From Lerner’s memoir, “The Street Where I Live” (which also may not be reliable, but this rings truer, because “Fair Lady” doesn’t sound like them):

“It has been my experience over the years that unless the title is born with the idea, as it was with Brigadoon and Paint Your Wagon, after a while it becomes a parlor game, and like all parlor games the longer you play it the sillier it is apt to become. [Hey -- sounds like naming a band! -- ed.] To date we had had ‘Liza’ and ‘Lady Liza,’ both of which went to their final resting places in the trash basket, because it would have seemed peculiar for the marquee to read: ‘Rex Harrison in “Liza”.’ For a short time we had ‘My Fair Lady,’ but discarded it because it sounded like an operetta. While we were in London, Fritz [composer Loewe -- ed.] came across ‘fanfaroon,’ a rarely used Enlish word meaning someone who blows his own fanfare. [Hey -- if I ever start another blog I'll name it that! -- ed.] He clung to it tenaciously. . . . The song on which we were now working was called ‘Come to the Ball,’ and for a while we even considered that. . . . [Months later]: ”Why don’t we just take the title that we all dislike the least,’ I sugggested. . . . After a brief summary of all the candidates, we decided the title we found the least indigestible was ‘My Fair Lady,’ and with a helpless shrug we agreed to it. A few months later we all thought it was brilliant, except Fritz, who still liked ‘fanfaroon.’”

I keep trying to feel a connection with London Bridge falling down . . .

“The show’s title was derived from one of Shaw’s provisional titles for Pygmalion, Fair Eliza. However, when Rex Harrison protested that Lerner and Loewe’s originally proposed title, Fair Lady, was too femininely sympathetic, the show’s authors added the possessive pronoun ‘My’ to appease the temperamental star.”

The mention of Lerner reminds me of one of my favourite moments in Franklin’s lecture, which came after he ran through some of the political background of Shaw’s play and how it evolved in the film treatment:

“I’m not saying that Alan Lerner was a crypto-Fabian, although this conference may be one of the few places in the world where I could use that sentence.”

Do you know whether the title of Lerner & Loewe’s show alludes to anything other than “London bridge is falling down”?

And why would they want to allude to that?

Thanks for the roundup.