My Fair Lady

My Fair Lady (released December 25, 1964)
Director: George Cukor
Starring: Audrey Hepburn, Rex Harrison, Stanley Holloway, Gladys Cooper
Produced by: Jack Warner
Written by: Alan Jay Lerner, George Bernard Shaw
Music by: Frederick Loewe (music), Alan Jay Lerner (lyrics)
Cinematography by: Harry Stradling, Sr.
Distributed by: Warner Bros.

Lady Fair

Really? Another musical to review? We just got finished writing about The Sound of Music didn’t we…? Okay, maybe that was a while back, but I was still slightly astounded to discover this film being pulled from the box on the heels of the Von Trapp adventures in Austria. I must admit that for someone who is not a big movie musical fan, I have caught myself humming tunes from My Fair Lady from time to time throughout my life. I will even admit to crooning some verses along with the CD player in an old friend’s rebuilt Camaro as we sped across miles and miles of open searing desert in the American Southwest while on a road trip a few years back. Richard happily possesses a fine voice, and I can only imagine the astonishment of the Navajo people and Gila monsters on the sides of the road as we raced by and they caught snatches of “The Rain in Spain”.

It fell to Warner Bros. and director George Cukor to bring this iconic stage musical to the big screen. In general, the look of the film was stagy; no doubt this due to its production on the Warner soundstages in Burbank, and because of this, in my opinion it really didn’t have the right “Edwardian English” look and feel to it. I believe it would have helped deflect bit of the disappointment many people felt in not seeing the original Eliza Doolittle of the stage version (Julie Andrews) in the title role instead of Audrey Hepburn. However at the time, Audrey had earned her chops before the cameras and Julie had not, and upon such fine points of cinematic etiquette film classics blossom and flourish or wither and die.

Erm, the street where you live looks like a sound stage...

I suppose we can’t find much to carp about Miss Hepburn’s lip-synching when in the same production we have Mr. Rex Harrison’s half-spoken, half-sung renditions, but then again he never claimed he could sing and indeed, his delivery managed with such bravado, comes across as quite natural. This, one imagines, is how the puritanical Henry Higgins would sing if forced to do so. At any rate, it certainly worked for him on the stage in London for those oft-repeated performances… 

This singing gig is a breeze!

And speaking of singing, it still startles me a bit to see the late and venerable Jeremy Brett warbling “On the Street Where You Live” as the rather foppish suitor for Eliza’s hand, Freddy Eynsford-Hill. Sherlock Holmes would never chase after a woman like that would he? 

Freddy never used his powers of deduction
to discover he was a git.

And yet despite these admittedly trivial cavils (which however added together leave one with a less-than-enthusiastic overall feel for the film) I did enjoy watching this version of what has been termed “the perfect musical”. The story in whatever guise one approaches it; ancient Greek myth, 19^th Century play, or 20^th Century musical has all the charm, freshness and sophistication of a classically good story.

I have sometimes mused upon what an indescribable rush of perfect joy Lerner & Loewe must have experienced when they originally came up with the pairing of words to music, being the only two in the world at that moment to know that they had just created something of true magnificence. 

--kak

My Unfairly Treated Lady

Audrey... practically
perfect in every way.

I love Audrey Hepburn. I want to look like her – lithe, graceful, with a swan’s neck, and huge eyes fringed in dark lashes. The few men I’ve told this to don’t get it. They tell me she’s got a big nose, no tits, and is too skinny. But I don’t care… there is something about her smile and voice that convinces me that she’s never been anything but happy. 

It’s nice little fantasy.

I was excited to watch My Fair Lady. It isn’t one I’d seen as a kid – we seemed to be a Rodgers and Hammerstein household and not a Lerner and Loewe one.  I figured I’d be in for a treat. It has Audrey Hepburn, gorgeous clothes, and some great music. What’s not to love?

Have you got an hour?

Let’s start by comparing and contrasting it with The Sound of Music. Both originated as stage plays, and while the movie version of SOM is visually gorgeous (how can it not be filmed in Salzburg?), I felt MFL was still very much a stage play. All outdoor scenes were obviously filmed on a soundstage. Maybe that was the look the director was going for, I don’t know. I do know that it seemed less authentic to me.

The music was great. Lerner and Loewe are no slouches when it comes to writing catchy songs that could crawl into your ear and burrow into your brain. (But in a good way.) My husband can do all of Henry Higgins’ parts from memory. I have to admit that’s awfully cute.

A prisoner of the gutter

Now let’s talk about the story. Henry Higgins is an English gentleman (and that’s figuratively, not literally) who says the only thing separating the classes is a lack of education and proper speech. (I suppose he'd consider it crass to mention something as inelegant as MONEY.) He picks Eliza Doolittle, a lowly flower seller and bets with his buddy Colonel Pickering, that he could pass her off as a lady with a bit of training up. He plucks her from the mud of Covent Garden and installs her in his townhouse. Surely a stroke of luck for poor, dirty, ignorant, uneducated Eliza, right?

All right, here’s the poop: this plot makes me itch. It makes me fume, steam, and rage. I am completely disgusted with the character of Henry Higgins, who sees Eliza Doolittle not even as a human being. He takes all the credit for her hard work, and never once considers Eliza has feelings, intelligence, or even a pulse. I find Eliza Doolittle to be delightful – funny, sharp, and full of spirit. After Henry has won his bet, he doesn’t see he has ruined her: she’s not really a lady and can’t ever belong in high society, and she can't return to her former life because she'd be resented for trying to rise above her station. She is a human being trapped in the ether without a place in the world.

In short, Henry Higgins is a worm.

G.B. Shaw: satirist or worm?

My problem stems from the source of this musical: George Bernard Shaw. He wrote Pygmalion, the play upon which My Fair Lady was based. I don’t know enough about him to understand if he intended this as a piece of satire. Or was Henry Higgins’ world view his own? Either option is a bad one. If he wrote it as a biting piece of satire, what would possess a person to set it to jaunty music? The theme and style of the film are at extreme odds with each other. I feel like I’m chewing aluminum foil while watching it. But on the verso, if Shaw was just as much of a worm as Henry Higgins, why do people find this a charming story? It has been venerated as “the perfect musical.” But how can you call it that when it is full of despicable characters, classism and misogyny? It makes me want to scream. And I am. Right now. In my head.

And the ending? If they were still alive, I’d hunt down the parties responsible and smack them with Henry’s slippers for that kind of ambiguous crap. But that’s just me. 

~Anna

Up next: 1949's All the King’s Men