Columbia Masterworks Records by John Gielgud—the longest-running "Hamlet" in Broadway history to date. Columbia Masterworks' most successful Broadway album was the original cast recording of "My Fair Lady" (OL-5090, 1956), starring Rex Harrison, Julie Andrews, Stanley Holloway and Robert Coote. This first album was issued only in mono, but the first stereo recording of "My Fair Lady"—featuring the same four stars, this time with the London cast—followed in 1959. And in 1964, Columbia Masterworks issued the film soundtrack album of the show, starring Rex Harrison and Audrey Hepburn's "singing voice", Marni Nixon. The most successful film soundtrack release on Columbia Masterworks was the
My Fair Lady settled on the title "My Fair Lady", relating both to one of Shaw's provisional titles for "Pygmalion", "Fair Eliza", and to the final line of every verse of the nursery rhyme "London Bridge Is Falling Down". Recalling that the Gershwins' 1925 musical "Tell Me More" had been titled "My Fair Lady" in its out-of-town tryout, and also had a musical number under that title, Lerner made a courtesy call to Ira Gershwin, alerting him to the use of the title for the Lerner and Loewe musical. Noël Coward was the first to be offered the role of Henry Higgins, but