My Fair Lady (1964)

Director:

George Cukor

Writers:

Alan Jay Lerner (book)
George Bernard Shaw (play)

Release Date:

25 December 1964 (USA)

Genre:

Drama | Family | Musical | Romance

Tagline:

The loverliest motion picture of them all!

Plot:

A misogynistic and snobbish phonetics professor agrees to a wager that he can take a flower girl and make her presentable in high society.

Plot Keywords:

Flower Girl | Professor | Wager | Linguist | Bet

Awards:

Won 8 Oscars. Another 13 wins & 10 nominations

Cast

Audrey Hepburn	...	Eliza Doolittle
Rex Harrison	...	Professor Henry Higgins
Stanley Holloway	...	Alfred P. Doolittle
Wilfrid Hyde-White	...	Colonel Hugh Pickering
Gladys Cooper	...	Mrs. Higgins
Jeremy Brett	...	Freddy Eynsford-Hill
Theodore Bikel	...	Zoltan Karpathy
Mona Washbourne	...	Mrs. Pearce
Isobel Elsom	...	Mrs. Eynsford-Hill
John Holland	...	Butler

Runtime:

170 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Color (Technicolor)

Aspect Ratio:

2.20 : 1

Sound Mix:

4-Track Stereo (35 mm magnetic prints) | DTS (re-release) | Dolby Digital (re-release) | Mono (16 mm prints) | Mono (35 mm optical prints) | 70 mm 6-Track (RCA Sound Recording) (70 mm prints)

Certification:

Iceland:L | USA:Approved (PCA #20570) (original rating) | USA:G (re-rating) (1970) | South Korea:All | Brazil:Livre | Canada:PG (video rating) | New Zealand:G | Argentina:Atp | Australia:G | Chile:TE | Finland:S | Sweden:Btl | UK:U | West Germany:12

Filming Locations:

Backlot, Warner Brothers Burbank Studios - 4000 Warner Boulevard, Burbank, California, USA

Company:

Warner Bros. Pictures

Trivia:

"My Fair Lady" is the only Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe stage musical to have been filmed totally complete, with no omission of any songs from the stage version (or dialogue, for that matter). There are even some added lyrics to the song "You Did It", in which Higgins goes more into detail about the speech "expert" Zoltan Karpathy's evaluation of Eliza at the ball, that were not in the stage version. "My Fair Lady", "West Side Story", and the 1958 "South Pacific" may be the most complete film adaptations of a Broadway musical ever made.

Goofs:

Revealing mistakes: During "The Rain in Spain", you can hear Audrey Hepburn's voice mixed with Marni Nixon's voice. It's especially obvious the first time she properly sings, "The rain in Spain stays mainly in the plain," after Higgins' line, "I think she's got it, I think she's got it."

Quotes:

Cockney: We've got a bloomin' heiress in our midst. Will you be needing a butler, Eliza?
Eliza Doolittle: Well you won't do.

Movie Connections:

Referenced in "Mystery Science Theater 3000: Bride of the Monster (#5.23)" (1993)

Soundtrack:

I'm an Ordinary Man

The quintessential musical with a staggering pedigree.

The classic case of an embarrassment of riches.

The infrastructure of this jewel reads like a Who's Who of American Cinema. Take the play by George Bernard Shaw. It's in the Western Canon of Literature, for heaven's sake. Then add lyrics by Jay Lerner and his longtime collaborator composer Frederick Loewe who gave us everything from An American in Paris, to Gigi, to Brigadoon, among many others.

Directed by George Cuckor, whose credits include not only Gone With the Wind, but also a string of Katherine Hepburn films, My Fair Lady bears Cuckor's brilliant touch in directing leading women. And what a leading woman he had to work with this time. Audrey is breathtaking in every move and every syllable she utters.

But that's not all. Those stunning costumes designed by Cecil Beaton are without peer in modern cinema, especially the Ball Gown. Audrey was so exquisite that she looked unreal, perhaps of another species, as she descended the stairs and donned her velvet cape.

With music direction by Andre Previn, the baton behind Gigi, Porgy and Bess, Kiss Me Kate and even Jesus Christ Superstar, My Fair Lady's musical pedigree is complete. From this perspective, My Fair Lady is the culmination of a generation of America musicals, and the greatest one of them all even before the first frame was filmed.

Ironically, Audrey was denied a well-deserved Oscar. She didn't even get nominated, which from an historical perspective boggles the mind. The Oscar that year went to Julie Andrews for Mary Poppins. Andrews, who had popularized the role of Eliza Doolittle on Broadway before the movie was made, passed on My Fair Lady to do Mary Poppins. Andrews, a gifted singer, was reportedly miffed at the casting of Hepburn, whose singing was dubbed by an uncredited Marne Nixon, and Hepburn's exuberant performance was completely ignored by the SAG.

But there were enough Oscars to go around. Beaton, Harrison and Previn all collected statuettes, and My Fair Lady collected eight total and was nominated for four more.

This immense achievement was almost lost to deterioration, but the newly restored version is stunning. If you don't have this one in your collection, you can't call it a collection.