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My Fair Lady is a 1964 American musical comedy 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.^[4] 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.”

Musical numbers

1. “Overture” – played by orchestra
2. “Why Can’t the English Learn to Speak?” – performed by Rex Harrison, Wilfrid Hyde-White and Audrey Hepburn

1. “Wouldn’t It Be Loverly?” – performed by Audrey Hepburn (dubbed by Marni Nixon) and chorus

1. “An Ordinary Man” – performed by Rex Harrison

1. “With a Little Bit of Luck” – performed by Stanley Holloway, John Alderson, John McLiam, and chorus

1. “Just You Wait” – sung by Audrey Hepburn (partially dubbed by Nixon) and Charles Fredericks

1. “Servants Chorus” – sung by Mona Washbourne and chorus

1. “The Rain in Spain” – performed by Rex Harrison, Wilfrid Hyde-White, and Audrey Hepburn (partially dubbed by Nixon)

1. “I Could Have Danced All Night” – performed by Audrey Hepburn (dubbed by Nixon), Mona Washbourne and chorus

1. “Ascot Gavotte” – sung by chorus

1. “Ascot Gavotte (Reprise)” – sung by chorus

1. “On the Street Where You Live” – sung by Jeremy Brett (dubbed by Bill Shirley)

1. “Intermission” – played by orchestra

1. “Transylvanian March” – played by orchestra

1. “Embassy Waltz” – played by orchestra

1. “You Did It” – performed by Rex Harrison, Wilfrid Hyde-White, and chorus

1. “Just You Wait (Reprise)” – sung by Audrey Hepburn

1. “On the Street Where You Live” (reprise) – sung by Jeremy Brett (dubbed by Shirley)

1. “Show Me” – performed by Audrey Hepburn (dubbed by Marni Nixon) and Jeremy Brett (dubbed by Shirley)

1. “Wouldn’t It Be Loverly” (reprise) – performed by Audrey Hepburn (dubbed by Marni Nixon) and chorus

1. “Get Me to the Church on Time” – performed by Stanley Holloway, John Alderson, John McLiam, and chorus

1. “A Hymn to Him (Why Can’t A Woman Be More Like a Man?)” – performed by Rex Harrison and Wilfrid Hyde-White

1. “Without You” – performed by Audrey Hepburn (dubbed by Nixon) and Rex Harrison

1. “I’ve Grown Accustomed to Her Face” – performed by Rex Harrison

1. “Finale” – played by orchestra

The partly-spoken delivery of the songs given by Harrison is a well-known example of sprechstimme.

Production

By unknown (Warner Bros.) – Public Domain, Link

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

CBS head William S. Paley financed 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. It was agreed that the rights to the film would revert to CBS seven years following release.

Order of musical numbers

The order of the songs in the Broadway show was followed faithfully with the exception of “With a Little Bit of Luck”; the song is listed as the third musical number in the play, but in the film, it is the fourth. On stage, the song is split into two parts sung in two different scenes. Part of the song is sung by Doolittle and his cronies just after Eliza gives him part of her earnings, immediately before she goes to Higgins to ask for speech lessons. The second half of the song is sung by Doolittle just after he discovers that Eliza is now living with Higgins. In the film, the entire song is sung in one scene that takes place just after Higgins has sung “I’m an Ordinary Man.” However, the song does have a dialogue scene (Doolittle’s conversation with Eliza’s landlady) between verses.

The instrumental “Busker Sequence”, which opens the play immediately after the overture, is the only musical number from the play omitted in the film version. However, several measures from the piece may be heard when Eliza is in the rain, making her way through Covent Garden.

All of the songs in the film were performed in their entirety, but some verses were omitted. For example, in the song “With a Little Bit of Luck”, the verse “He does not have a tuppence in his pocket,” which was sung with a chorus, was omitted because of its space and length; the original verse in “Show Me” was used instead.

The stanzas of “You Did It” that come after Higgins says “She is a princess” were originally written for the stage, but Harrison hated the lyrics and refused to perform the song unless the lyrics were omitted, as they were in most Broadway versions. However, when Cukor threatened to leave the production if the omitted lyrics were not restored for the film version, Harrison obliged. The omitted lyrics end with the words “Hungarian rhapsody” followed by the servants shouting “Bravo” three times, to the strains of Liszt‘s “Hungarian Rhapsody”, before the servants sing “Congratulations, Professor Higgins.”

Dubbing

Hepburn’s singing was judged inadequate, and she was dubbed by Marni Nixon, who sang all songs except “Just You Wait”, in which Hepburn’s voice was preserved during the harsh-toned chorus, with Nixon on the melodic bridge section. Hepburn sang the brief reprise of the song in tears. Some of Hepburn’s original vocal performances were released in the 1990s. Less well known is the fact that Jeremy Brett‘s songs (as Freddy) were dubbed by Bill Shirley.

Harrison declined to prerecord his musical numbers, explaining that he had never talked his way through the songs the same way twice and thus could not convincingly lip-sync to a playback recording during filming (according to Jack L. Warner, dubbing had been commonplace for years, stating, “We even dubbed Rin Tin Tin.”). George Groves equipped Harrison with a wireless microphone, the first such use during filming of a motion picture.^[14] The sound department earned an Academy Award for its efforts.

Intermission

One of the few differences in structure between the stage version and the film is the placement of the intermission. In the stage play, the intermission occurs after the embassy ball at which Eliza dances with Karpathy. In the film, the intermission comes before the ball as Eliza, Higgins and Pickering are seen departing for the embassy.

Art direction

Gene Allen, Cecil Beaton and George James Hopkins won an Academy Award for Best Production Design. Beaton’s inspiration for Higgins’ library was a room at the Château de Groussay, Montfort-l’Amaury, in France, which had been decorated opulently by its owner, Carlos de Beistegui. Hats were created by Parisian milliner Paulette ^[fr] at Beaton’s request.

Reception

With a production budget of $17 million, My Fair Lady was the most expensive film shot in the United States up to that time. 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. 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 60 reviews, with an average rating of 8.6/10. 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.”

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.” 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.'” 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.” 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.” 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.” 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.”

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.” 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.”

Dave Whitaker of DavesMovieDatabase, a film aggregator site that combines other lists with box-office, ratings, & awards, lists My Fair Lady as the 100th greatest movie of all-time, as the 9th greatest Musical of all-time, and as the 30th most awarded movie of all-time.

Retrospective analysis of My Fair Lady has been more mixed, with disagreement between reviewers about whether the movie critiques or affirms misogynistic and classist tropes.

Awards and nominations

Watch the Movie

PYGMALION (1938)

Pygmalion (1983)

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