Editing Alan Jay Lerner (section)

==Songwriting==
Lerner often struggled with writing his lyrics. He was uncharacteristically able to complete "[[I Could Have Danced All Night]]" from ''[[My Fair Lady]]'' in one 24-hour period. He usually spent months on each song and was constantly rewriting them. Lerner was said{{by whom|date=August 2017}} to have insecurity about his talent. He would sometimes write songs with someone in mind. For instance, he changed the rhymes in some lines of "[[I've Grown Accustomed To Her Face]]" to ones that [[Rex Harrison]] was more comfortable with.<ref>{{Cite book |url=https://archive.org/details/easytoremembergr00zins/page/231/mode/1up |title=Easy to Remember: The Great American Songwriters and Their Songs |first=William Knowlton |last=Zinsser |publisher=[[David R. Godine]] |isbn=1567921477 |pages=231–232 |date=2000 |access-date=2024-06-21 |via=Internet Archive |url-access=registration}}</ref>

Lerner said of writing:
{{Blockquote|You have to keep in mind that there is no such thing as realism or naturalism in the theater. That is a myth. If there was realism in the theater, there would never be a third act. Nothing ends that way. A man's life is made up of thousands and thousands of little pieces. In writing fiction, you select 20 or 30 of them. In a musical, you select even fewer than that.}} {{Blockquote| First, we decide where a song is needed in a play. Second, what is it going to be about? Third, we discuss the mood of the song. Fourth, I give (Loewe) a title. Then he writes the music to the title and the general feeling of the song is established. After he's written the melody, then I write the lyrics.}}

In a 1979 interview on [[NPR]]'s ''[[All Things Considered]]'', Lerner went into some depth about his lyrics for ''[[My Fair Lady]]''. Professor Henry Higgins sings, "Look at her, a prisoner of the gutters / Condemned by every syllable she utters / By right she should be taken out and hung / For the cold-blooded murder of the English tongue." Lerner said he knew the lyric used incorrect grammar for the sake of a rhyme. He was later approached about it by another lyricist:
{{Blockquote|I thought, oh well, maybe nobody will notice it, but not at all. Two nights after it opened, I ran into [[Noël Coward]] in a restaurant, and he walked over and he said, "Dear boy, it is ''hanged'', not ''hung''." I said, "Oh, Noel, I know it, I know it! You know, shut up!" So, and there's another, "Than to ever let a woman in my life." It should be, "as to ever let a woman in my life," but it just didn't sing well.
}}