“My Fair Lady” Keeps On Keeping On

Press, Volume XCIX, Issue 29177, 11 April 1960, Page 22

“My Fair Lady” Keeps On Keeping On

[From

new York, April 5. “My Fair Lady,” which has just passed its fourth birthday and a £l5 million world gross at the box office, was gathering new strength this week. New companies were set to open soon in Sydney and Amsterdam and the United States Department completed arrangements to send an American company on an eight-week tour of the Soviet Union. Lola Fisher, who understudied Julie Andrews for the role of Eliza Doolittle when the musical play first opened in New York on March 15, 1956, will appear as Eliza when the Russian season opens in Moscow on April 18. Although it is based on George Bernard Shaw’s “Pygmalion,” America regards “My Fair Lady” as its own creation and its most fascinating export. The magical adaption by lyricist Alan Jay Lerner and the composer Frederick Loewe has been a sell-out at London’s Drury Lane Theatre since. April 30, 1958, when Rex Harrison (as Henry Higgins) and Julie Andrews kicked it off with the gusto and perfection that marked their launching in New York two years earlier. On January 24 it celebrated its first anniversary at Her Majesty’s Theatre, in Melbourne, and the Swedish variation rounded out its first year in Stockholm on February 13. It is still packing them in at Oslo, Copenhagen and Helsinki. Rex Harrison and Julie Andrews

PETER MICHELMORE

in New York]

have long since gone from ,the theatre. Their S e^ a 5T ine * n 2‘l’ Edward Mulhare and Sally Ann Howes, have gone, too. Current New York players in the leading roles are Michael Alhnson and Pamela Charles. Long Run

But even after four years the nlay grosses about 85 per cent, of capacity on a weekly a verageIt will certainly pass South Pacific’s” long run on Broadway this month, but it will have to last until August, 1981, to outrun the all-time Broadway champion, “Okalhoma!” Perhaps the best illustration of the play is the fact that the George Bernard Shaw estate s cut runs already to well over a million dollars. It receives three per cent of the gross. “My Fair Lady” has made millionaires of Lerner and Loewe, although neither has any thought of retiring. Now they are working on a musical play to be called “Camelot,” based on stories of the Knights of the Round Table. They hope to bring the play to New York in October, again with Julie Andrews as the star. - Rodgers and Hammerstein, Cole Porter and Noel Coward had all considered the idea of putting “Pygmalion” to music before Lerner and Loewe decided to take the gamble. Not Convinced

Even when the musical play was christened in New Haven, Connecticut, on a bleak winter’s night in February, 1956, and sent

the local critics into raptiHi the authors were not <—-r-tj that it would pass the severe York critics. They were even more frlghtog* because feverish advance tsmS about the play’s magic w2 sweeping Broadway and theytaf had previous experience of* deadly resistance of New York audi«Mn But the response of tiw BE night audience soon assured Baft they had a solid hit Only in Mexico City has Bella Dama” proved a “flop.” | had to close because the Govww ment insisted on the conventioati 12-peso (about 9s) top seat aS The company played to-a&K ing-room-only audiences I* weeks, but the proceeds wosß not cover the expensive pi*, duction.—Associated Newapaam Feature Services.