Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe produced melodies and lyrics that are so appealing many people know the songs by heart. (How many little girls have whirled around their bedrooms singing, “I could have danced all night”?) On Monday, April 27, at the Paley Center for Media, the audience was taken on a magical journey, hearing from those who worked with this musical team, enjoying live performances of their songs, and seeing film clips of TV performances from the past.

Two of the participants crossed an ocean to be part of the celebration. The incomparable Leslie Caron, who starred in the film, Gigi, spoke about how she landed the role and how she learned, at the eleventh hour, that her singing voice had been dubbed with Marni Nixon’s. Liz Robertson, who met Lerner when she starred in a production of My Fair Lady in London in the 1970s and later became his wife, spoke about his meticulous attention to detail when composing lyrics. Jenny Fellner and Brent Barrett sang from the Lerner & Loewe songbook, including “The Heather on the Hill,” from Brigadoon.

As host, Aaron Grandy, a specialist in American musical theater who has directed both The Lion King and Urinetown, was the perfect guide for the evening’s program. Calling the Lerner & Loewe masterpiece, My Fair Lady, perhaps “the greatest musical of all time,” he noted that the show was considered a long shot. Turning George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion into a musical was turned down by another great team, Rogers & Hammerstein, who felt that the story lacked humor and enough characters. It was only the “vision and dogged determination of Lerner & Loewe” that brought the play to the stage and then the film.

Robertson said that Lerner was a perfectionist and a “tortured writer,” who worked at a stand-up desk. He remained displeased with “someone’s ‘ead restin’ on my knee,” from “Wouldn’t It Be Loverly,” because he felt the entire song should be about creature comforts and that line departed from that feeling. On the other hand, he called “breathing out and breathing in,” from “I’ve Grown Accustomed to Her Face,” “a gift from God.” Robertson delighted the audience singing “Wouldn’t It Be Loverly.”

Caron, looking slim and elegant in a brown silk pantsuit and knit jacket, said that the legendary producer, Arthur Freed, visited her on the set of Lili, and asked what she wanted to do next. She asked about Gigi, then being presented on Broadway with Audrey Hepburn in the lead. Colette’s novella is “the story of the making of a prostitute,” Caron said, and with censorship in Hollywood during the 1950s, Lerner, rewrote his screenplay turning it into more of a comedy with music. “They believed that music would solve the problem of the nastiness of it,” she said.

Andre Previn conducted the score and, according to Caron, tried to turn her into a singer. “He did not succeed,” she said with a laugh. “I had a high pitched voice and no training.” Still, she was upset when she later learned from Previn that her voice had been dubbed. When she confronted Freed in his office, he managed to leave before explaining his decision.

No matter whose voice is heard in the movie (the Paley audience viewed two numbers featuring Caron, including “The Night  They Invented Champagne,” shown above, as well as Louis Jourdan singing the title song), Gigi went on to win nine Academy Awards and is considered the last great MGM musical.

Another Lerner & Loewe musical, Camelot, came to define a time in American history. Right before the musical opened on Broadway, Gandy said, Lerner and Loewe had cause for concern. Out of town previews were poor, and everyone worried it would be a flop. Ed Sullivan to the rescue! Finding that his show had extra minutes to fill, Sullivan invited the Camelot cast to sing songs from the show on his program. The Paley audience was able to view these clips. Robert Goulet sang “If Ever I Would Leave You,” which, believe me, can still produce goosebumps, and Robert Burton and Julie Andrews sang “What Do the Simple Folk Do?” Sullivan, whose ratings made him The American Idol of his day, worked his magic. The next morning, crowds were around the corner waiting to buy Camelot tickets.

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