"My Fair Lady" Opens at the Mark Hellinger

Lerner and Loewe's musical version of George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion opened on March 15, 1956, at the Mark Hellinger Theatre, with Julie Andrews as Eliza Doolittle and Rex Harrison as Henry Higgins, directed by Moss Hart. Alan Jay Lerner wrote the book and lyrics, Frederick Loewe the music, turning Shaw's argument about class and speech into songs like "I Could Have Danced All Night" and "Wouldn't It Be Loverly." The show nearly didn't make it to New York in one piece: at the first preview, Harrison balked at singing with a live orchestra for the first time and locked himself in his dressing room until an hour before curtain. He came out, the show went on, and New York fell for it hard. By the start of 1959 it was the biggest-grossing production in Broadway history.