Gigi is a 1944 novella by French writer Colette. The plot focuses on a young Parisian girl being groomed for a career as a courtesan and her relationship with the wealthy cultured man named Gaston who falls in love with her and eventually marries her.

The novella was the basis for a 1949 French film starring Dani?le Delorme and Gaby Morlay. In 1951, it was adapted for the stage by Anita Loos and starring Audrey Hepburn. Seven years later, a musical film version with a screenplay by Alan Jay Lerner and a score by Lerner and Frederick Loewe won the Academy Award for Best Picture. This film version starred Leslie Caron and Louis Jourdan. According to Caron in an interview on TCM, [producer] Arthur Freed came on the set of Lili and said "I don't know what they're doing. They're ruining the image I worked so hard to create. I made you a star, I made you glamorous, and you look so pathetic in this grey dress and straight hair and no makeup, you look just pitiful, I've got to make another film to restore you to stardom. Any ideas?" She suggested Collette's story Gigi, having acted in the play in London and loved the story. It had been adapted into a dramatic film in France in with Danielle Delorme. The story of a girl being groomed to be a courtesan by her grandmother made Freed doubt making it as a straight drama would be acceptable to the American censors, so they "cleaned it up" and turned it into a musical.