!!
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More like this, please! -- Bravo!
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1956 As Hermione Gingold said once "I remember it well" -Not only did I see
MY FAIR LADY once but three times - and I saw it with MY fair lady -gosh
40 years ago -as the Playgoer Magazine announced on its cover BUT - no
it was 62 years ago !!!
I'm 83 and my ex-girlfriend is 80 -MY -how time flies!
I attended 29 Broadway show in one year with her I let her get away from me- You don't forget your first love especially five years of bliss- Happy
to report she is married now 54 year and has three "children"
She loved Julie Andrews as I did -and got a kick out of Rex Harrison's
convincing "speaking voice" -Why Can't The English ? and I have Grown
Accustomed to Her Face -WOW and The wonderful music, the score, the scenes - JUST SPECTACULAR - and the Stanley Holloway's "Get me to the Church On Time" rang a bell -resoundingly - BEST MUSICAL EVER @
TBA
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'...a veteran of England’s music halls -' indeed, Julie Andrews was also a veteran of England's bomb shelters during WWll. She and Petula Clark as children would serenade the helpless who had hidden away from the blitz. Amazing how the two of them started their careers so young and both attained dizzying heights.
Of course Julie is now a Dame, but Petula is not. Huh? What's the holdup?
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"My Fair Lady" is a motif that runs through my life. In 1956 at the age of seven, my parents took me to New York to see the show, and it was thus the first live stage production I ever saw. At 14, it was the first stage production I ever worked on, playing the French horn in the orchestra for a production at my high school. At 25, I had become a young production executive at United Artists in Los Angeles, and my new doctor was Herb Tanney. One day at the end of an appointment, he said he wanted me to come into his office because there was someone he wanted me to meet. It was another patient of his, Julie Andrews. I gushed to her that she was the reason I had chosen the entertainment business as my vocation. Of course she wanted to know why. But when I told her I'd seen her in the original production of "My Fair Lady" when I was seven, she was not amused. It was my first encounter with a movie star's ego - oops. Several years later, I was fortunate to befriend George Cukor, who directed the “My Fair Lady" film. I too was disappointed that Julie Andrew hadn't been cast. It turns out that George was also disappointed, but Jack Warner felt they needed a box office name to help insure the studio's investment. Of course, the irony is that she was then free to make "Mary Poppins" at Disney, and it was the dailies from that film that persuaded Robert Wise to cast her for "The Sound of Music." How do I know this? Bob Wise was my mentor.
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Fun adjunct to imminent opening of an extraordinary production I saw at Lincoln Center Saturday night -- strong singing, acting, staging. Lauren Ambrose merits a Tony for the transformation she enacts. And what a personal transition from her little-known career!
A delightful story. I agree it was sad that Andrews was cut from the film. At least we have Harrison. Reminds me of another controversial Hollywood choice: Norman Jewison refused to cast Zero Mostel in "Fiddler on the Roof" because audiences would see Mostel and not Tevye. Imagine if we had Mostel's Tevye for generations to savor! Topol was fine, but now all we have left is Mostel's one number sung at the Tony Awards. Thanks again for the insider story of MFL.
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Thank you, thank you, thank you for this wonderful article. I love it! My Fair Lady was one of my first musicals that I memorized as a ten year old, dying to be on the stage! I did make it to the stage and have done over fifty plays (though not in a decade). Rex and I both struggled from stage fright it appears. It can be so debilitating to a performer. Laurence Olivier had to give up the stage because of it. I love that Julie was the trooper she always appeared to be, always a wonder and delight and the story about her handling the ovation so well was great.
I was in Madama Butterfly, directed by Hal Prince at Lyric Opera of Chicago in the 1980's and we had a turntable that never worked, it was always failing; it was quite the trial to Mr. Prince and the six kabuki stagehands who sometimes really had to push it, not just pretend to push it!! And it made so much noise.
Ah, theatre. This was so great - something refreshingly un-political. Thanks again!!
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We had the original cast recording, and I used to put it on and perform all the roles for a captive audience (my little brother). I wore my dad's bathrobe to impersonate Henry Higgins and my mom's opera cape for Eliza Doolittle. To this day I think Julie Andrews is sheer perfection, practically perfect in every way.
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Many thanks Frank for sharing this loverly memory. And may it be said of New Haven, at least one decent think came out of it!
I came out of New Haven in 1954, so there's that...
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Great reading with fresh insights. But caption for the photo of the marquee on the Shubert Theater in New Haven cannot be from the 1930s. It had to be much later since A Touch of the Poet with Helen Hayes and Eric Portman opened in NYC in 1958. I was taken to My Fair Lady at eleven (a fabulous experience) and to the O'Neill drama at 13, and I recall not only being bored silly but unable to make out a single mumbled syllable from Eric Portman's mouth.
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Wow, great comment.
Lovely story. The whole long story of how My Fair Lady came to be is endlessly fascinating. It's the perfect musical, but it didn't get that way without a lot of work and outright terror. (Andrews had her own meltdown, but it was at the beginning of rehearsals and Mr. Hart came to her rescue with lots of coaching.)
Regarding this photo of the Shubert Theatre, it sure didn't look like 1930 to me. So I looked up "A Touch of the Poet" in IBDB - 1958!
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My Fair Lady remains among my personal trinity of favorite musicals, along with West Side Story and Les Miserables. I very much enjoyed this account of the trials and tribulations before the New Haven opening night. Having participated in many community theater productions, I know well how chaotic the run-up to an opening can be. Thank heaven that Rex Harrison managed to overcome his nervous trepidation, even if it took a little bit of blackmail to get him to do it. The show must go on!
What a beautiful story! I always got Rex Harrison and Ray Milland mixed up, since they both seemed like grumpy old Englishmen. How heartwarming to know that "little Julie" took command. I've adored her since "Mary Poppins" - her goodness and beauty shines through every role.
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In Julie Andrews's lovely memoir, "Home," she recounts the antics described in the story...and she very much was the unsung hero. Even though she was so young, she was already a veteran performer of many years.
The whole story of the first production of "My Fair Lady," told from Julie's point of view is marvelous and if you haven't read it, I highly recommend "Home."
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i WAS IN MY FAIR LADY WHEN IN HIGH SCHOOL IN THE 1960S. I CAN STILL REMEMBER MOST OF THE LINES AND LYRICS. A REAL CLASSIC.
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We saw a performance the MFL revival last week. It was a superb production by a talented troupe, even with an unusual, open-ended closing interaction between Liza and Henry in the final scene. Having (not voluntarily) played the role of Henry Higgins in a single-performance charity production a decade ago, I can attest to the extreme anxiety that envelopes someone who lacks either the acting (in my case) or singing (in Harrison’s case) ability. I, too, was somewhat rescued by a talented Liza. Thank you for this wonderful retrospective piece.
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Beautiful, elegant, loverly article most worthy of the Musical Classic. Captures miraculously that opening night pre-run. Does it sound like I was there when the sofa collapsed and Julie Andrews stole the show? Let me leave you guessing.
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A fine article, and how wonderful an irony (for we amateur actors, especially) that Mr. Harrison barely believed he could perform the role, when now it is very difficult for me to suspend disbelief for anyone else as Henry Higgins. I wonder if Robert Preston ever felt that way about Harold Hill?
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A friend and fellow teenager in New Haven was at that first performance. To him it was excruciatingly boring and looong, going on that night for a good four hours. We always assumed it must have been fiercely worked over before it became the biggest thing on Broadway. My own most thrilling experience at the Shubert was watching Abe Burrows walking up and down outside the theatre, stammering and stuttering and arguing with his fellow showmakers. Just like in the movies. I don't remember the name of the play.
By the way, one of the two movie theatres across from the Shubert was Loew's College. Loew's Poli was, I believe, on Temple Street.
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This wonderful show continued to suffer from technical difficulties. I was present during the original Broadway run when an extremely tall flat began falling over as John Michael King (playing Freddie) sang "On The Street Where You Live." Several unidentified people suddenly appeared on stage to keep it from collapsing. King just kept on singing.
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I well remember, as a youth growing up in a New Haven suburb, listening to this iconic, backstage theater story from my father, who with my mother often attended Shubert performances. As part of the story, Dad recounted that a friend would go on to see other performances by the cast, including in New York, and it was his opinion that Rex Harrison was never better than on that harrowing opening night in New Haven.
Thank you for a wonderful, affirming piece of personal triumph, and for resurrecting some warm family memories from a time long ago.
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I grew up in New Haven, in the 60's and 70's. My grandparents would attend all openers, we were members JCC mentioned, and we would go to Kayses for family meals out. Now, when I was in high school, Long Wharf Theater was the place to see shows destined for greatness.
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What a great story! This is what a newspaper, properly staffed, can do, and why it is important that newspapers must survive despite hedge funds and Facebook and all the other perils. It’s not just the Fourth Estate function of speaking truth to power, but the pleasure of a good story, well-written.
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I agree! I almost started crying at the end, I was so happy to read it! (I am definitely reading too much political news and this certainly drove that home to me!).
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Julie Andrews has two firsts in my life: Mary Poppins was the first movie I saw in a movie theater (it was all drive-ins until then); and in The Sound of Music she was my first crush—I was 9 years old and thought she was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen in my life, and she could SING! It was glorious. I'm not quite sure why it took me that extra year to grok her fabulousness...maybe I was too entranced by the movie theater aspect the first time out, or maybe that extra year was what did it. At this point in my life, my favorite movie of hers is Victor/Victoria. It's wonderful, exuberant and very funny, and she really struts her range.
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My parents gifted me with two tickets to My Fair Lady for my tenth birthday. I saw it shortly after it opened. MFL was my first Broadway show and imbued in me a love of theatre, music, dance and the performing arts.
I am grateful for their insight and wisdom. A life long 'nourishment' gifted at age 10! And the foundations of a professional career some decades later!
What a lucky little girl!
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What's interesting is that there is actually existing footage of Rex Harrison throwing a small tantrum ("Stop, stop, stop! I demand that be taken out!") when confronted with the full orchestra during rehearsals. This scene was evidently staged for a television spectacular (along with Julie Andrews working with a vocal coach on "Just You Wait, 'enry 'iggins"). It's surprising that Harrison, given his reputed ego, would allow himself to be seen that way, but perhaps that's a measure of what a triumph the show was once it had opened--and a testament to Rex Harrison being a better sport than he was alleged to be.
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Julie Andrews, a true trooper with a glorious voice and presence.
The real crime is the film made without her.
Imagine having her performance to enjoy now.
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Julie Andrews would have made the film much better, but the producers didn’t think she had enough star power to pull in American audiences. The positive is that if she had been chosen for the film she would have missed The Sound of Music, which made her a star. But, for me, and I suspect countless others, Julie Andrews will always be Eliza. A great article, by the way.
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Agreed. While I enjoy the film and Audrey gives it her best shot...I always think about what might have been. When I play the original Broadway soundtrack I always get a little emotional--oh how I would love to have have seen that.
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I think that very same thing every time they play the movie on TV.
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Wonderful story. I have a feeling Mr. Harrison was familiar with Noel Coward's short story, "Star Quality" (1951) where a female diva pulls much the same stunt, including the cancelled dress-rehearsal, and of course after the successful performance becomes everyone's idol.
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Wild speculation, as if he planned it. Nonsense.
Looking forward to seeing the revival at Lincoln Center. The original was the first Broadway show that I ever saw. It was, of course, unforgettable.
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I love stories like this. It would make a loverly little movie!
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This article was wonderful and convinces me the rumors about Rex were true. He was a rotter.
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He was a difficult and alienating man full of demons. And determinedly unkind.
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C'mon... remember that bit about walkin' a mile in a man's shoes first.
I saw My Fair Lady about three months after it opened. I was fourteen at the time, and will be 76 shortly. It remains to this day the best show—by far—I have ever seen on stage. Would that I had seen the Rogers & Hammerstein masterpieces.
It has been three generations since, and during that time the only thing that reminds us of that Golden Age are revivals. Broadway has not come close—at least, not when it comes to musicals. Lloyd Weber has written some nice scores that each contain a couple of nice tunes, but they can’t compare with South Pacific, or Oklahoma, or Cole Porter, or Irving Berlin or any of dozens of shows from that era, each of which included numerous numbers with extraordinary music and lyrics.
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I was born in '51 and the best thing that my mother ever did for me was sign me up at about nine for the Capitol Records record-of-the-month. I collected, memorized and sang - endlessly - all of great musicals, South Pacific, My Fair Lady, Music Man, Bye Bye Birdie, Sound of Music, Gypsy....so many. :)
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Biggest difference to my mind were the great hummable tunes from the past. I don't it possible to hum an Andrew Lloyd Weber tune. Too pretentious.
Wonderful story about storied actors.
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