My Fair Lady (1964)

Director:

George Cukor

Writers:

Alan Jay Lerner (book)
George Bernard Shaw (play)

Release Date:

25 December 1964 (USA)

Genre:

Drama | Family | Musical | Romance

Tagline:

The loverliest motion picture of them all!

Plot:

A misogynistic and snobbish phonetics professor agrees to a wager that he can take a flower girl and make her presentable in high society.

Plot Keywords:

Culture Clash | Role Reversal | Star | Linguistics | Fish Out Of Water

Awards:

Won 8 Oscars. Another 12 wins & 10 nominations

Cast

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

Runtime:

170 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Color (Technicolor)

Aspect Ratio:

2.20 : 1

Sound Mix:

70 mm 6-Track (RCA Sound Recording) (70 mm prints) | 4-Track Stereo (35 mm magnetic prints) | DTS (re-release) | Dolby Digital (re-release) | Mono (16 mm prints) | Mono (35 mm optical prints)

Certification:

USA:G (re-rating) (1970) | Brazil:Livre | South Korea:All | Iceland:L | Canada:PG (video rating) | USA:Approved (PCA #20570) (original rating) | Argentina:Atp | Australia:G | Chile:TE | Finland:S | Sweden:Btl | UK:U | West Germany:12

Filming Locations:

Warner Brothers Burbank Studios - 4000 Warner Boulevard, Burbank, California, USA

Company:

Warner Bros. Pictures

Trivia:

Warner Bros. won the bidding war for the film rights in 1962 with an offer of $5.5 million and nearly half the profits above $20 million.

Goofs:

Revealing mistakes: In almost the final scene, when Higgins goes to open the door with the key, he inserts the key, but doesn't turn it before opening the door.

Quotes:

Eliza Doolittle: You oughta be stuffed with nails, you ought!

Movie Connections:

Referenced in Carrie (2002) (TV)

Soundtrack:

I'm an Ordinary Man

MFL will always be one of my favorite movies..

I first saw this film when I was nine years old, after receiving it as a birthday present from my mother. For months I watched the movie on an almost daily basis, and, to everyone's surprise, surpassed "The Sound of Music" as my favorite movie (that was my daily movie when I was eight, lol). To this day I watch this movie more frequently than any other. Now that I am a bit older.. I notice that is does have quite a few flaws. It doesn't really capture the essence of Shaw's Pygmalion, but I don't think that should really take away from the movie; they should be treated as separate entities. Some of the sets are a little, well, cramped, but consider what they had to work with, they did a pretty good job. And then there is the dubbing issue. I recently special on MFL on AMC, and they showed "Wouldn't It Be Loverly" and "Show Me" with Audrey's voice, and though Audrey may not have the perfect melodic voice of Marni Nixon, her voice was much more "Eliza". I really do think they should have just used her voice. If you watch "Funny Face", you get a good feel for voice, which I think is beautiful in a unconventional way. Then, there is the question of whether Julie Andrews should have played Eliza in the film version of MFL. I've gone back and forth on this issue. Now, Audrey Hepburn is my favorite actress of all time, and Julie Andrews my second favorite, so it really is hard to "choose". Of course Julie's voice is much better than even Marni Nixon's... but like I said before, I don't think a perfect singing voice really would suit Eliza. And as for which would play a better Eliza overall.. I really don't know. I wasn't alive to see MFL on Broadway, so I really can't compare the two. What I do know is that Audrey gave an amazing performance. I really can't imagine Julie's instead of Audrey's face gazing into space right before "I could have danced all night". Anyway, as someone else said, if Julie had played Eliza, who would have played Mary Poppins? Not having Julie as Mary Poppins would be a MUCH greater tragedy than never seeing what sort of Eliza she would make on film.