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
Music by	Frederick Loewe
Distributed by	Warner Bros. (original) 20th Century Fox (1992)
Release date(s)	October 21, 1964
Running time	170 min.
Language	English
IMDb profile

My Fair Lady is a 1964 film directed by George Cukor and starring Audrey Hepburn and Rex Harrison. The film is an adaptation of the stage musical, My Fair Lady, as well as the play Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw.

The film was the winner of numerous Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Actor (Harrison) and Best Director (Cukor).

The film ranked #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.

It was photographed in Super Panavision 70 by Harry Stradling, earning him an Academy Award for Best Color Cinematography.

1 Plot
2 Background
3 Musical Numbers
4 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 selling flowers on the street, who has an atrociously Cockney accent. After overhearing this, Eliza finds her way to the professor's house and offers to pay him 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 pounds. 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'. At first, she makes no progress, but just as she thinks the idea is hopeless, she tries one more time and suddenly 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 her afterwards, especially his indifference to her future prospects, leads Eliza 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 film ends when Eliza returns to Higgins, much to his satisfaction. This differs from the original play's ending (see Pygmalion Adapted ending).

Spoilers end here.

[edit] Background

It was assumed the lead role in the film would go to Julie Andrews, who had played Eliza in the stage version. Hepburn was cast, despite lobbying from Lerner, because Jack Warner of Warner Brothers wanted a big box office star. The casting controversy hurt Hepburn's career, painting her in a negative light (although Elizabeth Taylor reportedly fought long and hard for the role as well). 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.

Marni Nixon was assigned to dub Hepburn's songs. Film of some of Hepburn's original vocal performances for the film was released in the 1990s, and many fans of the actress believe that it was unnecessary for her voice to be dubbed.

Harrison's singing voice was closer to speaking on pitch and rhythm than to actual singing. Regardless, 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 pre-record them and 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.

In 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 this well-loved film for future generations. A 30th anniversary re-issue in 1994 by Fox reinforced the film's popularity.

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 musical Anastasia. Though most critics still believe a re-make of My Fair Lady would have been more successful, Bluth and Goldman chose to create a re-make of Anastasia. It was later seen that in fact the animated Anastasia was quite successful, being the highest-grossing non-Disney animated film in 1997.