Anyone who appreciates the gentle genius of Alan Jay Lerner, the Lyrist, will enjoy having the words to his popular and not-so-popular lyrics.

I am Ryan and I read this book for my chorus class when we were required to read a book as a school requirement. I don't really have a passion for reading but I've always heard about "My Fair Lady" and when I was looking for a book to read at our school library, I accidentally saw it. After I read it, I would say that it is one of the best books that I've ever read. The story is really amazing and I believe in their point that language can change the image of a person. Together with a person's actions, the way he speaks can tell so much about him. I recommend this wonderful romantic story to anyone!

Yeah, well I gave it as a gift once too. Then I read the gift and learned that it wasn't the gift I intended. Sorry if that sounds garbled, but the long and short of it is: this isn't the book Alan Jay Lerner originally published. Much of that (great) book, including some of its very best parts, has been extracted. The thing that really gets me, though, is that this paperback version's inside flap claims it is "unabridged"! HOW can they get away with this?

Alan J. Lerner/and his collaborations with Fritz Lowe and Burton Lane are miracles of the 20th century. The circumstances of their coming together in an artistic and social mileux that called for--no yearned for that kind of musical theater--is a story in itself.

Mr. Lerner talks eloquently about these collaborators-and others (some not so succesful), and gives us complete and insightful discussions about the shows for which he has written the lyrics--"just" productions like "My Fair Lady," "Gigi," "Camelot," and others perhaps not as well known.

Mr. Lerner also discusses his own life with great candor--and even greater wit.

This book is an absolute must-have for those interested in The American Musical Theater! I have given it several times as a gift.

This is a witty (if occasionally slaphappy), literate, and very readable (difficult to put down) account of the making of three musicals. I doubt, however, that persons not especially interested in the theatre will want to read this. Note also that this is not a conventional autobiography like, say, Richard Rodgers's "Musical Stages": it concerns the circumstances of the author's life only peripherally.

Also recommended: Craig Zadan's "Sondheim & Company" and, for musicians, Jeff Burns's "Pentatonic Scales for the Jazz Rock Keyboardist".

Lees' book is an exhaustively (exhaustingly?) researched look at the careers of two giants in the musical theater. My main objection to it is his absurd analysis of "Camelot."

First, he is fixated on the percieved problem of anachronisms in Lerner's script, ignoring the fact that the piece is set in a mythical world, with only an oblique relationship to our own. The mix of cultural and historical references and styles is therefore completely appropriate. And I daresay few if any spectators of the show have ever even noticed, let alone been bothered by them.

Second, he projects a bizaare homosexual obssesion of his own onto the relationship between Arthur and Lancelot. He is disturbed by Lerner's having made Lancelot physically attractive, despite this having been the traditional view of him. Granted, T.H. White interestingly chose to make him ugly in his novel "The Once and Future King," on which "Camelot' is based, but to have carried that over into the show would have necessitated a far greater running time to explain Guenevere's attraction to him; hardly practical, given the show's length.

He says Lancelot is portrayed as "vain;" not true. He is unworldy, and therefore unaware of the need to be dishonest about his abilities in a corrupt world. Guenevere and the court percieve him as egotistical due to their own vanity and shallowness; until he performs a miraculous healing, which opens their eyes.

Lees continues this strange misinterpretation when he comes to the film, going on and on about a "phallic" shadow on Arthur's face! If anyone in the world has noticed this beside Lees, or given it this wierd analysis, I am unaware of it.

Nor does Lees acknowledge the great improvements Lerner made to the script when writing the film, changes which are now incorporated into the standard playscript as well.

The strength of Lees' book is in it's backstage reportage, not in analysis or appreciation of Lerner and Loewe's work, where he is weak indeed.

Gene Lees's "Inventing Champagne" is a terrific look at the partnership that spawned "My Fair Lady," "Gigi" and "Camelot"--the collaboration between lyricist / librettist Alan Jay Lerner and composer Frederick Loewe. Based upon exhaustive research and hundreds of interviews, this is the only book that tells the story behind some of the greatest works ever written for either stage or screen. Lerner comes across as a supremely gifted neurotic; Loewe as equally gifted, and vastly arrogant, yet free of the wild ambitions and assorted personal problems that plagued the obsessive Lerner. An unlikely pairing, yet one that had few rivals in the creation of theatrical songs. Lees' readable, in-depth portrait of Lerner and Loewe is a fascinating, well-written book that is more than worth reading.

In the introduction to his autobiography, Vincente Minnelli apologises. He has an insecurity about writing of his life since he believes he has "tip-toed" through it, and he isn't interested in serving up gossip about the people he has encountered. He says he would rather be remembered for his knowledge of rococco furbelows than for anything else. This soon clues you into what kind of book you are getting, one written by a man whose notions of taste and discretion are going to provide an anaemic experience. After a painfully hyperbolic forward by Alan Jay Lerner, and a scripted conversation between his daughter Liza and himself in preparation for the production of A Matter Of Time (the book was written in 1974), Minnelli goes through his past. His transition from window dresser to costume designer to theatre then Hollywood is catalogued, but requires one to have seen the end result to appreciate the detail. And his damnable "discretion" gives it all a reserved and waxed tone. Also those looking for any evidence of his reknowned bisexuality will be disappointed, not surprisingly. Minnelli's reluctance to settle in Hollywood is based on his belief that American films up to that time had no style - the camera rarely moving. This argument is clearly coloured by his initial unsuccessful venture in Hollywood, and is as spurious as the idea that Lerner proposes that it takes a true artist to create something really bad. Minnelli provides an interesting prefiguring of his soon to be wife Judy Garland and her drug addiction when he mentions he was given amphetamines and sedatives to get through the long working hours, but the trial so exhausted him that he soon disposed of this method of endurance. One might then consider Garland's choice, and he makes it clear that she made a choice to continue with the drugs after the years when she began at MGM and she was required to put in 14 hour days, as either foolhardy or admirable in a perverse sort of way ie she was more of a man than he could be. He mentions her pathological desire for approval and the negative influence of her mother who he quips must have been the inspiration for Mama Rose in Gypsy, who was incapable of giving Judy the loving words she so desperately needed to hear. Minnelli may attribute himself with helping Garland's evolution from child-star to woman in her films, and giving her an appreciation of "beautiful things" but ultimately he feels he failed her. "I thought I had a bottomless reservoir of love to offer, but Judy found me lacking". He adds though that any man would, because of the deep-rooted and open wounds of her childhood, and her depressive notion that self-destruction would "pay them back", a revenge on those at the studio who had wronged her. It is ironic in their A Star is Born relationship that after a brief shared success, his stock would rise and hers would fall, leading to her departure from MGM and his greatest triumphs. More interesting though is the perceived failures - Brigadoon which he blames on Gene Kelly's lack of enthusiasm, and Kismet, his own reluctant commitment. He lost the chance to direct the film of My Fair Lady because he wanted a percentage, and had planned to direct Marilyn Monroe in Goodbye Charlie before she died. I also liked the mention of projects abandoned - the life of Bessie Smith with Tina Turner, and Liza as Zelda Fitzgerald!