Read Online Alan Jay Lerner: A Lyricist's Letters by Dominic McHugh - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Dominic McHugh
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completed.
If you fail, Gabriel old boy, then fly right home and persuade me to write it anyhow. I know it’s a superb property but at the moment I’m stuck with Mary Martin in my head and in my heart.
On a secondary level of importance, I would love to get Michael Kidd 6 for the choreography. He could do wonderfully humorous things with the cockneys as well as “the swells” and he’d be first rate for Mary. (There I go again with Mary.) He’s about the only choreographer who thinks of the show first and thinks that by some chance the star may be more important than his itty-bitty dances. I’ve already mentioned the project to Mike and he’s highly enthusiastic.
Well, I guess that’s about all at the moment. The surf is beginning to call me so I think I’ll drop my tired body into the brine. Just wanted you to know that
Pygmalion
haunts me and that I’m hoping and praying God will be with you on your trip to London. Give Mary and Dick my love and tell them I’m ready to do anything short of homicide to see Mary as Liza. I’ll be leaving here Sunday, May 18th and I’ll be in N. Y. Tuesday, the 20th. Fritz and I have to fly home for a week on matters of
Paint My Wagon
[
sic
]. I’ll be at the Algonquin that week and then back on the coast the following Monday.
Bon voyage—and keep us posted.
Faithfully,
Alan
Lerner’s relish for the show is palpable. With the benefit of hindsight, it is curious to see how a couple of his initial ideas for the adaptation were very different from the finished product. In particular, the notion of designing the show in a “completely modern” setting seems at odds with the ultimate decision to set it in period (which is central to the depiction of Eliza’s social mobility in the show). Equally striking is Lerner’s emphasis on his original ideas for the first-act finale, which were woven into a ballet sequence and included in the show’s out-of-town tryout in New Haven in February 1956 but cut after one performance. The idea of “obviating” the great Eliza-Higgins encounter at Mrs. Higgins’s house is also surprising in light of the brilliance of the “Without You” scene in the finished show. Perhaps most interesting and amusing are the enthusiastic references to actress Mary Martin and choreographer Michael Kidd. According to Lerner’s memoir, both of them reacted critically to the show’s score when he and Loewe later performed it for them, and both turned it down. It’s clear he held this against them, because the accounts of their reactions in his memoir are comically exaggerated, but this letter shows that Lerner desperately wanted both of them at the beginning. 7 Further work on the show was announced in the press in June, but Lerner and Loewe temporarily abandoned it later in the year and only returned to it in 1954. 8
Pygmalion
was by no means the pair’s only musical prospect at the time. Barely a month after writing to Pascal, Lerner set his sights on another high-profile property: a musical adaptation of the beloved 1942 Humphrey Bogart-Ingrid Bergman movie,
Casablanca
. It was announced on April 9 that “In the eventAlan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe, who co-wrote
Paint Your Wagon
, convert the film,
Casablanca
, into a musical they would like to join hands with Monte Proser and Jack Small in the sponsorship.” 9 Though Lerner and Loewe went on to sign provisional contracts to gain the rights to
Casablanca
, the project never seems to have gone beyond the discussion stage, unlike
Pygmalion
. 10 Throughout their working relationship, various projects were mulled over but abandoned, and this period was no exception. They were also beginning to talk about the possible film adaptation of
Paint Your Wagon
, which continued to run on Broadway. As early as January 1952, the newspapers were talking about the competition between the major studios to bid for the
If you fail, Gabriel old boy, then fly right home and persuade me to write it anyhow. I know it’s a superb property but at the moment I’m stuck with Mary Martin in my head and in my heart.
On a secondary level of importance, I would love to get Michael Kidd 6 for the choreography. He could do wonderfully humorous things with the cockneys as well as “the swells” and he’d be first rate for Mary. (There I go again with Mary.) He’s about the only choreographer who thinks of the show first and thinks that by some chance the star may be more important than his itty-bitty dances. I’ve already mentioned the project to Mike and he’s highly enthusiastic.
Well, I guess that’s about all at the moment. The surf is beginning to call me so I think I’ll drop my tired body into the brine. Just wanted you to know that
Pygmalion
haunts me and that I’m hoping and praying God will be with you on your trip to London. Give Mary and Dick my love and tell them I’m ready to do anything short of homicide to see Mary as Liza. I’ll be leaving here Sunday, May 18th and I’ll be in N. Y. Tuesday, the 20th. Fritz and I have to fly home for a week on matters of
Paint My Wagon
[
sic
]. I’ll be at the Algonquin that week and then back on the coast the following Monday.
Bon voyage—and keep us posted.
Faithfully,
Alan
Lerner’s relish for the show is palpable. With the benefit of hindsight, it is curious to see how a couple of his initial ideas for the adaptation were very different from the finished product. In particular, the notion of designing the show in a “completely modern” setting seems at odds with the ultimate decision to set it in period (which is central to the depiction of Eliza’s social mobility in the show). Equally striking is Lerner’s emphasis on his original ideas for the first-act finale, which were woven into a ballet sequence and included in the show’s out-of-town tryout in New Haven in February 1956 but cut after one performance. The idea of “obviating” the great Eliza-Higgins encounter at Mrs. Higgins’s house is also surprising in light of the brilliance of the “Without You” scene in the finished show. Perhaps most interesting and amusing are the enthusiastic references to actress Mary Martin and choreographer Michael Kidd. According to Lerner’s memoir, both of them reacted critically to the show’s score when he and Loewe later performed it for them, and both turned it down. It’s clear he held this against them, because the accounts of their reactions in his memoir are comically exaggerated, but this letter shows that Lerner desperately wanted both of them at the beginning. 7 Further work on the show was announced in the press in June, but Lerner and Loewe temporarily abandoned it later in the year and only returned to it in 1954. 8
Pygmalion
was by no means the pair’s only musical prospect at the time. Barely a month after writing to Pascal, Lerner set his sights on another high-profile property: a musical adaptation of the beloved 1942 Humphrey Bogart-Ingrid Bergman movie,
Casablanca
. It was announced on April 9 that “In the eventAlan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe, who co-wrote
Paint Your Wagon
, convert the film,
Casablanca
, into a musical they would like to join hands with Monte Proser and Jack Small in the sponsorship.” 9 Though Lerner and Loewe went on to sign provisional contracts to gain the rights to
Casablanca
, the project never seems to have gone beyond the discussion stage, unlike
Pygmalion
. 10 Throughout their working relationship, various projects were mulled over but abandoned, and this period was no exception. They were also beginning to talk about the possible film adaptation of
Paint Your Wagon
, which continued to run on Broadway. As early as January 1952, the newspapers were talking about the competition between the major studios to bid for the
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