My Fair Lady is a musical based upon George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion and with book and lyrics by Alan Jay Lerner and music by Frederick Loewe. The show's 1956 Broadway production was a smash hit, setting a new record for the longest run of any major theatre production in history. It was followed by a hit London production, a popular film version, and numerous revivals. It has been called "the perfect musical." See, e.g., Steyn, Mark. Broadway Babies Say Goodnight: Musicals Then and Now, Routledge (1999), p. 119 ISBN 0415922860 and [LINK: http://theater2.nytimes.com/mem/theater/treview.html?_r=1&res=9F0CEFDA143BF933A25751C1A965958260&oref=slogin] this 1993 NY Times review Background In the mid-1930s, film producer Gabriel Pascal acquired the rights to produce film versions of several of George Bernard Shaw's plays, Pygmalion among them. He asked lyricist Alan Jay Lerne