My Fair Lady (film)

In London, Professor Henry Higgins, a scholar of phonetics, believes that the accent and tone of one's voice determines a person's prospects in society ("Why Can't the English?"). At the Covent Garden fruit-and-vegetable market one evening, he meets Colonel Hugh Pickering, himself a phonetics expert who had come from India to see him. Higgins boasts he could teach anyone to speak so well he could pass them off as a duke or duchess at an embassy ball, even the young woman with a strong Cockney accent named Eliza Doolittle who tries to sell them flowers. Eliza's ambition is to work in a flower shop, but her accent makes that impossible ("Wouldn't It Be Loverly"). The following morning, Eliza shows up at Higgins' home, seeking lessons. Pickering is intrigued and offers to cover all the attendant expenses if Higgins succeeds. Higgins agrees and describes how women ruin lives ("I'm an Ordinary Man").

Eliza's father, Alfred P. Doolittle, a dustman, learns of his daughter's new residence ("With a Little Bit of Luck"). He shows up at Higgins' house three days later, ostensibly to protect his daughter's virtue, but in reality to extract some money from Higgins, and is bought off with £5. Higgins is impressed by the man's honesty, his natural gift for language, and especially his brazen lack of morals. Higgins recommends Alfred to a wealthy American who is interested in morality.

Eliza endures Higgins' demanding teaching methods and treatment of her personally ("Just You Wait"), while the servants feel both annoyed with the noise as well as pitiful for Higgins ("Servants' Chorus"). She makes no progress, but just as she, Higgins, and Pickering are about to give up, Eliza finally "gets it" ("The Rain in Spain"); she instantly begins to speak with an impeccable upper-class accent, and is overjoyed at her breakthrough ("I Could Have Danced All Night").

As a trial run, Higgins takes her to Ascot Racecourse ("Ascot Gavotte"), where she makes a good impression initially, only to shock everyone by a sudden lapse into vulgar Cockney while cheering on a horse. Higgins partly conceals a grin behind his hand. At Ascot, she meets Freddy Eynsford-Hill, a young, upper-class man who becomes infatuated with her ("On the Street Where You Live").

Higgins then takes Eliza to an embassy ball for the final test, where she dances with a foreign prince. Also present is Zoltan Karpathy, a Hungarian phonetics expert trained by Higgins, who is an imposter detector. After he dances with Eliza, he declares that she is a Hungarian princess.

Afterward, Eliza's hard work is barely acknowledged, with all the praise going to Higgins ("You Did It"). This and his callous treatment of her, especially his indifference to her future, causes her to walk out on him, but not before she throws Higgins' slippers at him, leaving him mystified by her ingratitude ("Just You Wait (Reprise)"). Outside, Freddy is still waiting ("On the Street Where You Live (Reprise)") and greets Eliza, who is irritated by him as all he does is talk ("Show Me"). Eliza tries to return to her old life but finds that she no longer fits in. She meets her father, who has been left a large fortune by the wealthy American to whom Higgins had recommended him, and is resigned to marrying Eliza's stepmother. Alfred feels that Higgins has ruined him, lamenting that he is now bound by "middle-class morality", in which he gets drunk before his wedding day.("Get Me to the Church On Time"). Eliza eventually ends up visiting Higgins' mother, who is outraged at her son's callous behavior.

The next day, Higgins finds Eliza gone and searches for her ("A Hymn to Him"), eventually finding her at his mother's house. Pickering, realizing that Higgins was to blame for his mistreatment, leaves Higgins. Higgins attempts to talk Eliza into coming back to him. He becomes angered when she announces that she is going to marry Freddy and become Karpathy's assistant ("Without You"). He makes his way home, stubbornly predicting that she will come crawling back. However, he comes to the unsettling realization that she has become an important part of his life ("I've Grown Accustomed to Her Face"). As he listens to a recording of Eliza's voice, she reappears in the doorway behind him, turning off the recording and saying in her old Cockney accent, "I washed my hands and face before I come, I did." Higgins looks surprised, then pleased, and says, "Eliza ... Where the devil are my slippers?" referring to the slippers that Eliza threw at Higgins the night before.

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

Uncredited:

• Henry Daniell as the British Ambassador (in his last film role)
• Charles Fredericks as the King in Eliza's fantasy
• Lillian Kemble-Cooper as Female Ambassador (in yellow dress) at the ball
• Queenie Leonard as Cockney bystander
• Moyna Macgill as Lady Boxington
• Alan Napier as Gentleman escorting Eliza to the Queen
• Betty Blythe as Lady at the ball
• Marjorie Bennett as Cockney with pipe
• Philo McCullough as Ball Guest
• Barbara Pepper as Doolittle's dancing partner[5]
• Baroness Rothschild as the Queen of Transylvania
• Walter Burke as Cockney bystander telling Eliza about Higgins taking notes about her

The partly-spoken delivery of the songs given by Harrison is a well known example of Sprechgesang.[6][7]

Cinematographer Harry Stradling poses with Audrey Hepburn as Eliza Doolittle on the set of the film

The head of CBS, William S. Paley, put up the money for the original Broadway production in exchange for the rights to the cast album (through Columbia Records). Warner Bros. bought the film rights in February 1962 for the then-unprecedented sum of $5.5 million plus 47¼% of the gross over $20 million.[8] It was agreed that the rights to the film would revert to CBS seven years following release.[9]

The film had its premiere at the Criterion Theatre in New York on Wednesday, October 21, 1964 with its regular run starting the following day with a $500,000 advance.[15]

With a production budget of $17 million, My Fair Lady was the most expensive film shot in the United States up to that time.[16] The film was re-released in 1971 and earned rentals of $2 million in the United States and Canada. It was re-released again in 1994 after a thorough restoration.[17] In 2019, the film was given a limited theatrical re-release through Turner Classic Movies and Fathom Events on February 17 and 20 as part of TCM Big Screen Classics.

My Fair Lady currently holds a 95% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes based on 57 reviews, with an average rating of 8.34/10. The consensus states: "George Cukor's elegant, colorful adaptation of the beloved stage play is elevated to new heights thanks to winning performances by Audrey Hepburn and Rex Harrison."[18]

Bosley Crowther of The New York Times opened his contemporary review: "As Henry Higgins might have whooped, 'By George, they've got it!' They've made a superlative film from the musical stage show 'My Fair Lady'—a film that enchantingly conveys the rich endowments of the famous stage production in a fresh and flowing cinematic form."[19] Philip K. Scheuer of the Los Angeles Times reported from the New York premiere that "when the curtains came together at the finish of just three hours, three hours of Technicolored entertainment, I heard myself all but echoing Col. Pickering's proud summation of Eliza Doolittle's performances as a duchess at the Embassy Ball, 'a total triumph.'"[20] Robert J. Landry of Variety wrote, "It has riches of story, humor, acting and production values far beyond the average big picture. It is Hollywood at its best, Jack L. Warner's career capstone and a film that will go on without now-forseeable [sic?] limits of playoff in reserved seat policy and world rentals."[21] The Monthly Film Bulletin of the UK declared that "with the range of talent, taste and sheer professionalism at work, from Shaw onwards, Warners could hardly have made a film which would do less than please most of the people most of the time. Their $17,000,000 investment looks as safe as houses." The review opined that Cukor directed with "great tact" but "a rather unnecessary circumspection. Scenes move at a steady, even pace, as though every word were worth its weight in gold (perhaps, in view of the price paid for the rights, it very nearly was). Especially, the decor tends to inhibit rather than release the film."[22] Brendan Gill of The New Yorker wrote that the film "has survived very nearly intact the always risky leap from stage to screen," adding, "Miss Hepburn isn't particularly convincing as a Cockney flower girl, but, having mastered her vowels and consonants in the 'rain in Spain' scene, she comes into her own."[23] Richard L. Coe of The Washington Post also suggested that Hepburn's casting was the film's "basic flaw," describing her as "recognizably exquisite—but not 21—as the flower girl and to the later scenes she brings a real flirtatiousness quite un-Shavian." Nevertheless, Coe remarked that "there are some marvelous things which will make this a long-loved film," including Rex Harrison giving "one of the classic screen performances" that he correctly predicted was "an absolute certainty for next year's Oscars."[24]

Chicago Sun-Times critic Roger Ebert gave the film four stars out of four, and, in 2006, he put it on his "Great Movies" list, praising Hepburn's performance, and calling the film "the best and most unlikely of musicals."[25] James Berardinelli wrote in a retrospective review, "Few genres of films are as magical as musicals, and few musicals are as intelligent and lively as My Fair Lady. It's a classic not because a group of stuffy film experts have labeled it as such, but because it has been, and always will be, a pure joy to experience."[26]

The film was restored in 1994 by James C. Katz and Robert A. Harris, who had restored Spartacus three years earlier. The restoration was commissioned and financed by CBS, to which the film rights reverted from Warner Bros. in 1971.[1] CBS would later hire Harris to lend his expertise to a new 4K restoration of the film for a 2015 Blu-ray release, working from 8K scans of the original camera negative and other surviving 65mm elements.[28]

A new film of the musical was planned in 2008 with a screenplay by Emma Thompson but the project did not materialize. Keira Knightley, Carey Mulligan, and Colin Firth were among those in consideration for the lead roles.[29][30][31]

• List of American films of 1964

Wikiquote has quotations related to: My Fair Lady (film)

Wikimedia Commons has media related to My Fair Lady (film).

• My Fair Lady at the American Film Institute Catalog
• My Fair Lady at IMDb
• My Fair Lady at the TCM Movie Database
• My Fair Lady at Box Office Mojo
• My Fair Lady at Rotten Tomatoes