My Fair Lady (musical)

Opened on Broadway March 15, 1956, 2,717 performances
Music: Frederick Loewe. Lyrics & Book: Alan Jay Lerner.
Original lead roles played by: Rex Harrison and Julie Andrews

Perhaps the most popular musical of the 1950s, My Fair Lady came into being only after Hungarian film producer Gabriel Pascal devoted the last two years of his life to finding writers who would adapt George Bernard Shaw's 1913 play Pygmalion into a musical. Rejected by Rodgers and Hammerstein and Noël Coward, Pascal finally turned to the younger but very talented duo of Frederick Loewe and Alan Jay Lerner.

Henry Higgins, an opinionated linguistics professor and confirmed bachelor, makes a wager with a colleague that within six months he can transform a coarse cockney flower seller, Eliza Doolittle, into a lady who can take her place in high society. Eliza agrees to take speech lessons from Professor Higgins in order to fulfill her dream of working in a flower shop. He wins the bet, but doesn't bargain for the profound effect she has on his life. Lyracist Lerner tosses in a song indicating that Higgins has fallen in love with Eliza, but it rings out of tune to me. This is not a match that will ever work out.