May 23, 2024 - Sale 2670

Sale 2670 - Lot 169

Price Realized: $ 812
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 300 - $ 400
Andrews, Julie (b. 1935)
Signed Sheet Music for "I Could Have Danced All Night" from My Fair Lady.

Illustrated music and lyrics sheet from the 1956 production of Herman Levin's My Fair Lady, signed by stars Julie Andrews and Rex Harrison (1908-1990) in ink on the outer front wrapper; 8 pages printed on two folded folio leaves, outside front of wrapper printed in pink and black, featuring the iconic illustration by Albert Hirschfeld (faint dampstain to outside rear wrapper); 12 x 9 in.

Andrews's Eliza Doolittle in this adaptation of Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion is counted as one of her most noteworthy and challenging performances. According to her memoir, she spent more than 48 hours straight honing each scene with director Moss Hart, which helped her not only, "become the character of Eliza" but also, "made her part of [Andrews's] soul."

Her exciting solo "I Could Have Danced All Night" was originally a song entitled "Shy" and was meant to be a confession of love to Henry Higgins. Once lyricist Alan Jay Lerner realized the word "love" was never explicitly mentioned in Pygmalion, he replaced "Shy" with the present song, which "conveys all the affection that Eliza feels, yet never once mentions the word." (See Julie Andrews's Home: A Memoir of My Early Years.)

Property from the Estate of Michael Feingold (1945-2022).