Gigi (1958)

Honore Lachaille: Look at all the captivating / fascinating things there are to do!
Gaston Lachaille: Name two.
Honore Lachaille: Look at the pleasures / of the myriad of treasures / we have got!
Gaston Lachaille: Like what?
Honore Lachaille: Look at Paris in the spring / when each solitary thing / is more beautiful than ever before! / You can hear every tree / almost saying "Look at me!"
Gaston Lachaille: What color are the trees?
Honore Lachaille: Green!
Gaston Lachaille: What color were they last year?
Honore Lachaille: Green!
Gaston Lachaille: And next year?
Honore Lachaille: Green!
Gaston Lachaille: It's a bore!

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Gaston Lachaille: [singing] She's a babe! / Just a babe! / Still cavorting in her crib / Eating breakfast with a bib / with her baby teeth / and all her baby curls! / She's a tot! / Just a tot! / Good for bouncing on your knee! / I am positive that she / doesn't even know that boys aren't girls! / She's a snip! / Just a snip! / Making dreadful baby noise, / having fun with all her toys! / Just a chickadee who needs a mother hen! / She's a cub, a papoose! / You could never turn her loose! / She's too infantile to take her from her pen! / Of course, that weekend in Trouville, / in spite of all her youthful zeal, / she was exceedingly polite / and on the whole a sheer delight. / And if it wasn't joy galore, / at least not once was she a bore, / that I recall. / No, not at all... / Ah, she's a child! / A silly child! / Adolescent to her toes / and good Heaven how it shows / Sticky thumbs are all the fingers she has got! / She's a child! / A clumsy child! / She's as swollen as a grape / and she doesn't have a shape / where her figure ought to be, / It is not! / Just a child! / A growing child / that's so backward for her years, / if a boy her age appears / I am certain he will never call again! / She's a scamp and a brat, / doesn't know where she is at, / unequipped and undesirable to men! / Of course, I must confess / that in that brand new little dress, / she looked surprisingly mature / and had a definite allure. / It was a shock in fact to me, / the most amazing shock to see / the way it clung / on one, so young! / She's a girl, / a little girl! / Getting older, it is true, / which is what they always do / till that unexpected hour / when they blossom like a flower! Oh, no! Oh, no! But... but... there's sweeter music when she speaks, isn't there? / Could I be wrong? Could it be so? / Oh where, oh where did Gigi go? / Gigi! Am I a fool without a mind or have I merely been too blind to realize? / Oh Gigi! Why you've been growing up before my very eyes / Gigi! You're not at all that funny, awkward little girl, I knew / oh no! Overnight there's been a breathless change in you...

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[singing]
Gigi: I don't understand the Parisians / Making love every time they get the chance / I don't understand the Parisians / Wasting every lovely night on romance! Any time and under every tree in town / They're in session two by two / What a crime with all there is to see in town / They can't find something else to do! I don't understand how Parisians / Never tire of walking hand in hand / They seem to love it, and speak highly of it. / I don't understand the Parisians! When it's warm, they take a carriage ride at night / Close their eyes and hug and kiss / When it's cold, they simply move inside at night / There must be more to life than this! I don't understand the Parisians / Thinking love so miraculous and grand / But they rave about it, and won't live without it / I don't understand the Parisians!

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By mid-July 1957, the songwriters had still not come up with the title song. One evening, Frederick Loewe was at a piano while Alan Jay Lerner was indisposed in the bathroom, and when Loewe began playing a particular melody, he later recalled Lerner jumped up, "his trousers still clinging to his ankles, and made his way to the living room. 'Play that again,' he said." That melody ended up as the film's title song.
When Alan Jay Lerner met Leslie Caron in London to discuss the film with her, he was surprised to discover that Caron, who was of French birth, had become so immersed in the English culture that she had lost her French accent.
Writers Colette and Alan Jay Lerner chose Audrey Hepburn for the title role, which she performed on stage in 1952. Unfortunately, in 1958 Hepburn was busy with other films and could not commit.
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