Musical theater writers Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II had attempted to adapt George Bernard Shaw's "Pygmalion" as a musical long before Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe but had abandoned the project as unadaptable. Rodgers and Hammerstein felt that Shaw's style of writing intellectual dialogue and the emotionless character of Professor Henry Higgins did not lend themselves to a musical. Lerner and Lowe overcame these problems by leaving Shaw's dialogue largely intact and working under the notion that Higgins must be played by a great actor, not a great singer. Thus, they wrote the role especially for Sir Rex Harrison, and they adopted the idea that Higgins should not sing outright but talk on pitch, less an expression of emotions than ideas.

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