My Fair Lady (film)

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My Fair Lady
Original movie poster
Directed by	George Cukor
Written by	Alan Jay Lerner George Bernard Shaw
Starring	Audrey Hepburn Rex Harrison Stanley Holloway Wilfrid Hyde-White Gladys Cooper Jeremy Brett
Music by	Frederick Loewe
Cinematography	Harry Stradling Sr.
Distributed by	Warner Bros. (original) 20th Century Fox (1992)
Release date(s)	October 21, 1964 (premiere) 9 December 1964 (premiere) 21 January 1965
Running time	170 min.
Language	English
IMDb profile

My Fair Lady is a 1964 film adaptation of the stage musical, My Fair Lady, based in turn on the play Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw. The film was directed by George Cukor and stars Audrey Hepburn and Rex Harrison.

1 Plot
2 Production
3 Musical Numbers
4 Awards
5 Restoration
6 Unmade remake
7 External links

[edit] Plot

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

Henry Higgins (Rex Harrison), an arrogant, irascible professor of phonetics, boasts to a new acquaintance, Colonel Pickering (Wilfrid Hyde-White), that he can teach any woman to speak so "properly" that he could pass her off as a duchess - even Eliza Doolittle (Audrey Hepburn), a young woman with a horrendous Cockney accent who is selling flowers on the street. After overhearing this, Eliza finds her way to the professor's house and offers to kill his pet to give her elocution lessons so that she can get a better job in a flower shop. Pickering is intrigued and wagers that Higgins cannot make good on his claim; Higgins takes Eliza on as a challenge of his skills free of charge.

Eliza's father, Alfred Doolittle (Stanley Holloway), a dustman, arrives three days later, ostensibly to protect his daughter's virtue, but in reality simply to extract some money from Higgins, and is bought off with £5. Higgins is impressed by the man's genuineness, natural gift for language and especially his brazen lack of morals ("Can't afford 'em!").

Eliza goes through many forms of speech training, such as speaking with marbles in her mouth and trying to recite the sentence "In Hertford, Hereford, Hampshire, hurricanes hardly ever happen" without dropping the 'h', and to say "The rain in Spain stays mainly in the plain" rather than "The rine in spine sties minely in the pline". At first, she makes no progress, but just as she and Higgins and Pickering are exhausted and about to give up, she tries one more time and finally "gets it", as she begins to speak with an impeccable upper class English accent.

Higgins takes her on her first public appearance to Ascot Racecourse, where she makes a good impression with her stilted, but genteel manners, only to shock everyone by a sudden and vulgar lapse into Cockney ("C'mon Dover, move your bloomin' arse!"). Higgins, who dislikes the pretentiousness of the upper class, partly conceals a grin behind his hand, as if to say "I wish I had said that!"

The bet is won when Eliza successfully poses as a mysterious lady of patently noble rank at the 'embassy ball', despite the unexpected presence of a Hungarian phonetics expert trained by Higgins. Higgins' callous treatment of Eliza afterwards, especially his indifference to her future prospects, leads her to walk out on him, leaving him mystified by her ingratitude. When she is gone, he comes to the horrified realization that he has "grown accustomed to her face" (the closest he can come to acknowledging that he is in love with her).

The film ends with Eliza returning to Higgins, much to his satisfaction. This differs from the original play's resolution (see Pygmalion ending).

Spoilers end here.

[edit] Production

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It was assumed that the lead role in the film would go to Julie Andrews, who had played Eliza in the stage version. However, Audrey Hepburn was cast instead (despite lobbying from screenwriter Alan Jay Lerner), because Jack Warner of Warner Brothers wanted a bigger box office star. Elizabeth Taylor reportedly fought long and hard for the role as well. The casting controversy hurt Hepburn's career, painting her in a negative light. Andrews' subsequent Academy Award for Mary Poppins - and the lack of a nomination for Hepburn - was seen by many as vindication for Julie Andrews, though both actresses denied that there was ever any animosity between them.

Hepburn's singing was judged inadequate, however, and she was dubbed by Marni Nixon. Film of some of Hepburn's original vocal performances for the film were released in the 1990s, affording fans of the actress to judge whether the dubbing was necessary. Less well known is the dubbing of Jeremy Brett's songs (as Freddy) by Bill Shirley. [1]

No dubbing was done for Rex Harrison, even though his singing voice was closer to speaking on pitch and rhythm than to true singing. In addition, the actor declined to pre-record his musical numbers for the film, explaining that he had never sung the songs the same way twice and thus couldn't convincingly lip-sync to a playback during filming (as musical stars had been doing in Hollywood since the dawn of talking pictures). In order to permit Harrison to sing his songs live during filming, the Warner Bros. Studio Sound Department, under the direction of George Groves, implanted a wireless microphone in Harrison's neckties, marking the first time in film history that a wireless mike was used to record sound during filming. Both the sound department and Harrison earned Academy Awards for their efforts.

The head of CBS put up the money for the original Broadway production in exchange for the rights to the cast album (through Columbia Records). When Warner bought the film rights for the then-unprecedented sum of $5 million, it was agreed that the rights to the film would revert to CBS seven years after its release. Warner owned the film's original copyright, but it was renewed by CBS due to the 1972 rights reversion. Currently, Warner owns the DVD rights to the film (under license from CBS), while CBS corporate cousin King World now owns the television rights. A VHS release by Paramount Pictures in 2001 is currently out-of-print.

[edit] Musical Numbers

Act One

Overture (conducted by Previn)
Why Can't The English? (Harrison)
Wouldn't It Be Loverly (Nixon)
An Ordinary Man (Harrison)
With A Little Bit of Luck (Holloway)
Just You Wait (Hepburn/Nixon)
Servants Chorus
The Rain in Spain (Hepburn/Nixon and Harrison)
I Could Have Danced All Night (Nixon)
Ascot Gavotte
Ascot Gavotte [reprise]
On the Street Where You Live (Shirley)
Intermission

Act Two

Transylvanian March
Embassy Waltz
You Did It (Hyde-White and Harrison)
Just You Wait [reprise] (Hepburn)
On The Street Where You Live (Shirley)
Show Me (Shirley and Nixon)
Get Me to The Church on Time (Holloway)
A Hymn to Him (Harrison and Hyde-White)
Without You (Nixon)
I've Grown Accustomed to Her Face (Harrison)
Finale
Exit Music

[edit] Awards

The film won numerous Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Actor (Harrison) Best Director (Cukor), and Best Color Cinematography (Harry Stradling). It also won the BAFTA Award for Best Film from any Source.

It ranks at #91 on the American Film Institute list of the greatest American movies of all time and in 2006 it ranked #8 on their list of best musicals.

[edit] Restoration

By the 1990s, the original film elements had fallen into disrepair from heavy printing and there was fear of total deterioration. Film restorers Robert A. Harris and James C. Katz, in conjunction with 20th Century Fox (whose home video division previously held the rights to the CBS library including My Fair Lady), were brought in to save the film. They succeeded in preserving the film's image quality for future generations. A 30th anniversary re-issue in 1994 by Fox reinforced the film's popularity.

[edit] Unmade remake

In 1995, Fox executives gave animation directors/producers Don Bluth and Gary Goldman, then newly appointed as the creative heads of Fox Animation Studios, the choice between creating an animated re-make of either My Fair Lady or the 1956 Fox film Anastasia. Though most critics still believe a re-make of My Fair Lady would have been more successful,^{[citation needed]} Bluth and Goldman chose to remake Anastasia; the animated Anastasia became the highest-grossing non-Disney animated film in 1997.