The stage musical first opened on March 15, 1956 at the Mark Hellinger Theatre in New York City. It ran for 2717 performances, a Broadway record at the time.

It opened in London on 30th April 1958 at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane and ran for 2281 performances. It was revived on tour and on Broadway in 1980-81 with Rex Harrison repeating his role as Henry Higgins under the direction of Patrick Garland.

Moss Hart directed the musical, Cecil Beaton designed the costumes, and Hanya Holm choreographed. The original Playbill and original cast album included art by Al Hirschfeld, which depicted Eliza Doolittle as a marionette being manipulated by Henry Higgins, whose own strings are being pulled by a heavenly puppeteer who looks like George Bernard Shaw.

The play and subsequent adaptations take place in 1910, and thus the Ascot outfits are mostly black, because Edward VII had just died.

A contemporary version of the Pygmalion motif can be found in Willy Russell's play Educating Rita (1980).

The songs

• "Why Can't the English?"
• "Wouldn't It Be Loverly?"
• "With a Little Bit o' Luck"
• "I'm an Ordinary Man"
• "The Servants' Chorus"
• "Just You Wait"
• "The Rain in Spain"
• "I Could Have Danced All Night"
• "Ascot Gavotte"
• "On the Street Where You Live"
• "You Did It"
• "Show Me"
• "Get Me to the Church On Time"
• "A Hymn to Him"
• "Without You"
• "I've Grown Accustomed to Her Face"

Plot of original stage version

Henry Higgins (Rex Harrison), an arrogant, irascible professor of phonetics, boasts to a new acquaintance, Colonel Pickering (Robert Coote), that he can train any woman to speak so "properly" that he could pass her off as a duchess - even Eliza Doolittle (Julie Andrews), a young woman with a decided Cockney accent selling flowers on the street. After overhearing this, Eliza finds her way to the professor's house and offers to pay the professor to give her elocution lessons so that she can get a better job. Pickering is intrigued and wagers that Higgins cannot make good on his claim; Higgins takes Eliza on as a challenge of his skills free of charge.

Eliza's father, dustman Alfred P. Doolittle (Stanley Holloway), arrives three days later supposedly to save his daughter's virtue, but in reality to extract some money from Higgins, and is paid off with 5 pounds. Higgins is impressed by the man's genuineness, natural gift for language and especially his brazen lack of moral values ("Can't afford 'em!").He arranges for Alfred Doolittle to get acquainted with an American millionaire to lecture on 'good moral values'. In the end we find the drunkard Doolittle emerging as a rich dandy with four thousand pounds a year pension, bequeathed to him by the millionaire.

Eliza goes through many forms of speech therapy, such as speaking with marbles in her mouth. In addition, she repeats the phrase “In Hertford, Hereford, Hampshire, hurricanes hardly hever happen” into a machine that spouts flame if she does not drop her “H”. This exercise results in Eliza setting a piece of paper on fire, much to Colonel Pickering's surprise. Eventually after a musical number featuring the servants of Mr. Higgins, we come to the scene of Eliza Mr. Higgins and the Colonel sitting in Mr. Higgins study. Eliza protest to Mr. Higgins expectations of her, and he responds to her with a heart felt speech about the “gift of the spoken word”.

At first Eliza makes no progress, but just as she thinks the idea is hopeless she tries one more time, suddenly "gets it" when Higgins explains the value of the English language, and begins to talk with an impeccable upper class English accent. Higgins takes her on her first public appearance at Ascot Racecourse where she makes a good impression with her polite manners, only to shock everyone by a sudden and vulgar lapse into cockney. Higgins, who dislikes the pretentiousness of these upper class people, partly conceals a grin behind his hand, as if to convey the message to the audience, "I wish I had said that!"

The bet depends on Eliza's passing as a lady at the 'embassy ball', which she does successfully despite the presence of a Hungarian phonetics expert, who is completely taken in.In the party,she even had a chance to dance with the Crown Prince himself. Higgins's ungrateful boasting of his success leads Eliza to walk out on him, leaving the seemingly clueless Higgins mystified by her ingratitude. This is more faithful to the original play's ending than the two film versions.

Popular culture

• The subplot of the Family Guy episode "One If by Clam, Two If by Sea" is a parody of My Fair Lady, as Stewie tries to teach an acquaintance's daughter Eliza to overcome her common Cockney accent and speak proper English. Songs from the musical are also parodied. In fact, the character of Stewie himself has been referred to as an "evil Rex Harrison" by Seth MacFarlane, his voice actor and the Series' creator.
• The Simpsons episode "My Fair Laddy" parodies the story, as Lisa tries to teach Groundskeeper Willie to be a proper gentleman. The musical's songs are parodied here as well. The show had previously made small tributes the musical: in the episode "The Great Louse Detective" (in which Sideshow Bob sings about his inability to kill Bart because he has "grown accustomed to his face") and in the episode "The Sweetest Apu" (in which Apu produces a version of My Fair Lady starring all eight of his children to compensate for infidelity). When the Simpsons visit Britain in "The_Regina_Monologues," two English gentleman come upon a sugar OD'd Bart and Lisa. The first, Lord Daftwager, asks the second how much he would wager to turn these street urchins into a proper gentleman and lady, a la Pygmalion. One episode even parodied the story's original title - "Pygmoelian".
• The ¡Mucha Lucha! episode "My Hairy Knuckles" (produced for the show's second season but aired in its third season) dealt with Buena Girl and The Flea educating Heavy Traffic, a bully from a rival school, into becoming a luchadore, similar to My Fair Lady's storyline.
• The movie "She's All That", starring Rachael Leigh Cook and Freddie Prinze, Jr., is a modern day interpretation of the "My Fair Lady" plotline. Prinze's character claims that he could take any one girl in the school and make her prom queen and ends up choosing Cook's character.
• My Fair Mandy, an episode of The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy, is a parody of My Fair Lady.
• My So-Called Wife, an episode of Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends, is a parody of My Fair Lady.
• In The Girl In The Fireplace, an episode of Doctor Who, the Doctor staggers into one of the rooms on board a spaceship just as his companions are about to be dissected for parts, drunken and singing "I Could Have Danced All Night".
• The short-lived Warner Brothers series Pinky and the Brain had a parody episode, Pinky, Elmira, and the Brain, where Brain attempts to teach the dimwitted Elmira all about outer space, in hopes that her new knowledge would allow her (and thus Brain) into a junior space program in yet another plot to take over the world.

See also

• Pygmalion Effect

American musicals | Musical films | Broadway musicals

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