Fair Lady

Frederick Loewe, whose chance meeting with Alan Jay Lerner nearly 50 years ago led to one of the more productive associations in American musical history, died Sunday afternoon in a Palm Springs hospital. He was 86 and was admitted to Desert Hospital on Thursday after suffering a heart attack. Loewe had lived in Palm Springs for 25 years.

Clive Davis has played a key role in some of the biggest careers in pop music, including '60s rock icons Janis Joplin , the Grateful Dead and Carlos Santana as well as pop and R&B hitmakers Barry Manilow , Whitney Houston and Alicia Keys. He's long and consistently expressed the importance of finding first-rate songs, whether the artists come up with them on their own or they look to other writers. So perhaps it should come as no surprise he's harbored a lifelong affection to stage musicals and is working toward producing a revival of the 1950s Lerner and Loewe classic “My Fair Lady” for Broadway with a target date of 2014.

As my contribution as art director was overlooked in Emanuel Levy's article on the restoration of "My Fair Lady" (" 'My Fair Lady' Gets a Face Lift," Sept. 23), I feel it proper to point out that, even though Cecil Beaton is credited as production designer, I conceived, designed and executed all the sets and, in addition--working on a daily basis with George Cukor and director of photography Harry Stradling--functioned as the production designer. Beaton designed the costumes, and together we gave the film a look worthy of restoration.

True to its name, the musical revue "Broadway Holiday" celebrates show tunes and seasonal cheer. Musical director Neil Berg will be joined by a three-piece band and a talented lineup of Broadway alumni to perform favorite songs from "My Fair Lady," "West Side Story," "Wicked" and others, as well as a selection of holiday tunes. Geffen Playhouse, 10886 Le Conte Ave., Westwood. 8 p.m. Fri., 3 and 8 p.m. Sat., 2 and 7 p.m. Sun. $65 to $75. (310) 208-5454. http://www.geffenplayhouse.

Dame Joan Sutherland and conductor Richard Bonynge will open Opera Pacific's third season at the Orange County Performing Arts Center with four performances of a new production of Bellini's "Norma" in February, 1989. The season will be weighted evenly between musical theater and opera, with 12 performances of Lerner and Loewe's "My Fair Lady" balanced against seven of Rossini's "Il Barbiere di Siviglia" and the four of "Norma." Dates for the Sutherland-Bonynge "Norma" will be Feb.

Audrey Hepburn is Audrey Hepburn is Audrey Hepburn. Everyone knows that, which is why the most extraordinary gathering of Hollywood brand names turned up at Della Koenig's home Tuesday night. Hepburn was there with designer Hubert de Givenchy, kicking off the Givenchy retrospective gala benefiting the Los Angeles County High School for the Arts Foundation.

If you are an Audrey Hepburn fan and own a laser player, you'll find a bonanza awaiting you at the video store: a sumptuous "My Fair Lady" in a "30th Anniversary Restoration Widescreen Collector's Edition," from Fox Video/CBS Video/Image Entertainment ($130), and a collector's "Breakfast at Tiffany's" edition from Paramount Home Video ($80; the disc is also available singly for $40).

Fans of the glorious 1964 musical "My Fair Lady" who couldn't afford the expensive collector's edition released on laserdisc four years ago have a cheaper alternative at hand now: DVD. Warner's digital video disc release of the George Cukor masterpiece is symbolic of how consumer-friendly the new format is: At $24.99, this DVD "premiere" edition costs only a fraction of its laser counterpart.

You may grow accustomed to her face, but more likely it's her singing you will come to care about. Jodi Benson, who supplied the enchanted voice of Disney's Little Mermaid and who starred on Broadway as the tomboy heroine in "Crazy for You," is Eliza Doolittle now, the dirty-cheeked flower-vendor turned fair lady in the classic Lerner & Loewe musical, now through Sunday at the Alex Theatre in Glendale.

A story that refers to cruel conduct by a Japanese soldier during World War II was pulled from a high school textbook and replaced with an excerpt from "My Fair Lady" after politicians protested to the publisher, published reports said today. Sanseido Co., the publisher of the English textbook, decided to replace the story after members of the governing Liberal Democratic Party complained it was inappropriate.

Casting call: The movie is still categorized as "in development," but producer Gale Anne Hurd has actors lined up for the adaptation of the Top Cow comic book Magdalena: Jenna Dewan and Luke Goss. They'll be touting the project at the Comic-Con convention in San Diego Saturday. Spike sequel: Lucy Liu has joined the cast of "Afro Samurai: Resurrection," a two-hour sequel to the animated series starring Samuel L. Jackson, Spike TV said Thursday. The program is expected to air in January.

Michael Evans, a stage and screen actor best known to television audiences for his long-running role as Col. Douglas Austin on the CBS soap opera "The Young and the Restless," has died. He was 87. Evans, who starred on Broadway with a young Audrey Hepburn in "Gigi," died Sept. 4 at a Woodland Hills assisted-living facility of complications related to age, said his son, Nick Evans.

You just can't keep a good woman down. Audrey Hepburn has returned from the Other Side this month and is starring in an ad campaign for Gap, the struggling retailer that is pinning its hopes on the actress, who died of colon cancer in 1993. She joins many dead colleagues -- Fred Astaire (Dirt Devil), John Wayne (Coors) and Humphrey Bogart (Diet Coke) -- in her posthumous marketing career. The Gap spot is based on a clip from the 1957 romantic comedy "Funny Face."

Not long after Peter Ladefoged moved from Scotland to Los Angeles to become an assistant professor of linguistics at UCLA, he received a call from legendary director George Cukor. "I had no idea who he was," says Ladefoged, now 78 and a research linguist/professor emeritus at UCLA. "I was not a movie buff."

London has found its "Mary Poppins," but first she'll appear on Broadway in the upcoming revival of "Fiddler on the Roof." Laura Michelle Kelly will star as everyone's favorite umbrella-carrying nanny when a stage version of the P.L. Travers book and the Disney-Julie Andrews movie opens Dec. 15 at the Prince Edward Theatre in London. Rehearsals begin in July.

Not all of the music at the Sunday night Hollywood Bowl performance of "My Fair Lady" was written by Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe. The audience composed much of it on the spot as it sent choruses of laughter through the hillside amphitheater.

Alan Jay Lerner, the Oscar-, Tony- and Grammy-award winning playwright and lyricist who joined composer Frederick Loewe to create such Broadway hits as "My Fair Lady," "Camelot" and "Brigadoon," died Saturday of lung cancer in New York. He was 67. Officials at the Sloan-Kettering Memorial Cancer Center said Lerner succumbed about 10:15 a.m. to the illness that had hospitalized him for the last two months.

Opera Pacific's "My Fair Lady" at the Orange County Performing Arts Center is casual, ambling, refined: With its restrained sensibilities, this production is more interested in elegance than earthiness. Friday's opening night required a dose of patience from those expecting to see fur flying between Eliza Doolittle and Prof. Henry Higgins as soon as she lets loose her first caterwauled Cockney vowel. The show started slowly--very slowly--lacking an amplification of character or scene.

Stomping and strutting like a peacock around a rehearsal space on a shabby corner in Burbank, Roger Daltrey looks like nothing less than the eternal youth of rock 'n' roll embodied. The once and future frontman for the Who and a bona fide rock demigod, Daltrey seems only slightly dulled from that summer 34 years ago when he belted out "I Can See for Miles" at a little concert called Woodstock and permanently redefined the way rock singers were supposed to work.

GODSPEED, my love. You were beautiful. You were ... amazing. Your eyes, your voice (your legs!), your very presence was all ... sublime. Goodbye, Fair Lady. Please remind Spence to put on a sweater before he puts the canoe out for a bit of fishing. He'll argue with you about that, but his pleadings will remain, I hope and trust, adorable. Jay Windsor Ojai KATHaRINE Hepburn requested that she receive no memorial service on her passing, but she will get it anyway.