My Fair Lady

 George Cukor’s 1964 adaptation of the 1956 stage musical which was itself an adaptation of George Bernard Shaw’s 1913 play Pygmalion accomplishes one quality I always truly admire in a film.  A viewer watching the film for the first time could easily see it is an adaptation of a play, with the long scenes (most film scenes are only a couple of minutes long) and the literate dialogue.  In addition nearly the film was shot almost completely on soundstages.  After the big opening sequence outside the theatre in Convent Garden the scene shifts to Lisson Grove even though Eliza never seems to go anywhere (the two neighborhoods are about four miles apart) which is the kind of thing that would happen only in a play.  The film is also incredibly cinematic with a lot of scenes shot on 70 mm on a big scale with many extras, all of whom of are dressed uniquely and in expensive clothes.  The quality I admire is the film is successfully both theatrical and cinematic.   I hope to see it on stage someday and also on the big screen.

Warner Brothers paid $5 million for the rights to the musical and was rewarded with a film that was a giant success at the box office ($72 million from $17 million production budget) as well as a winner of several Academy Awards.  Jack Warner notably allowed the casting of several key actors from the play such as Rex Harrison as Professor Henry Higgins and Stanley Doohan as Alfred P. Doolittle but he wanted a star in the title role and refused to cast Julie Andrews who had played Eliza Doolittle on stage.  Audrey Hepburn, who was an established box office star with Roman Holiday, Sabrina, and Breakfast at Tiffany’s among many others, was cast even though she could not sing anywhere near as well as Andrews.  I have seen clips of Andrews on YouTube on stage and she seems well cast.  Walt Disney clearly did not have the same misgivings as he gave Andrews the title role in Mary Poppins (though she was cast alongside Dick Van Dyke who was a more established star at the time) and the film was a giant hit ($44 box office from a $6 million budget) and she won an Academy Award.  Andrews famously jokingly thanked Jack Warner at the podium since missing out on the My Fair Lady freed her to do Mary Poppins.

Spoilers below:

The play presents the idea that speech and accents define a person’s station in life far more than actual backgrounds.  I live in the United States and have always noticed the different regional accents but I never consciously associated them with class.  But I have noticed for example Jennifer Garner is from West Virginia, which has one of the most definitive accents in the country.  But if you listen to Garner speak there is not trace of it.  She may have trained it out of herself so she would not be limited in the roles available to her.  I am from New Jersey but was discouraged from pronouncing certain words specific to the region (ie I was told to say “coffee” phonetically instead of pronouncing it like “Cawfii”).   

My Fair Lady tells the story of a young woman, Eliza Doolittle, who sells flowers on the street and wants to improve her station in life by getting a job in an actual flower shop.  Because Eliza’s accent is lower class she seeks the help of Henry Higgins, a professor of phonetics who while earlier mocking her publicly had claimed he could teach her to speak with a refined accent.  Higgins agrees to house and teach her for six months leading up to a royal ball as a bet with Colonel Pickering, another language expert who Higgins also offers to house.  

Recently I saw the film Emilia Perez, a musical I enjoyed so much I watched it again a few days later.  However I was mostly moved by the story and although I mostly liked the music in it I could not hum a single bar from it now by memory. Of My Fair Lady’s many songs there are about a half dozen that I could sing end to end without missing a note or lyric.  As my singing voice has faded immensely as I get older, I will spare the general public this torment.  

The music serves as an extension of the characters’ personalities.  The first song is used to demonstrate Higgins’ arrogance in the very funny opening number “Why Can’t The English” as he insults nearly every form of British accent except his own.  There is a line in that song that perfectly describes the class conscious English culture “Whenever an Englishman speaks he makes another Englishman despise him”.  Higgins also sings the very sexist “I’m Just an Ordinary Man” and “Why Can’t a Woman Be More Like a Man”.  Rex Harrison clearly has a narrow singing range so he performs them as a mix of a soliloquy and singing usually only in one octave.  I do not know what led to Harrison being cast in the play but I would imagine the pieces were written to be sung throughout and then adjusted to fit his strengths.  As Higgins’ brain always seems to be racing the switching of styles matches the delivery.  The songs take a little edge off his sexism, as if he said a lot of those words in a different context the audience would despise him outright as opposed to just loving to hate him.  

Eliza has several songs which mark her journey from flower girl to the titular lady.  “Wouldn’t It Be Loverly” is a typical first act song about her dreams of a better life.  “Just You Wait” is one of the most fun songs as Eliza fantasizes about getting rid of Higgins.  It also serves as a release to the audience as Higgins has been bullying her nonstop for awhile now and we want to see Eliza get one over on him.  One of the best touches is the vaseline or something that is used to slightly blur the lens during the fantasy.  When Eliza realizes Higgins has been watching her as she looks up nervously the lens is still blurred.  Higgins reacts by putting her back to work as he is more often amused by people’s negative reactions to him than offended.

My favorite Eliza song is “I Could Have Danced All Night” which is her celebration after she finally learns to speak in a “proper” accent.  There is a hint of romance as she clearly enjoyed dancing with Higgins (who got her over the line by being gentlemanly-sharing the cold pack for her headache even though he had one too- and by inspiring her).  The melody is higher pitched than many of the other songs and Hepburn, who has a very expressive face throughout the film, shows unadulterated joy throughout it, as Mrs. Pearce keeps trying to get her to go to bed.  

The relationship between Higgins and Eliza is based on words and interplay as opposed to traditional romance.  For that reason Freddie, Eliza’s would be paramour, played by Jeremy Brett, is portrayed as a fool.  He ruins Eliza’s flowers in the first act and never offers to replace them.  Then when Eliza catches his eye he sings the one romantic ballad “On The Street Where you Live” which is appealing though the idea that he just hangs outside for hours each day hoping she might show up is the kind of thing only a lovesick idiot would do.  When Eliza does finally meet him outside, in the middle of the night after she mocks him with the angry song “Show Me”.    

Colonel Pickering played by Wilfred Hyde-White is an unusual character.  I find the idea that he and Higgins meet and then Pickering essentially moves in with Higgins to be a little odd.  It keeps Pickering on site to be a more reasonable contrast to some of Higgins’ excesses, but if so much of the focus were not on the Higgins/Eliza dynamic there could be a side story on the Higgins/Pickering relationship.  The film goes easy on Pickering as Eliza claims he is always a gentleman but Pickering also participates in the bet and takes a lot of joy in using Eliza to fool everyone at the ball.

My Fair Lady does not have much dancing in it, especially compared to a musical like West Side Story.  There is some light dancing at the ballroom scene and in The Rain In Spain though I tend to remember that scene more for the Spanish themed jokes like Eliza imitating a flamenco dance or Pickering acting like a bull and Higgins as the matador. Hyde-White performs this silly moment so willfully that it does not diminish the character it might otherwise have.

The brief moment between “The Rain In Spain” and “I Could Have Danced All Night” has a couple of the film’s highlights.  Hepburn face is beaming as it is the first time Eliza has ever felt this happy.  This is contrasted with Higgins and Pickering debating what kind of dress they should buy her for the Ascot races.  Notably they do not involve Eliza at all in this discussion nor do they bring her with them to purchase the dress.

In keeping with the play’s feminist themes, Higgins mother, played by Gladys Cooper is wealthy but put off by Higgins’ game with Eliza.  Higgins clearly inherited his bluntness from her as when she first sees him at Ascot she tells him “Henry, what a disagreeable surprise” and wants him to leave before he insults her friends.  When Eliza appears at Mrs. Higgins’ house she is very supportive of her and refuses to allow Higgins to bully her.  By this point in the story Eliza has found her voice and calls out Higgins with the song “Without You” which has lyrics like “Without you pulling it the tide comes in, without you twirling it the Earth still spins.”  Notably in the song Eliza is straightforward but is not cruel to.  Eliza is above that type of behavior.  The end of the scene has a nice button when she leaves and Higgins after a pause calls for his mother at full voice.  For a moment he is a little boy and just needs his mommy to comfort him.  

“I’ve Grown Accustomed to Her Face” is a showcase for all of Higgins conflicting emotions as he storms from his mother’s house back to his own.  Higgins goes from indignant to angered to sad.  When I was young I found Harrison’s seething delivery of some of the song’s more harsh lyrics a little frightening, in particular “In a year or two when she’s prematurely grey” and “I’ll slam the door and let the hellcat freeze!”.   

Harrison’s face drops and he starts moving more slowly after the song s nicely goes into the sadness as he starts to process the loss and the score changes to a slow paced instrumental version of “I’ve Grown Accustomed To Her Face”.  When Higgins turns on the recording of their earlier conversation it is an edited version (there were many other lines in between the ones we hear and all the pauses seem to be removed) but it gets the point across.  

I find the final beat amusing but I know why a lot of people do not seem to like it.  Let’s break it down.   Eliza comes in while Higgins is listening to the recording, turns it off and using her old accent repeats a line from the scene he was listening to “I washed my face and hands before I come I did”.  Harrison as Higgins smiles, calls her name, but without ever looking at her puts his hat over his eyes and then says “Where the devil are my slippers?”. As the score turns to an instrumental version of “I Could Have Danced All Night” and Eliza slowly approaches him the scene fades out.

Higgins does not want to allow himself to be vulnerable so if he had gotten up to embrace her it would have been out of character (or at least he feels it would).  I think he is trying to role play as he unlikely expects her to get them for him (and has servants who can do so).  Eliza seems to get the joke since she approaches him but we can infer what would happen next.  My guess is that she would have given him some grief and he would have dropped the pretense and she would have moved back to her room.  If Higgins ever stepped out of line Eliza would leave since although she had worried earlier about her future, the truth is now she has the confidence to do anything she would like.  This version of Eliza would not stand for Higgins’ bullying but life with him, in whatever form it took, would never be easy.  The choice of “I Could Have Danced All Night” for the score hints to me that they will find some form of happiness.  If they had used “Just You Wait” or “Without You” I would feel differently.  They may or may not be headed for a romance.  To me it feels more like a companionship. Higgins is elated when Eliza puts him in his place with the song “Without You” because he wants someone who can spar with him.  Earlier Higgins has no qualms at all about helping Eliza find a husband though this is before he grasped that she might one day leave his life.  Regardless I would hope she would not have married Freddie or if she had that she would make him work.  But she would not have been happy with him.  Freddie was too dumb for her.

There are other versions of the play where Eliza leaves (a la A Doll’s House) or points to the floor where Higgins looks for his slippers so he has to get on his knees in front of her.  The truth is though the end of the film is of much less importance than the journey we see the characters take together.

There are a couple of flaws in the picture.  Stanley Holloway plays Eliza’s father, Alfred P. Doolittle, in just a few scenes.  Holloway is charming and looks appropriately dirty in his early scenes but the flaw is his final song “Get Me To The Church On Time” although entertaining, and proof of his growth as a character since he is being responsible now (while still enjoying an impromptu “bachelor party”) goes on far too long.  The song lasts for about six minutes which is at least two too many.  Doolittle is a minor character in the story and could be removed entirely if necessary without any damage to the plot so to give him such a big send off this late in the film throws the timing off.  Higgins’ final song is much shorter and Eliza’s is even shorter than that.

Anotber flaw is a pretty minor one but a detail I noticed nonetheless on the first viewing.  After Eliza leaves and Higgins is distraught it is revealed that Eliza had been organizing much of the household tasks. We never see any of this.  Higgins’ reaction to her departure is one of the more fun moments in the story and I think something that happens to a lot of men who take the women in their lives for granted.

I could go on about this film forever but I’ll put a pin in it here and maybe revisit in a future post.  If you want to see an incredible musical with a witty script with two magnificent leads, watch My Fair Lady in at least one form or another.  Someday I would like to see the film on the big screen and also a stage version.  I am sure neither would disappoint me.  *****