11/15/2023 0 Comments Brandon de wilde oscarsThere is, similarly, in-depth discussion about changes in the script, changes in the dialogue, changes in lyrics, and changes in music. But what of it? How important are these details? How much do they add to our understanding of My Fair Lady? To these errors and exaggerations by Lerner I say, okay. What's more, he was writing 20 years after the facts, at the age of 60, and after who knows how many years of "health injections" that turned out to be amphetamines. But Lerner's aim in 1978 was to be entertaining and witty, and I expect to earn some money after five consecutive flop musicals. Dozens of instances, all meticulously proven. McHugh spends much energy comparing what he finds in the files with what Lerner wrote in his autobiography, "The Street Where I Live." He piles on documentary evidence proving that things didn't take place the way Lerner says, or when Lerner says, or why Lerner says. Julie Andrews and Rex Harrison in My Fair Lady. (Somehow or other, the ultimate resolution - with Levin as the surprising winner of the rights - is tied up with Li'l Abner, and don't ask me to explain how without rereading the thing.) Highly interesting to those of us who have worked in theatrical producing and management - as is the disposition of the original London stage rights - but little to do with the musical itself. This last makes a fascinating tale, if you are keen on such things (as I am) if not, though, you might have trouble keeping the various parties and the numerous developments straight. He has also plumbed other collections - including those of the Theatre Guild - to piece together the pre- My Fair Lady attempts at musicalizing Shaw's "Pygmalion." And, just as importantly, the battles to secure the rights to the same. McHugh has done a protean job digging through archival material, in this case being mostly the office files of producer Herman Levin at the Wisconsin Historical Society and the extensive musical holdings at the Music Division of the Library of Congress. As a book about a scintillatingly deft piece of musical theatre, though, it is - shall we say - drily academic. While I don't have much experience with doctoral theses, I suppose this made a fine one. McHugh seems to have developed this book from his doctoral thesis at King's College, London. If you want a scholarly account of the creation of Lerner & Loewe's My Fair Lady, here it is. The word "scholarly" appears three times in the first two pages of Dominic McHugh's explanatory preface to Loverly: The Life & Times of My Fair Lady, and the first paragraph of the book proper cites Ovid, Dryden, Goethe, Rodin, Goya, William Morris (the 19th century designer/writer, not the theatrical agent), Shelley, Rameau, Cherubini, Donizetti and even Kurt Weill before it gets to George Bernard Shaw.Īnd there, in a way, is the gist of it. Cover art for "Loverly: The Life & Times of My Fair Lady"
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