My Fair Lady is a 1964 American musical drama film adapted from the 1956 Lerner and Loewe stage musical based on George Bernard Shaw's 1913 stage play Pygmalion. With a screenplay by Alan Jay Lerner and directed by George Cukor, the film depicts a poor Cockney flower seller named Eliza Doolittle who overhears an arrogant phonetics professor, Henry Higgins, as he casually wagers that he could teach her to speak "proper" English, thereby making her presentable in the high society of Edwardian London.
The film stars Audrey Hepburn as Eliza Doolittle and Rex Harrison as Henry Higgins, with Stanley Holloway, Gladys Cooper, and Wilfrid Hyde-White in supporting roles. A critical and commercial success, it became the second highest-grossing film of 1964 and won eight Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Actor, and Best Director. In 1998, the American Film Institute named it the 91st greatest American film of all time. In 2006 it was ranked eighth in the AFI's Greatest Movie Musicals list.
In 2018, the film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant."
Contents
Plot
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. The person whom he is shown thus teaching is one 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 pay for speech lessons, so that she can work in a flower shop. Pickering is intrigued and wagers that Higgins cannot back up his claim; Higgins takes Eliza on free of charge as a challenge to his skills.
Eliza's father, Alfred P. 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 (Doolittle explains, "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 (due to Higgins's harsh approach to teaching), but just as she, Higgins, and Pickering are exhausted and about to give up, Higgins softens his attitude and gives an eloquent speech about the beauty and history behind the English language. Eliza tries one more time and finally "gets it"; she instantly begins to speak with an impeccable upper-class 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 an embassy ball, despite the unexpected presence of a Hungarian phonetics expert trained by Higgins. Higgins's callous treatment of Eliza afterward, especially his indifference to her future prospects, leads her to walk out on him, leaving him mystified by her ingratitude. When she is gone, however, he comes to the horrifying realization that he has "grown accustomed to her face." Putting aside his resentment about the intrusion on his life and toward women in general, Higgins finds Eliza the next day and attempts to talk her into coming back to him. During a testy exchange, Higgins's ego gets the better of him, and his former student rejects him.
Higgins makes his way home, stubbornly predicting that Eliza will be ruined without him and come crawling back. However, his bravado collapses and he is reduced to playing old phonograph recordings of her voice lessons. To Higgins' great delight, Eliza chooses that moment to return to him.
Cast
- 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. Higgins
- 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
- Marni Nixon as Waiter from the bar ("Get Me To The Church On Time")
- Barbara Pepper as Doolittle's dancing partner
- Baroness Rothschild as the Queen of Transylvania
- Walter Burke as Cockney bystander telling Eliza about Higgins taking notes about her
Reception
My Fair Lady currently holds a 95% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes based on 56 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."
Soundtrack
- Main article: My Fair Lady (soundtrack)
- "Why Can't The English?"
- "Wouldn't It Be Loverly?"
- "I'm an Ordinary Man"
- "With A Little Bit Of Luck"
- "Just You Wait"
- "The Rain in Spain"
- "I Could Have Danced All Night"
- "Ascot Gavotte"
- "On the Street Where You Live"
- "You Did It"
- "Show Me"
- "Get Me To The Church On Time"
- "A Hymn to Him"
- "Without You"
- "I've Grown Accustomed To Her Face"
External links
- My Fair Lady at the TCM Movie Database
- My Fair Lady at Box Office Mojo
- My Fair Lady at Rotten Tomatoes
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This page uses content from the English Wikipedia. The article or pieces of the original article was at My Fair Lady (film). The list of authors can be seen in the page history. As with Warner Bros. Entertainment Wiki, the text of Wikipedia is available under the GNU Free Documentation License. |
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