My Fair Lady | |
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Directed by | George Cukor |
Produced by | Jack L. Warner |
Screenplay by | Alan Jay Lerner |
Based on |
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Starring | |
Music by |
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Cinematography | Harry Stradling |
Edited by | William H. Ziegler |
Distributed by | Warner Bros. Pictures, Inc. |
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Running time
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170 minutes |
Country | United States |
Language | English |
Budget | $17 million |
Box office | $72 million |
My Fair Lady is a 1964 American musical film adapted from the Lerner and Loewe eponymous stage musical based on the 1913 stage play Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw. 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 and Rex Harrison as Eliza Doolittle and Henry Higgins respectively, with Stanley Holloway, Gladys Cooper and Wilfrid Hyde-White in supporting roles. A critical and commercial success, it 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.
“Wouldn’t It Be Loverly” is a popular song by Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe, written for the 1956 Broadway play My Fair Lady. The song is sung by flower girl Eliza Doolittle and her street friends. It expresses Eliza’s wish for a better life. In addition to pronouncing “lovely” as “loverly”, the song lyrics highlight other facets of the Cockney accent that Professor Henry Higgins wants to refine away as part of his social experiment.
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