Anonymous Commenter "Canadian" says:

My Fur Lady was fabulous! Knew all the songs, had the LP; now want a DVD or video of it, but alas no-one was thinking such devices then. Anybody know if a film was made, and if so whether it's been made available electronically?

My Fur Lady had an LP!?! Does anyone have a copy out there? We've gotta dig this on up an put it online...

It looks like there's a copy in the McGill Archives, who describe it as "...an LP recording from the wildly popular 1957 theatrical production of My Fur Lady..."

But I can't find hide nor hair (sorry, couldn't resist -- you'll understand in a minute) of a used LP anywhere...

And I don't know who did the poster, but it's INCREDIBLE. Me wantey too!

Just for those who haven't been following the saga of My Fur Lady, it's a long-lost Canadian musical with Music by James Domville, Harry Garber and Galt MacDermot; Book and Lyrics by Timothy Porteous, Donald MacSween and Erik Wang and produced as a McGill University Student Production, 1957 (Premiere).

My Fur Lady originated with the McGill Red and White Revue. The Revue consisted of a new, student-produced play each year, whose general goal was to parody university life at McGill. In 1956, the task of writing the show fell to a group of law students, Donald MacSween, Timothy Porteous, and Erik Wang. They wrote a musical satire of Canadian culture and politics as seen by an outsider -- an Inuit princess -- and titled it My Fur Lady, a pun on the Broadway musical popular at the time.

The students mounted the play at Moyse Hall in February of 1957, and its original run sold out nearly instantly. They decided to put it on again in May of the same year, planning sixteen performances; but demand for the show was such that they ran for six weeks! The company was then invited to play at the fringe of the Stratford Theatre Festival, where their expected run was again doubled because of My Fur Lady's huge popularity. The show then embarked on a tour throughout Eastern Canada, including performances at Toronto's Royal Alexandra Theatre, Her Majesty's Theatre in Montreal, and a special gala in Ottawa, attended by several of the government officials who were lampooned in the play!

If you read the Music credits carefully, you will notice the name "Galt MacDermot", who is of course the world-famous composer of Hair.

He is also wrote the Tony Award-winning score for Two Gentlemen of Verona.

In fact, MacDermot's work spans the gamut of performing arts; musicals (Hair, Two Gentlemen of Verona, The Human Comedy), ballet scores (La Novela, Salome), film scores (Cotton Comes To Harlem, Fortune and Men's Eyes, Mistress), chamber music (Wind Quintet), the Anglican Liturgy (The Mass in F), poetry (The Thomas Hardy Songs), drama accompaniments (The Sun Always Shines For The Cool, The Shooting of Dan McGrew), and band repertory.

The son of a Canadian diplomat, Mr. MacDermot was born and raised in Montréal. After attending Bishop's University, he received a more extensive musical education at the University of Cape Town, South Africa, and then moved to New York in 1964.

Apparently, Galt MacDermot's recordings can be obtained through Kilmarnock Records, New York. Here's the contact info:

12 Silver Lake Road
Staten Island, NY 10301
1-800-497-1691
fax 718-815-9323
macdermot@aol.com
Outside the USA
718-816-8239

I'm going to drop Mr. MacDermot some mail to see if he's got a copy of My Fur Lady on hand...stay posted...

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