Dorothy Gale is swept away from a farm in Kansas to a magical land of Oz in a tornado and embarks on a quest with her new friends to see the Wizard who can help her return home to Kansas and help her friends as well.
At the turn of the century in a Welsh mining village, the Morgans, he stern, she gentle, raise coal-mining sons and hope their youngest will find a better life.
A down-on-his-luck inventor turns a broken-down Grand Prix car into a fancy vehicle for his children, and then they go off on a magical fantasy adventure to save their grandfather in a far-off land.
Director:
Ken Hughes
Stars:
Dick Van Dyke,
Sally Ann Howes,
Lionel Jeffries
In prerevolutionary Russia, a Jewish peasant contends with marrying off three of his daughters while growing anti-Semitic sentiment threatens his village.
Pompous phonetics Professor Henry Higgins (Sir Rex Harrison) is so sure of his abilities that he takes it upon himself to transform a Cockney working-class girl into someone who can pass for a cultured member of high society. His subject turns out to be the lovely Eliza Doolittle (Audrey Hepburn), who agrees to speech lessons to improve her job prospects. Higgins and Eliza clash, then form an unlikely bond, one that is threatened by aristocratic suitor Freddy Eynsford-Hill (Jeremy Brett).Written by
Jwelch5742
During the parts of "Wouldn't It be Loverly" featuring Audrey Hepburn's own singing voice, her lip-synching does not match her own singing as well as it does Marni Nixon's singing, even though Hepburn filmed the scene with her own track. This shouldn't be surprising considering that Nixon "looped" her vocals to the song after the number was already filmed, and was given multiple attempts to match Hepburn's lip movements precisely (as was the case when she dubbed Natalie Wood in West Side Story (1961)). Nixon discusses this in her autobiography, where she actually praises Hepburn for lip-synching very well to her own track. Also, according to the DVD commentary, instead of using the vocal track that was used during filming, a new vocal track had to be created for use on the "Audrey dub". See more »
Goofs
At Ascot, Eliza mentions an aunt whose death was first ascribed to influenza. The story is set in 1912, but it was 1918 when the great Spanish flu pandemic swept the world, claiming 50-100 million lives. See more »
Quotes
[first lines]
[sounds from crowd, occasionally a word or phrase, indistinct and mostly not associated with a character]
Mrs. Eynsford-Hill:
Don't just stand there, Freddy, go and find a cab.
Freddy Eynsford-Hill:
All right, I'll get it, I'll get it.
See more »
Crazy Credits
In the posters, playbills and the original cast album for the stage version of "My Fair Lady", the credits always read "based on Bernard Shaw's 'Pygmalion' ", letting the audience know what play "My Fair Lady" was actually adapted from. The movie credits simply read "from a play by Bernard Shaw". See more »
Alternate Versions
In the remastered version of the film, some of the scene changes are changed from sudden cuts to wipe outs, as they probably were when the film was released. When CBS Fox released it on video originally, they were changed to sudden cuts. See more »
There have been numerous recordings of this musical from the days of Julie Andrews through Kiri te Kanawa and many others. But Marni Nixon's singing in the film is superb. Audrey Hepburn looks the part. Rex Harrison and Stanley Holloway leave their defining performances of Higgins and Doolittle for us to enjoy, the supporting cast are fine - Gladys Cooper, Jeremy Brett, Mona Washbourne, Theodore Bikel and the incomparable Wilfred Hyde-White. Cecil Beaton's designs bring the screen to life and in the newly restored version it looks 'loverly'. One of the best musicals ever, certainly along with West Side Story and Oliver! the cream of the 1960s.
12 of 26 people found this review helpful.
Was this review helpful to you?
| Report this
There have been numerous recordings of this musical from the days of Julie Andrews through Kiri te Kanawa and many others. But Marni Nixon's singing in the film is superb. Audrey Hepburn looks the part. Rex Harrison and Stanley Holloway leave their defining performances of Higgins and Doolittle for us to enjoy, the supporting cast are fine - Gladys Cooper, Jeremy Brett, Mona Washbourne, Theodore Bikel and the incomparable Wilfred Hyde-White. Cecil Beaton's designs bring the screen to life and in the newly restored version it looks 'loverly'. One of the best musicals ever, certainly along with West Side Story and Oliver! the cream of the 1960s.