Who wrote the book for the original Broadway musical My Fair Lady?

Alan Jay Lerner wrote the book for the original Broadway musical My Fair Lady.

Lerner also wrote the lyrics, while Frederick Loewe composed the music. The show premiered at the Mark Hellinger Theatre on March 15, 1956, with Julie Andrews as Eliza Doolittle and Rex Harrison as Professor Henry Higgins.

My Fair Lady is based on George Bernard Shaw’s 1913 play Pygmalion. Its story follows Eliza, a Cockney flower seller, as Higgins attempts to change her speech and social presentation. The musical’s songs include “I Could Have Danced All Night,” “The Rain in Spain,” and “Wouldn’t It Be Loverly.”

People sometimes identify Shaw as the musical’s writer because Pygmalion supplied the plot and characters, but Shaw did not write the Broadway adaptation. Lerner and Loewe transformed the play into a musical while retaining its central questions about class, language, identity, and independence. The original production won the Tony Award for Best Musical.