Alan Jay Lerner: A Lyricist's Letters (24 page)

    
105
Drew Middleton, “Londoners Greet Their ‘Fair Lady,’”
New York Times
, May 1, 1958, 34
.

    
106
Fordin,
MGM’s Greatest Musicals
, 493.

    
107
Leland Hayward (1901–71) was an agent and producer whose biggest successes were Rodgers and Hammerstein’s
South Pacific
and
The Sound of Music
.

    
108
Michael Evans (1920–2007) was a popular successor to Rex Harrison as Henry Higgins.

    
109
Anne Rogers (1933–) is a British actress, who originated the lead role in the original production of
The Boy Friend
(1954), various productions of
My Fair Lady
, and the original London production of
She Loves Me
(1963).

    
110
Say, Darling
was a Broadway play by Abe Burrows and Marian and Richard Bissell that opened on April 3. It contained eight songs by Jule Styne, Betty Comden, and Adolph Green, though it was a play about staging a musical and all the songs were diegetic rather than book numbers.

    
111
Sol Hurok (1888–1974) managed numerous Russian artists in their appearances in the West, and was responsible for bringing the Bolshoi ballet to America in 1959.

    
112
Lerner is probably referring to “Clyde Week,” an annual regatta held in the Firth of Clyde.

    
113
Elizabeth Larner (1931–) is a British actress and singer who appeared in numerous important original British productions of Broadway musicals, including
Kiss Me, Kate, Camelot
, and
Kismet
. She also appeared in the TV shows
The Two Ronnies
and
Up Pompeii!

    
114
Australian singer and actor Max Oldaker (1907–72) was understudy to Harrison in the London
Fair Lady
.

    
115
Betty Wand is a singer whose credits include dubbing various movie musicals in the 1950s and 1960s, including
Gigi
and
West Side Story
.

    
116
Lerner,
Street
, 126–127.

After many months of stagnation, and having rejected
Father of the Bride, Life with Father
, and
Sherlock Holmes
, Lerner and Loewe finally hit upon their next project. Announcing the show on February 5, 1959, the
New York Times
explained, “The plot will concern King Arthur and his valorous knights of the Round Table, the Pentagon of its day. But everything hinges on the outcome of negotiations, initiated by Mr. Lerner, Mr. Loewe and Moss Hart, director of ‘My Fair Lady,’ for the rights to ‘The Once and Future King.’ The reason why they would like to acquire T. H. White’s witty and scholarly book was prompted by the author’s retelling of the legend and his fluoroscopic examination of the medieval characters. Mr. Lerner, Mr. Loewe and Mr. Hart aim to produce the attraction themselves with the last named gripping the directorial reins again. Barring obstacles, rehearsals should begin in January or February, 1960.”
¹
This was a promising start for the musical, and since they had taken years to make a choice, it was reasonable to expect another hit was in the making.

    
But the show that became
Camelot
turned out to be the most troubled of the Lerner-Loewe relationship and effectively brought it to an end. It had been exceedingly difficult to choose material to follow
My Fair Lady
and
Gigi
: with these musicals, Lerner and Loewe had conquered Broadway and Hollywood once and for all, winning an unusually equal level of critical praise and commercial success. The reaction of composer and lyricist to this situation was almost completely opposed: for Lerner, it meant they must go on to bigger and better things; for Loewe, it meant the satisfying climax of a career that had almost run its course. Lerner reports in his autobiography that after Loewe’s health scare in 1958, the composer was reticent about working again, and when the prospect of writing
Camelot
arose he said: “My boy, I’ll try it one more time. But if it’s too tough or if I start to worry so much I can’t work the way I want to, the
next will be my last.” It also did not bode well that although Lerner and Hart were passionate about the story of King Arthur, Guenevere, and Lancelot, the composer was unmoved and “could not even finish” reading White’s book. But, Lerner claims, he was “swept along by our enthusiasm and after much persuasion agreed to do it.”
²

    
About a month after announcing the new musical, the press started to spread rumors about who was to star in the show. On March 8, the
New York Times
suggested that “Laurence Harvey,
³
seen not so long ago at the Broadway Theatre as Old Vic’s Henry V, may be with us again. With authentic British reticence he concedes that he has been approached to play the role of Launcelot [
sic
] in the musical that Alan Jay Lerner, Frederick Loewe and Moss Hart hope to make out of T. H. White’s ‘The Once and Future King.’” The article added that Harvey “confessed that as soon as he returns to London he will seek out Elisabeth Schwarzkopf,
⁴
eminent artist and vocal instructor, for training.”
⁵
However, according to Lerner’s subsequent account, Harvey contacted
him
and announced that he “wanted to play Lancelot.” But, the lyricist continued, although they were intrigued, “he was a basso profundo, not at all like his speaking voice,” and would require lots of training to enable him to project in the theater. They were looking for a baritone, and eventually found him in the form of a young unknown singer, Robert Goulet,
⁶
who was signed to play Lancelot on the spot after an outstanding audition; it would be the defining performance of his career.
⁷
Harvey, meanwhile, went on to appear as Arthur, not Lancelot, in the original London production of the show, in 1964. The next rumor involved the designer Adrian:
⁸
on March 12, it was announced that he would create the costumes for the musical.
⁹
Two weeks later, Lerner and Loewe declared that the show would be called
Jenny Kiss’d Me
. They planned to leave for France in May to work on the project and expected to be ready for rehearsal in January 1960.
¹⁰
With the source material finally chosen, composition could begin.

    
Just as
Camelot
was part of a strategy to enlarge the “Lerner and Loewe” brand, so too was it necessary to take care of
My Fair Lady
both in New York and on its gradual journey round the world’s capitals as the pair started to globalize their product. In January 1959,
Fair Lady
had its Australian premiere at Melbourne and was accorded “one of the most enthusiastic receptions ever given to an Australian performance.” The
Melbourne Herald
said it was “the most beautiful piece of spectacular theatre Australia has ever seen,” while the
Melbourne Sun
declared it “fabulous.”
¹¹
Stockholm saw its own production in mid-February, and a Mexican version called
Mi bella dama
opened in Monterrey a week later.
¹²
Most important of all, the Broadway production celebrated its third birthday on March 15. A special six-page report in the
New York Times
commemorated the event and noted that the worldwide box office to date was $21,359,000, an extraordinary sum by any standards. The article was illustrated with photographs of some of the productions from around the world, as well as with a caricature of a woman holding the theater’s ticket agent at gunpoint, indicating how difficult it had been to obtain a ticket for this most beloved of musicals.
¹³

    
It wasn’t all plain sailing, however: when the show reached Mexico City on April 2, the audience was initially so unresponsive that “the artists began putting increasing energy into their contribution. The dancing at one point became so frenzied that one of the male dancers slid halfway into the orchestra pit.”
¹⁴
Meanwhile, the other representative of the Lerner and Loewe brand,
Gigi
, also enjoyed huge success into 1959. On April 7, it was awarded nine Oscars including best picture, the first musical to do so since
An American in Paris
in 1951; both films, of course, were written by Lerner, directed by Vincente Minnelli, and starred Leslie Caron. In celebration of this achievement, the studio’s telephone operators started to identify their place of work as “M-Gigi-M” when people called them up, according to newspaper reports.
¹⁵

    
Fair Lady
was not just a Lerner and Loewe show, though: it was also in the hands of the producer Herman Levin, who had his own ideas about how it should be promoted. For the greater part of 1959, Levin worked to bring it to even greater international prominence than before by organizing the launch of a European-wide tour, in Russia. The show’s initial connection with this country was controversial. On May 1, it emerged that “a young Muscovite” by the name of Victor Louis had translated it into Russian and planned to stage it in
Sverdlovsk and Kiev in the 1959–60 season. Lerner and Loewe “publicly protested,” not least because the production was unauthorized and they would receive no royalties due to the lack of an international copyright agreement between the United States and the USSR at this time. Nevertheless, Louis had apparently asked Lerner and Loewe for a copy of the full score because although he had a script and piano-vocal score, he did not have the orchestrations.
¹⁶
This was front-page news for the
New York Times
, and the article started an extensive discussion about the possibility of taking
Fair Lady
to Russia. Four days later, Louis responded to Lerner’s protests in the newspaper by saying “I cannot understand why the authors of ‘My Fair Lady’ would not be pleased to have the Russian people hear this fine example of American culture.” He remained adamant that the show would go ahead, though it was noted by the
New York Times
’s anonymous Moscow reporter that “there are few here who believe it would be possible without the sanction of the authorities.”
¹⁷

    
For the time being, the matter rested there, at least in public. In July, Lerner admitted that
Jenny Kiss’d Me
would have to be delayed until November 1960 due to the lack of a suitable theater. At the same time, he also unveiled the musical’s “dream team”: “Players already lined up are Richard Burton,
¹⁸
Julie Andrews, Robert Goulet and Robert Coote. The director will be Mr. [Moss] Hart; choreographer, Hanya Holm; scenic designer, Oliver Smith, and the costumer, Gilbert Adrian.”
¹⁹
It is impressive that within five months of deciding on their new project, Lerner and Loewe had already recruited such a formidable collection of talent, including major figures from
Fair Lady
(Andrews, Coote, Holm, and Smith), well-established names (Burton and Adrian), and an exciting newcomer (Goulet). The show seemed to be on track, and in announcing that Hart was flying to London on August 1 to rehearse a new Eliza Doolittle for the London
Fair Lady
, the
New York Times
also mentioned that he would “go to Cannes, France, where he will confer with Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe regarding their next show, ‘Jenny Kiss’d Me.’”
²⁰
Lerner confirms that he spent July to September writing with Loewe in Cannes, before returning to New York in the fall.
²¹

    
Back in the United States, the subject of the Russian
Fair Lady
once more arose, but this time in a more official manner. The Soviet Deputy Minister of
Culture, Nikolai N. Danilov, issued an invitation for the show to visit Russia as part of an ongoing series of Soviet-American cultural exchanges designed to foster better relations between the two nations during a difficult period of the Cold War. Herman Levin loved the idea and planned for the production to tour Russia before visiting various European capitals (thereby bringing to fruition an ambition for globalization that he had first raised with Lerner in 1958). Initially, Lerner and Loewe gave permission, and the tour was announced in the press in November 1959.
²²
But in truth, the writers were fundamentally unhappy with the idea and wanted to call it off, as Lerner indicates in this letter to Levin:

    
To Herman Levin

    
January 28, 1960