By the time My Fair Lady (1964) made it to the screen it was not so much a movie as it proved to be a social event. The Lerner and Loewe stage play had been a runaway smash hit, eclipsing the meteoric successes of Rodgers and Hammerstein's Oklahoma!, South Pacific and even The King and I.
But that success came at a price - chiefly in preventing studios from jumping on the bandwagon to produce it as a film right away. And so, the years rolled on.
To capitalize on My Fair Lady's stage success, MGM producer Arthur Freed hired Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe to adapt Gigi into a musical in 1958. Their results so closely paralleled the circumstances depicted in My Fair Lady that the movie was dubbed 'Eliza Goes to Paris'. But its overwhelming financial and critical success created another hurdle for the film version of My Fair Lady to overcome. Thankfully, the filmic 'fair lady' was still a good six years away, allowing Gigi's memory to quietly fade away.
My Fair Lady required a steady gentle hand and considerable cash to surpass its Broadway roots. It got both and then some as a personal project of Jack L. Warner – who paid a then whopping six million dollars for the rights to produce it.
In adapting the play for film director George Cukor ever so slightly tweaked the narrative structure to better accommodate the new medium while remaining almost religiously faithful to its Broadway origins. If My Fair Lady has a single failing it is Warner’s lack of foresight to cast the stage’s Eliza Doolittle (Julie Andrews) as the film's lead. Andrews was, unfortunately, unproven as yet in the movies. Walt Disney's Mary Poppins (released the same year) would prove that Andrews was every bit a movie star of the first magnitude.
Despite this oversight, Jack Warner’s replacement star was almost as good; filmdom’s winsome gamin, Audrey Hepburn who eased into the role – though not without controversy. Although it had long been standard practice in Hollywood (ever since the dawn of the ‘talkies’) to dub singing vocals for stars in movie musicals, the substitution of Marni Nixon's singing pipes for Audrey created a minor stir that arguably cost Hepburn her Best Actress Oscar nomination.
For the rest, and despite Warner’s initial interest in pursuing Cary Grant over Rex Harrison for the role of Henry Higgins (a calamity narrowly avoided when Grant informed Warner that not only would he not do the film, but would refuse to ever appear in another feature for the studio should anyone except Rex Harrison be cast), My Fair Lady emerged as an inspired exercise in old fashioned film making – justly winning 9 Oscars, including a long overdue statuette for George Cukor. Unlike many movie musicals from the decade, that faintly wreak of formaldehyde and are undernourished in star power, the filmic incarnation of My Fair Lady sparkles like vintage champagne.
In a nutshell, the plot of Lerner and Loewe’s magical Edwardian excursion is sustained by the musicalization of thorny words derived from George Bernard Shaw’s play Pygmalion. Stuffy phonetics professor, Henry Higgins (Rex Harrison) is out and about London collecting dialects for a phonetics study. After a rainstorm effectively forces both the lower and upper classes to seek shelter under the same canopy, Higgins discovers a rarity in the fractured English of a lowly flower girl, Eliza Doolittle (Audrey Hepburn).
Eliza’s singular desire is to speak English beautifully – a challenge eventually undertaken by Higgins after his house guest, Colonel Hugh Pickering (Wilfred Hyde-White) bets him the costs of the experiment that it cannot be done.In adapting the play for film director George Cukor ever so slightly tweaked the narrative structure to better accommodate the new medium while remaining almost religiously faithful to its Broadway origins. If My Fair Lady has a single failing it is Warner’s lack of foresight to cast the stage’s Eliza Doolittle (Julie Andrews) as the film's lead. Andrews was, unfortunately, unproven as yet in the movies. Walt Disney's Mary Poppins (released the same year) would prove that Andrews was every bit a movie star of the first magnitude.
Despite this oversight, Jack Warner’s replacement star was almost as good; filmdom’s winsome gamin, Audrey Hepburn who eased into the role – though not without controversy. Although it had long been standard practice in Hollywood (ever since the dawn of the ‘talkies’) to dub singing vocals for stars in movie musicals, the substitution of Marni Nixon's singing pipes for Audrey created a minor stir that arguably cost Hepburn her Best Actress Oscar nomination.
For the rest, and despite Warner’s initial interest in pursuing Cary Grant over Rex Harrison for the role of Henry Higgins (a calamity narrowly avoided when Grant informed Warner that not only would he not do the film, but would refuse to ever appear in another feature for the studio should anyone except Rex Harrison be cast), My Fair Lady emerged as an inspired exercise in old fashioned film making – justly winning 9 Oscars, including a long overdue statuette for George Cukor. Unlike many movie musicals from the decade, that faintly wreak of formaldehyde and are undernourished in star power, the filmic incarnation of My Fair Lady sparkles like vintage champagne.
In a nutshell, the plot of Lerner and Loewe’s magical Edwardian excursion is sustained by the musicalization of thorny words derived from George Bernard Shaw’s play Pygmalion. Stuffy phonetics professor, Henry Higgins (Rex Harrison) is out and about London collecting dialects for a phonetics study. After a rainstorm effectively forces both the lower and upper classes to seek shelter under the same canopy, Higgins discovers a rarity in the fractured English of a lowly flower girl, Eliza Doolittle (Audrey Hepburn).
But teaching Eliza proves somewhat more of a challenge than Higgins anticipated – more so after the arrival of Eliza’s father, Alfred P. Doolittle (Stanley Holloway); a common dustman who attempts to bribe Higgins for some quick cash, but finds himself being billed by Higgins as England’s most original moralist.
Eliza's premature debut at London's famed Ascot races results in the cockney waif breaking a major social etiquette when she hollers for one of the horses to "move (its) bloomin' ass!" Nevertheless, amiable man about town, Freddie Eynsford-Hill (Jeremy Brett/ singing voice dubbed by Bill Shirley) becomes smitten with Eliza. Unfortunately, she has already fallen in love with her mentor.
But Higgins is not at all interested in his pupil as a woman. Or is he? To Higgins chagrin, he does indeed become 'accustom to' Eliza's 'face', and begrudgingly realizes he cannot live without her. But is it too late for him to win Eliza back?
My Fair Lady is exemplary stage craft and even more meticulously plied film making. The results are a wonder to behold. Try as she might, Audrey Hepburn is ever bit 'the lady' even when she attempt to be the uncouth flower girl. But Hepburn's performance is far from flawed. In fact, she is so earnest, so sincere in everything that she does, it is easy to overlook her shortcomings in the early scenes and simply bask in the sumptuousness of it all.
Rex Harrison delivers a peerless performance - truly one of the all time great and seamless bits of movie acting. Ditto for Stanley Holloway's Alfred Doolittle and Wilfred Hyde White's Pickering.
Reportedly, Rex Harrison made it known at the start of filming that although he had performed the role of Higgins tirelessly on the stage, he would never be able to give the same performance twice on film – hence, lip-syncing his lyrics was out of the question. To accommodate Harrison film makers employed the first wireless mic’ strategically sewn into the actor’s ascot to capture the variations in his pitch and tone live on the set.
Cukor's direction sustains and retains the main points of the stage show while ever so slightly 'opening up' the narrative for film. We never leave the soundstages at Warner Brothers and yet there is a distinctly 'English feel' to the film. Gene Allen's sets and Cecil Beaton's gorgeous costumes evoke the Edwardian period with artistry and aplomb. This is lush and masterful film making at its finest.Regrettably, the movie deal that Jack Warner struck with CBS only afforded him film rights to the end of the decade. This was fine and dandy in an era when no perceived resale value of movies was the norm in Hollywood. All the 70mm film stock was handed over to CBS/Fox in 1969 where it continued to languish and severely deteriorate until roughly 1989 when restoration experts Robert Harris and James Katz were called in to work their magic on the tired source material. The results of their efforts have been quite astounding and successful in resurrecting 'the lady' for a new generation of admirers.
But you would never guess it from CBS Home Video's Blu-ray release. This latest incarnation of My Fair Lady has been minted from a digital transfer made back in 1997! What a crock!
The audio improves greatly over the aforementioned DVD and is something of a revelation with more depth and clarity than has ever been heard before. Extras are all imported from previously issued DVD incarnations and include ‘More Loverly Than Ever: The Making and Restoration of My Fair Lady’ , screen tests for Harrison and Hepburn, Audrey's original vocals for two songs, vintage interviews and featurettes, L.A. premiere footage and a commentary track that is both informative and revealing. But if you already own Warner Bros. 2 disc DVD special edition there is really NO GOOD REASON to repurchase this title on Blu-ray from CBS. The image barely improves! And isn't pristine image quality what Blu-ray is supposed to offer us?!?
Not recommended!
FILM RATING (out of 5 - 5 being the best)
5
VIDEO/AUDIO
2
EXTRAS
3.5
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