We are celebrating our tenth anniversary!  All month we will be sending Delanceyplace.com encores that our subscribers picked as their favorites, starting with the top ten   Delanceyplace.com excerpts, followed by ten more favorites. Thanks for reading and enjoy!

 

Ten More Favorites!

 

 

Today's encore selection -- from The Street Where I Live by Alan Jay Lerner. Alan Jay Lerner, partner and co-writer with Frederick Loewe of 'Camelot', 'My Fair Lady', 'Gigi' and other plays. Here Lerner explains the painfully poignant lyrics of the 'Camelot' song 'How To Handle a Woman', sung by King Arthur at a point when he is both lost and soon to lose his wife Guinevere to his most loyal knight, Lancelot:

"By the middle of the first act, Guinevere has met Lancelot and has begun behaving in a manner that is to Arthur both perplexing and maddening. Alone on stage, he musically soliloquizes his confusion and out of desperation resolves it for himself in an uncomplicated reaffirmation of love in a song called 'How to Handle a Woman.' I had had that idea for two or three years, but I cannot claim sole inspiration for it. My silent partner was Erich Maria Remarque [author of All Quiet on the Western Front].

"He had just married an old friend of mine, Paulette Goddard, all woman, magnificently distributed, as feminine as she is female. One night when we were having dinner, I said to Erich (not seriously): 'How do you get along with this wild woman?' He replied: 'Beautifully. There is never an argument.' 'Never an argument?' I asked incredulously. 'Never,' he replied. 'We will have an appointment one evening, and she charges into the room crying, 'Why aren't you ready? You always keep me waiting. Why do you ...?!' I look at her with astonishment and say, 'Paulette! Who did your hair? It's absolutely ravishing.' She says, 'Really? Do you really like it?' 'Like it?' I reply. 'You're a vision. Let me see the back.' By the time she has made a pirouette her fury is forgotten. Another time she turns on me in rage about something, and before a sentence is out of her mouth I stare at her and say breathlessly, 'My God! You're incredible. You get younger every day.' She says, 'Really, darling?' 'Tonight,' I say, 'you look eighteen years old.' And that is the end of her rage.'

"I was as amused as I was admiring and I said to him: 'Erich, one day I will have to write a song about that.' The song was 'How to Handle a Woman' which ends:

"The way to handle a woman is to love her,
Simply love her; merely love her,
Love her, love her."

Five Minute Video of
Two Minute Video of "How to Handle a Woman" from Camelot (1967)


The Street Where I Live
Author: Alan Jay Lerner 
Publisher: W.W. Norton & Company
Copyright 1978 by Alan Jay Lerner
Pages: 193-194

If you wish to read further:  Buy Now

 

 

 

If you use the above link to purchase a book, delanceyplace proceeds from your purchase will benefit a children's literacy project. All delanceyplace profits are donated to charity.

  
About Us

Delanceyplace.com is a brief daily email with an excerpt or quote we view as interesting or noteworthy, offered with commentary to provide context. There is no theme, except that most excerpts will come from a non-fiction work, mainly works of history, are occasionally controversial, and we hope will have a more universal relevance than simply the subject of the book from which they came.