CHICAGO—Cole Porter, Richard Rodgers, and Oscar Hammerstein turned down the opportunity to adapt George Bernard Shaw’s 1913 “Pygmalion” play into a musical comedy. It was too wordy, they said, and not romantic. It would never work as a musical.
Indeed, Shaw’s drawing-room comedy of class differences in which Henry Higgins teaches Eliza Doolittle to use proper English didn’t look to be a promising idea for a musical. Shaw seemed more interested in exploring how social classes are differentiated through the use of language rather than the mechanics of love.
But perhaps there was a love story in it, thought librettist Alan Jay Lerner and composer Frederick Loewe. After all, Shaw titled the play “Pygmalion” after the Greek myth in which a sculptor falls in love with his marble statue. And so they decided to take up the challenge, and in so doing they created an extraordinary combination of story and music, developing what some have called the perfect musical. That’s why, since its premiere on Broadway in 1956, “My Fair Lady” continues to play over and over again….