Instead, he focuses on class and, surprisingly, the rights of women. Pygmalion deemphasizes love: Shaw was adamant that Eliza and Higgins aren’t supposed to end up together.
The same basic premise remains in Lerner’s musical stage adaptation. “I said that I did not think that was the solution and we walked on,” Lerner later wrote in his memoir, The Street Where I Live. He expresses a preference for men as well, but since this is the 50s, sexuality and the deed itself must always remain in the offing, forever the tension beneath the surface of the moment. He’s well-dressed, worldly, and knowledgeable about culture. He is a lifelong bachelor, an upper-class man of means, sophisticated and bored. Higgins is certainly coded as a certain gay stereotype. Would making Higgins gay solve his star’s presence problem? Past love affairs with women had wrung Harrison and Lerner both dry. His presence faded so much in the second act that Harrison became restless. More importantly, they’d also set out to discuss the trouble with Harrison’s character. They were walking along Fifth Avenue, discussing their love lives while the play was still in rehearsals. “Wouldn’t it be marvelous if we were homosexuals?” Rex Harrison, the actor who played Henry Higgins in the 1956 Broadway version of My Fair Lady joked to the show’s playwright, Alan Lerner.
