My Fair Lady
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Short description
My Fair Lady is set in London in 1912, where Henry Higgins, a phonetician known for his expertise in speech, encounters Eliza Doolittle, a poor flower seller whose rough way of speaking catches his attention. He makes a wager with his friend Colonel Pickering that he can pass her off as a lady of high society through lessons in proper speech and manners. Eliza agrees, largely because the arrangement gives her a place to stay, and the two men set about transforming her.
The film is a musical adaptation of the stage production, directed by George Cukor as the sixteenth of the seventeen films he directed, following Let's Make Love and preceding Rich and Famous. Alan Jay Lerner wrote the screenplay, Jack L. Warner and James C. Katz produced it, and the cast of thirty-seven credited performers is led by Audrey Hepburn as Eliza, Rex Harrison as Higgins, Stanley Holloway as Alfred Doolittle, Wilfrid Hyde-White as Pickering, Gladys Cooper as Mrs. Higgins and Jeremy Brett as Freddy Eynsford-Hill. Made for 17 million dollars, it took 72 million worldwide, a strong return for a musical of its length.
On IMDb it holds 7.7 from around 107,000 votes, and on TMDB 7.5 from roughly 1,471 votes, while critics rated it 8.7 from 89 reviews, a notably higher figure than the audience scores.
What's left behind the scenes
- The Broadway premiere of the musical took place on March 15, 1956. The production, starring Julie Andrews in the lead role, immediately became immensely popular, with tickets sold out six months in advance. 'My Fair Lady' was performed on Broadway 2717 times.
- Audrey Hepburn specifically prepared and took vocal lessons for the role, but she was ultimately dubbed by Marni Nixon in all the songs.
- James Cagney was first offered the role of Alfred Doolittle. When he turned it down at the last minute, the role went to Stanley Holloway, who had played Alfred on Broadway.
- Before it was decided that Rex Harrison would play Professor Higgins in the film as well, Cary Grant, Peter O'Toole, Noel Coward, Michael Redgrave, and George Sanders were considered for the role.
- Jeremy Brett, who turned 30 during filming, was very surprised to learn that a 42-year-old American, Billy Shirley, dubbed his singing voice.
- Actress Gladys Cooper, who plays Professor Higgins’ mother, previously played the same role in a 1963 television production of 'Pygmalion,' 'Hallmark Hall of Fame: Pygmalion (#12.3)'.
- The film's title does not appear in any dialogue or song.
- When Cary Grant was asked why he turned down the role of Henry Higgins, Grant replied that his manner of speaking was much closer to Eliza Doolittle's.
- The film takes place in 1912.
- 27A Wimpole Street in London – the address of Professor Higgins – does not actually exist; there is a 27 Wimpole Street.
- Shirley Jones was one of the actresses Jack L. Warner planned to offer the role if Audrey Hepburn had refused. Julie Andrews' candidacy was rejected because the producers considered her insufficiently famous. Elizabeth Taylor also very much wanted to play Eliza.
- Audrey Hepburn later confessed that she would never have accepted the role of Eliza Doolittle if she had known that Jack L. Warner wanted to dub all her songs. Furthermore, she once told Julie Andrews personally that she should have played Eliza instead of her. During her performance at the University of California in Los Angeles in 2008, Julie Andrews confirmed this fact.
- In the musical, Elise is 21 and Freddie is 20. Audrey Hepburn was 34 years old during filming (this fact also upset fans of the Broadway production), and Jeremy Brett was 30 years old.
- The film was originally going to be called "Lady Lisa".
- When it was decided that the musical "My Fair Lady" would be made into a film, its fans were disappointed, hoping to see Julie Andrews in the role of Eliza (Rex Harrison wanted her too), but Audrey Hepburn ended up playing her. However, Rex Harrison, who played Higgins on Broadway, was irreplaceable, and the eccentric professor successfully moved from the stage to the big screen and subsequently received an Oscar.
- In her 2004 autobiography, “Tis Herself,” Maureen O’Hara wrote that producer Jack L. Warner asked her to sing for Audrey Hepburn in the film.
- Jack L. Warner paid $5.5 million for the rights in February 1962. At the time, this purchase was a record; no one had previously acquired an original stage idea for such a large sum. Only in 1978 did Columbia pay $9.5 million for the rights to film “Annie” (1982).
- Rex Harrison was very disappointed to learn that the role of Eliza went to Audrey Hepburn, as he wanted his Broadway co-star Julie Andrews to play her. However, Harrison and Hepburn became friends during filming, and when the actor received an Oscar for “My Fair Lady” in 1964, he dedicated it to his “two beautiful ladies,” Audrey Hepburn and Julie Andrews, who had both played Eliza Doolittle with him.
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