Ralph Carlson Blog

Another evidence of America’s coming of age after World War II was the musical comedy. More accessible to people than opera where every line is sung, musical comedy inserts song and dance into a spoken play. Rogers and Hammerstein led the way with hits like South Pacific and Oklahoma which were blockbusters both on stage and in movie versions but the musical comedy reached its absolute peak with My Fair Lady. Lerner and Lowe struggled with the conversion of George Bernard Shaw’s play, Pygmalion. They finally got their musical version ready for the stage in 1956. It was American in every way despite being based upon a British play and involving the completely un-American notion of class snobbery about speech.

Growing up in the midwest, far from Broadway, I never had the opportunity to attend a performance of My Fair Lady or any of the other blockbuster musicals of the 50’s. We had summer theater at the Starlight Theater in Swope Park where each week would provide a different musical. This wasn’t my main way of enjoying musicals, however. I collected the original cast recordings. I listened to the records over and over. I knew (and probably still know) the lyrics to all the songs. In my confused high school years, I reinvented myself as Freddie Einsford Hill mooning over Eliza on the Street Where you Live. It was an alternate reality – maybe a low tech version of today’s video games.

The movie in 1964 ruined My Fair Lady. Audrey Hepburn was miscast and had to be dubbed. The sets were too Hollywood. I watched it once but never again. The magic remains for me as it was in the beginning with the original cast recording. Julie Andrews is, and will remain, the quintessential Eliza Doolittle.

Musical comedy has evolved from those early days. I don’t get excited about the new ones. For me nothing will ever top My Fair Lady except possibly West Side Story. More later.