by Judy Geater
Director: George Cukor
Producer: Jack Warner
Music: Frederick Loewe
Lyrics: Alan Jay Lerner
Screenwriter: Alan Jay Lerner (adaptation of George Bernard Shaw)
Choreographer: Hermes Pan
Cinematographer: Harry Stradling Sr
Studio: Warner Brothers
Main actors: Audrey Hepburn, Rex Harrison, Stanley Holloway, Wilfrid Hyde-White, Gladys Cooper, Jeremy Brett
****
My Fair Lady has one of the greatest scores of any musical, by Lerner and Lowe, with many songs which have become standards, such as With a Little Bit of Luck, Wouldn’t It Be Loverly and On the Street Where You Live. It is also one of the most gorgeous musicals to look at, making full use of Super Panavision, with its dazzling Cecil Beaton costumes and colourful sets. It wasn’t filmed on location in London, but Covent Garden flower market and the dingy back streets look convincing enough to me, while scenes like the Embassy ball and Ascot have all the visual flamboyance you’d expect from director George Cukor, aided by art director Gene Allen. Yet this celebrated film was allowed to deteriorate into a sorry state and needed full-scale restoration by the mid-1990s. The DVD I have, part of an Audrey Hepburn box set, features the restored print, looking great, plus several special features – and there are also a couple of different two-disc special editions available,with a region 1 blu ray in the pipeline. But what I’d really like would be to see this on the big screen some day.
This was one of the first musicals that I came to love, as a child of the 1960s. But the version I knew back then was the soundtrack of the Broadway show, starring Julie Andrews as Shaw’s Cockney flower girl Eliza Doolittle, whose life is transformed when eccentric phonetics expert Henry Higgins decides to teach her to speak “like a lady”. My mother had a copy of the LP which someone had brought back for her from America (it wasn’t allowed to be sold in the UK at that time, presumably for copyright reasons), and we listened to it endlessly. So when I hear anyone else singing those songs, I still always have Julie’s voice in the back of my head somewhere.
Over the years I’ve seen several stage productions , including the 1979 West End revival, which I remember as a magnificent spectacle. But it took a while for the movie version to grow on me, mainly because of the big problem which everyone brings up as soon as this film is mentioned – the casting of the heroine. Julie Andrews was hoping to reprise her Broadway role along with leading men Rex Harrison and Stanley Holloway, but, instead, Audrey Hepburn was brought in andher singing voice was dubbed by Marni Nixon, who also provided Deborah Kerr’s vocals in The King and I and Natalie Wood’s in West Side Story. I think in Britain in particular there was a feeling that Andrews had been robbed and had her part given to a Hollywood star. (She soon hit back with Mary Poppins.) Reportedly, Rex Harrison nearly lost the part of Higgins too – producer Jack Warner was keen to cast Cary Grant, which would have been an odd choice given Grant’s erratic accent! Grant famously replied to Warner: “Not only will I not play in it, but if Rex Harrison doesn’t do it, I won’t even go to see it.”
However, it really isn’t fair to hold it against Audrey Hepburn that she was cast instead of Andrews – and her fine acting performance shouldn’t be overlooked. Cukor tended to be known as a “woman’s director” from the 1930s onwards, a label he himself resented, but in this film it is certainly true that he puts Hepburn in centre stage and allows her personality to shine through. She brings a wistful quality to Eliza in those opening scenes which is all her own, and also convincingly portrays her growing, sometimes mischievous self-confidence through the later scenes. Hepburn had already played a similar role in another Pygmalion story, Funny Face, and has the same kind of poignancy in this part, with the flower imagery running all through the film, from those shots of flowers during the overture onwards, to show how she cautiously starts to blossom. And her waifish beauty sets off the Cecil Beaton gowns to perfection.
The big difference between My Fair Lady and the earlier film is that Hepburn was allowed to do her own singing in Funny Face – and, listening to her fragile but charming performance of Gershwin’s How Long Has This Been Going On, you do feel that she could have managed Lerner and Loewe’s songs too, especially if the key had been slightly lowered to suit her voice. According to Donald Spoto’s biography, Enchantment: The Life of Audrey Hepburn, she had been told that her own singing voice would be used in the film except for occasional high notes, and was devastated when in the end almost all the songs were dubbed, with her own voice only being used for part of Just You Wait. There are painstakingly re-created videos on Youtube which restore her own vocals for four songs, Wouldn’t It Be Loverly, Without You, I Could Have Danced All Night and the whole of Just You Wait – and, while her voice may be less polished than Nixon’s, it does express the emotions of the sings beautifully and fits in well with Rex Harrison’s dry, half-speaking style.
Having said all this, Nixon does give a fine performance of the songs herself, similar to that of Andrews on Broadway, and gets every high note perfectly – and, after being overlooked for so many years, it is good that she has now received some recognition for her many contributions to some of the greatest movie musicals. I’ve seen an interview with Nixon where she argues that she should be regarded in the same light as a stuntman, and nobody should worry about who it is singing, but just about the film. “As Shakespeare says, the play’s the thing,” she comments.
So what about the play? Shaw’s Pygmalion was a smash hit on stage in its own right, and is still frequently revived to brilliant effect. Shaw didn’t want to see his play turned into a musical and insisted that it had its “own verbal music”. I am an admirer of the play and have seen it performed several times, and to me, anyway, My Fair Lady in the main stays true to that verbal music. It keeps a lot of Shaw’s own dialogue and strongly satiric flavour, and shows the extent of the class divide in Britain at that time. Maybe the portrayal of Eliza’s drunken father, Alfred Doolittle, is somewhat softened through the great comic songs performed by Stanley Holloway, such as I’m Getting Married In the Morning – but this is still a man who is prepared to sell his daughter to a stranger for £5.
I don’t really think the character Higgins is softened at all between Shaw’s play and Lerner’s screenplay – he is still just as fiercely irascible and determined to win every argument, and the patter songs, reportedly written with Harrison’s instantly recognisable voice in mind, are full of brilliant but often cruel wit. I do think Harrison and Hepburn make a rather strange couple on film, with the 21-year age gap between them – plus the fact that he doesn’t really look like a movie leading man. Hepburn and Jeremy Brett, playing the lovelorn Freddy Eynsford-Hill, make a much more glamorous couple. (Brett’s singing voice was dubbed too, but nobody worried about that!) You can understand why Jack Warner was tempted to replace Harrison simply on the basis of his age and looks.
But, of course, Higgins and Eliza are meant to be an odd couple – and the way they are dressed through much of the film, with Eliza in her beautiful gowns and Higgins in his old jacket, certainly accentuates that. The film really brings out the fact that, although Higgins thinks he can train Eliza to pass in “society”, he himself is just as out of place there as she is – his mother is horrified when he turns up at Ascot because he is wearing the wrong clothes, and he offends all her friends every time he opens his mouth. I’ve seen the film described as a “misogynist’s dream . It is certainly true that Higgins has many hurtful lines and indeed two whole songs sneering at women – I’m an Ordinary Man and A Hymn to Him (Why Can’t a Woman Be More Like a Man?). But I’d say the saving grace here is that both these songs rebound and really end up satirising Higgins rather than women – he is clearly anything but an “ordinary man” who never flies into a rage, and devoted friend Colonel Pickering (Hyde-White) constantly has the task of calming him down.
Nevertheless, it’s a strange thing that in a film usually regarded as a romance so many of the songs are about hate rather than love. Even Higgins’ only love song, I’ve Grown Accustomed to Her Face, is full of angry imaginings about how he’d like to see Eliza suffer for leaving him – and she in turn imagines a dire fate for him in Just You Wait, before triumphantly and sarcastically vowing her independence in Without You.
I do find the happy ending, adapted from one reluctantly written by Shaw himself for the 1938 film of Pygmalion, rather hard to take – why would Eliza go back to Henry so soon after vowing that she will never do so? Shaw’s original ending with Eliza planning to marry Freddy is more believable, if less romantic. Instead, she comes back as Higgins is listening to his recording of her voice – and, rather than embracing her, he coolly asks where his slippers are. Behind the infuriating chauvinism, in effect Higgins is inviting Eliza to throw the slippers at him again, as she did earlier. You get the feeling that any married life for this couple will be extremely lively, to say the least.
There have been rumours of a remake starring either Carey Mulligan or Keira Knightley as Eliza, but I haven’t heard anything about this for a long time. To be honest I’m not holding my breath, and I find it hard to believe it could live up to the 1960s version.
How My Fair Lady made the ‘Elite 70′:
Judy Geater’s No. 10 choice
Sam Juliano’s No. 25 choice
Pat Perry’s No. 42 choice
Dennis Polifroni’s No. 54 choice
Greg Ferrara’s No. 70 choice
“My Fair Lady has one of the greatest scores of any musical, by Lerner and Lowe, with many songs which have become standards, such as With a Little Bit of Luck, Wouldn’t It Be Loverly and On the Street Where You Live. It is also one of the most gorgeous musicals to look at, making full use of Super Panavision, with its dazzling Cecil Beaton costumes and colourful sets.”
These are quite my own sentiments too Judy. I also fancied the infectious “I Could Have Danced All Night” and a few others. It’s certainly gorgeous to look at and Beaton’s work is superlative. Anyway, your entire piece is fascinating and enthralling. I absolutely loved that response that Cary Grant gave Jack Warner about not even seeing the film if Harrison wasn’t cast in the lead. Ha! But you again come to table fully equipped to discuss the film, what with those numerous stage versions under your belt. I never myself took the kind of issue that some others did in regard to Marni Nixon’s dubbing. It’s part of the musical process, and I never saw it as a compromise on the performances. Julie Andrews may well have deserved the part, but as it turned out Audrey Hepburn was still enchanting to a fair (couldn’t resist) degree. Great discussion of the songs, George Cukor, PYGMALION and of some vital comparisons between the way the characters are shown to be on stage and on screen.
This is truly a master class presentation of MY FAIR LADY from a person who has a long and glorious history of the work.
Bravo, Hudy!
Thank you very much for the over-kind comments, Sam, which, as ever, are much appreciated! Glad to hear that you like this musical too and agree it is gorgeous to look at.
I find it a bit odd that this one particular example of dubbing is criticised so much, but loads of other actors who had their voices dubbed in films get away without the same controversy – even in this film, nobody worries about Brett’s voice being dubbed! Also it may be just as well for ‘Mary Poppins’ fans that Andrews didn’t get this part, since she would probably have struggled to find time to do both. Thanks again, Sam.
Julie Andrews was never considered for the part of Eliza Doolittle in the screen adaptation because asshole Jack Warner wanted a star. He cared nothing of talent or creating a new star with Andrews and, by your own admition, wanted to strip the entire production of the stage originals by putting Cary Grant in the role of Higgins (actually, I would have liked to see that as I always loved Cary Grant). This was Warner just trying to cash in on a property that was white hot before anyone else could get their hands on it. By putting big stars in the roles he guaranteed hug receipts at the box office and he could push it even further by influencing (or bullying) the Academy into submission for the big wins at the end of the year. Warner was also a good pal of Cuckor’s and he could help his friend get the attention that had, for so long, passed him by, and tether a subserviant henchman to his big money-making project.
Disney, on the other hand, flew to New York with his wife to see MY FAIR LADY (they were both avid fans of stage musicals and traveled monthly to NYC to see what was popping up on the stage) and immediately recognized talent. He loved the way Andrews whistled (in the marbles in the mouth sequence), and offered the part of Mary Poppins to her on the spot even though this meant massive rewrites in his already labored-upon script (the original casting of Mary poppin’s was going to go to Mary Martin-who said no because of her obligation to PETER PAN on stage and because she felt she didn’t look good on screen-or Bette Davis-who was closer to the descriptions of the character in the books and would have been dubbed for the msical portions of the film). Disney didn’t want any dubbing in his film if it wasn’t necessary, was in love with Andrews from the first meeting (in his many biographies it’s notated that he and his wife found her “utterly charming”) and loved the idea of creating a star.
One of the funniest moments in the history of Awards for film came in 1965 when the Golden Globes gave there awards out for the year 1964 and, as predicted, Julie Andrews strutted to the podium as Best Actress for MARY POPPINS. When she took the award, she smiled and said: “this award would not be mine if it weren’t for the visions and the decisions of one great man…” Then she smiled at the audience, and went on to say: “Thank you so much for this… JACK WARNER!”
Promply sticking the Golden Globe up the morons ass…
Yet, Dennis, it could be reasonably argued that Hepburn’s performance, dubbing warts and all was as fine as Andrews’, who was frankly miscast. The role of Mary Poppins never played to her outgoing strengths, and she was far better in THE SOUND OF MUSIC.
Her strengths?
Her strengths were in singing and vocalizing and if that is the criteria that we base Andrews on (along with acting while performing the musical numbers, or dancing, rather professionally I might add, to the music numbers), then she is head and shoulders better than Hepburn in MY FAIR LADY. Hepburn was chosen by Jack Warner because she was a glamour girl that made any costume look good and because she was an out and out star whereas Andrews had never made a film before.
As for Andrews acting in MARY POPPINS…
What would you like her to do? She played the no fuss-no muss nanny exactly the way it was written in the book and, in the fantasy sequences, came to life as the juxtapose to the more stoic version of the character when in the house performing her domestic job. She balances the acting with the singing and dancing perfectly and without any sweat to her brow and she steals every number she is in in the film. As for dramatics, I refer you to her heart-felt moment where she sings “feed the birds” to Jane and Micheal and, literally, reduces the audience (as well as Disney who said the song was his absolute favorite from the film) to tears.
In my mind, this was one of the rare instances where the Academy had a two in a row performer primed for back to back Oscars. Andrews deservedly won that statue for MARY POPPINS and she SHOULD HAVE won it the following year, as well, for her showstopper in THE SOUND OF MUSIC.
But, let the numbers do the talking here…
I see Hepburn and MY FAIR LADY banking in on the count in the No. 37 position. You wanna bet that Julie Andrews and MARY POPPINS and Julie Andrews and THE SOUND OF MUSIC absolutely show up on this count in higher positions????
Fact is, there is no way you can compare Hepburns lip-syncing and call it good when she’s up against the greatest feamale musical star the screen has ever seen (and I mean star of musicals with great singing voices, ability to dance and balance a dramatic performance at the same time-Debbie Reynolds was good but her voice was only so-so, Ginger Rodgers could dance and play the part but her voice was only adequate-get the picture?). The requirement of Hepburn in MY FAIR LADY is to recite her lines and look good in the costumes. There are no big dance numbers for her like Andrews has to balance in MARY POPPINS. There are no real technical dificulties for Hepburn in MY FAIR LADY unlike the challenges Andrews went through acting to nothing before the animation was brought in for the JOLLY HOLIDAY number. And Hepburn didn’t have to give a performance while dangling from flight cables the way Andrews had to in the I LOVE TO LAUGH sequence or whenever Mary floats on or off the screen.
And, the critics have basically spoken all they have to say about the performances as well. The reviews for Andrews in MARY POPPINS were glowing and both the Golden Globes and the Oscars labored their admiration for her perfromance on her with what amounts to two very attractive book ends on her mantle piece…
And Andrews was NOT miscast…
Other than the age difference between the character in the book and the character in the film, she was perfectly cast and no less an authority on the character, the books author (who was also Disney’s closest consultant on the film version) P.L. Travers , LOVED Andrews in the role…
MY FAIR LADY made my No. 54 choice utterly by accident.
When I was writing out the original ballot I just quickly jotted down 50 titles of the most beloved and respected and thought to leave it at that under the impression that SAM was writing every review. THEN, as always, SAM asked for alterations to the ballot and announced he was looking for writers to contribute their views to the films that made the count, asked for 75 titles, and I started shifting and adding/deleting.
It’s funny, but when you look at things long enough you really do miss the mistakes. Had I known I was about to commit a blunder like the one in slot No 54, I’d have just taken the long route and rewrote the entire ballot from the ground floor up.
NOW, I don’t want Judy to be insulted as this isn’t directed at her or her well written and enthusiastic essay on a film she obviously admires… HOWEVER, MY FAIR LADY is that one screen musical that I was in love with when I first saw it, couldn’t get enough, a rewatched enough times till the flaws started to pile up on my head so heavily that I though I was gonna have to go out and buy a fuckin’ hat.
Frankly, this might be one of the most tedious and unimaginatively directed RESPECTED films in the canon of cinema and screen musicals and absolutely one of the worst choices that the Academy EVER made when selecting the BEST PICTURE winner for 1964 (it beat out, among other films, the better musical MARY POPPINS and, in a SCREW YOU that is mind boggling, Stanley Kubrick’s DR. STRANGELOVE, inarguably the greatest black-comedy in the history of cinema and one of the most visually visionary films of that decade).
George Cuckor was an old, OLD man by the time MY FAIR LADY was put together and released and it’s obvious, when you look at the images on screen, that he was taking no chances in transfering the success of the stage to the screen. There is no vitality or ingenuity to any of the visual aspects of the film. Basically, Cuckor is picking his framing, locking the camera in place and letting the actors, set designers, costumers and lighting guys do the rest. This is hysterically buy-the-numbers movie-making and it’s clear that Cuckor did it this way to cash in on the success of the stage hit and to procure that Oscar for BEST DIRECTOR that had passed him up so many times in the past based on the popularity of the title alone.
The casting is the next nail in the cross that is this films crucifixion of the audience. While you have to give applause to Stanley Halloway as Eliza’s druken father (recreating his role from the London stage), and Gladys Cooper is hysterically funny as Higgin’s no fuss mother, it’s the two leads that sink this boat worse than the iceberg that tanked the Titanic.
That Warner Brothers snubbed Julie Andrews for the non-singing Audrey Hepburn is laughable. Hepburn couldn’t sing, is not believable in her mouthing of the lyrics and too old and not wildly sexual enough for the role that Wendy Hiller nailed in the dramatic version of PYGMALION. Andrews was primed for the role as she was the original casting for the stage and she made her name there with this part. But, history and fate has a way of correcting stupidity and Andrews won a richly deserved Oscar for her performance as the no-nonsense magical nanny with the tremendous singing voice in MARY POPPINS (stick that on up your ass Jack Warner). Walt Disney had a much keaner ear for musical talent and that should go without saying…
Rex Harrison, while fine in his dialoque sequences, butchers the songs he’s featured in with his wording and inability to even attempt to sing a note. WHY CAN’T THE ENGLISH LEARN TO SPEAK, Higgins big solo number, is a train wreck that could empty a movie house if it were performed today in that manner. Hearing it again, recently, reminded me of dogs howling and cats screetching. Fine, he’s got a few moments of snobby comedy in the film that he effortlessly handles with the bravado of a seasoned pro-but if the Academy had to give Rex Harrison an Oscar for that kind of thing then they should have looked more closely at him a few years earlier in Preston Sturges most perfect use of the actor in UNFAITHFULLY YOURS.
Sure, I can say the set and costumes are pretty and, at least in the raceway sequence, slightly creative, but, for the most part this is a mediocre production through and through with A-listed backing and designed to get the 60 year old and up members of the Academy in a froth over more visionary and verbal statement works like DR STRANGELOVE.
This one has a lot of admires of it. I like a lot of the parts but cannot take the overall product.
So, let’s go, I’m ready, start ripping into me…
At least I know Allan is on my side with this one…
I just think this film is so over-praised it ridiculous…
Sorry, Judy, nothing against your terrific essay….
Dennis, wow… so you’re not a big fan of this movie, then? Glad you like some of the parts, anyway, and thanks for the kind comments on my essay! Although I love this film, as you will have gathered, I know what you mean about going back to a movie and finding it doesn’t live up to your memories – that has happened to me with some, and vice versa with others which seem much better to me now than I thought from previous viewings.
Cukor was 64 when he directed this – not all that ancient in my book!:) (And he made ‘Travels with My Aunt’, which I like, a few years later.) I do take your point about him standing back as director and letting the musical numbers run, but to be honest I like that – it helps to give a feeling of what it would be like to see it on stage with these actors. Also, as RD says below, Harrison insisted on recording his numbers live rather than lip-synching, so I think they tried to get them complete on the first take where possible. I like his exasperated style of patter song, but have to take your point that it isn’t really singing.
But, that’s the whole point Judy. The film succeeds despite of itself and it should be able to go further…
The score and the songs and the legions of fans that would watch Hepburn read a phone book in a potato sack are what made MY FAIR LADY the hit it was and DR. STRANGELOVE made it the Oscar winner it is today.
When taking the the stage to the screen the point is not just to replicate what was on the stage, but to break the barriers of the stage and fan out as well. Look at AMADEUS or WEST SIDE STORY or,Christ, even CHICAGO for that matter. These films take the souce material and expand, both visually and plot-wise to create an even more detailed experience in getting to know the character and the places they come from. The kind of direction that Cuckor is doing (and from what I understand, with his drinking and partying like a gay kid let loose at SPLASH on College Boi Go-Go night, he was a very OLD 64 years) flies in the face of ingenuity and making the property the directors own. It’s the kind of work that insures the least amount of imagination and the highest form of replication. If you want just the basics of the play and solid renditions of the songs then Cuckor was right to do it this way (actually, his AND Jack Warner’s way). But, setting the camera in place, yelling action and then going out to lunch is not the way to take a project further and no way to put your indelible stamp on the piece yourself as a director.
Some will say that the intimacy of the stage is rare to achieve on the screen but I say that’s bullshit and if a director really knows what he’s doing then he can replicate one while achieving a totally new visual experience at the same time. AMADEUS is one of the best examples of this as Milos Forman both carried over the intimacy the audience experienced with the stage play and then, wisely, had Peter Shaffer come in and write additional sequences and scenes to blow out the second, third and fourth wall and take it to the real world. I’ve seen AMADEUS on stage and it’s a wonderful experience, but the movie is a far bigger, more totally engaging work that not only puts you in the environment of the character but gets you closer to understanding the emotions of the charcaters even better. Cuckor was just a frightened rabbit by the time MY FAIR LADY had come along and played this one real safe.
DR. STRANGELOVE brought MY FAIR LADY the Oscar as much as Lerner and Loew’s score did. STRANGELOVE was nominally regarded as best film of 1964, critically, and the film had legions of fans (basically the under 40 crowd and a huge hit with the college set and the beatnicks) and that scared the shit out of the conservative Academy. A black comedy about the retardation of government, the military and the threat of Nuclear holocaust? Or, how about this “by-the-numbers”, safe musical that threatens nothing and asks nothing?
Ummmmmmmmmm…..
No brainer.
MY FAIR LADY wins the Oscar…
Listen, I love the score and the songs as much as the next guy or girl listening to it. I admit the film has it’s moments and I will watch it when it’s on TCM and I’m at work on a slow night deciding between it and episodes of HILLBILLY HAND FISHIN”…
But this film is a like a paint by numbers of Van Gogh’s “Starry Night” rather than a high-schoolers hand painted reimagining of the classic painting…
It’s good, but it’s not great…
Ah ha! I forgot that MY FAIR LADY’s win at the Oscars deprived Kubrick. But the Academy still would not have given the top prize to Kubrick without MY FAIR LADY in the picture. I bet it would have been POPPINS or BECKET with their mind set. R.D. Finch “embalming” argument has a good deal of credence in regards to Cukor’s direction, but Lerner and Loews’ glorious music trumps all and the performances are dead on. For me that’s more than enough for this kind of film.
I see where some of that indignation is now.
SAM-
YES. You are absolutely correct that Kubrick’s film had less than a snowball’s chance in hell as the stodgey and highly conservative Academy was scared shitless by the idea of Kubrick and Southern’s (as in screenwriter Terry Southern) rap against the government and military machine. But, that’s the reason it lost. Not because MY FAIR LADY was better. Cause it’s not…
MARY POPPINS was probably the next best choice if you weren’t going to go with Kubrick as it’s a musical that works on all cylinders because it was devised and created directly for the screen (so the challenge of adapting a stage presentation was not there and daunting, and the music was just a s beloved as MY FAIR LADY’S SCORE-it won the score and song award for CHIM CHIM CHEREE) and, in itself was ripe for bigger ingenuity and imagination. But, then we also forget that DOCTOR ZHIVAGO was also nominated for BEST PICTURE and the Academy could have easily gone with a giant travelogue epic directed by one of their favorites, the great David Lean (another safe bet along with the historical epic BECKET). Simply put, MY FAIR LADY was the only film in the running that required no thinking, has nothing original to say, or has no agenda outside of being a musical adaptation of an admired stage success.
MY FAIR LADY was the winner and it’s not so much about the music or the replication of the stage play. It was the big winner that year because it was NOT that “upstart” Kubrick and WAS Cuckor who had many friends in Hollywood and, particularly the Academy (most felt bad he had never won) and hadn’t been given entrance into that “elite” club his friends were already partying in. MY FAIR LADY is a safe stage adaptation and it doesn’t make ANY attempt to go further and become a “movie musical” this is why a films like THE SOUND OF MUSIC, WEST SIDE STORY or CHICAGO are the better stage to screen musicals as they do both, effortlessly and without scarring the source…
But, then again, the greatest screen musicals are the ones without boundaries, and nobody to answer to. They are the ones that just run and run and run and are guided only by where their imagination takes them. These are the musicals that are devised directly for the big screen and this is why a film like SINGIN IN THE RAIN or GOLD-DIGERS OF 1933 or TOP HAT or MARY POPPINS will always be seen as purer in this form and genre of the medium. Their palette is vaster and they have the ability to go anywhere their creators decide to take them.
Look at THE WIZARD OF OZ and you’ll see a perfect definition of what I’m getting at here when I say vast imagination and no barriers…
I don’t agree with Dennis (what else is new?) The Academy could care less about Cukor winning or not winning Oscars. Hitchcock and Grant never won. It had more with validating a beloved stage play, which was a huge hit with the public and the critics.
In 1964 this was seen as a great musical film.
Judy has worked miracles with her super-engaging review, filled with recollections and a long association.
PETER-
It’s true that the Academy liked MY FAIR LADY, but it’s win had more to do with brushing aside the better reviewed film, DR STRANGELOVE, which was causing a international stir in the movie going world.
The Academy DID care enough for Cuckor as well by giving him his lifetime acheivement award for MY FAIR LADY. It happoens all the time. When the Academy is trying to avoid a problem and they can find a scape-goat they always run with that ball. If your a much snubbed director, eventually they will get to you as long as you’ve basically played nice with them over the course of a few decades. Spielberg was like this. Scorsese was like this. Actors like Jeff Bridges, Paul Newman and John Wayne also benefitted from being a good boy and not ruffling the feathers as well.
Kubrick was a game changer and an up-start to the Academy and this is why his only Oscar was in the field of Special Effects in 1968 for 2001 A SPACE ODYSSEY (which was the hands down best film of 1968 and one of the few films in films long history to actually shake the medium at the core). It’s only after many years after each of his films release that just about all of them are considered masterpieces in there respective genres and as the work of a visionary (I recall Allan, in an email to me, referring to him as the greatest American director post 1960 of them all).
MY FAIR LADY is a nice film. It;s parts outweigh it’s whole.
But, it was nowhere in the leaque with a film of importance and message like DR STRANGELOVE.
I am sorry but I don’t really buy it. I honesty don’t think Dr. Strangelove was ever a part of the awards equation. It was lucky to even get nominated. In 1964 the Academy was hell bent on My Fair Lady, which was the critical darling and a popular film with the audiences. Cukor directing it was incidental, and icing on the cake.
I’m surprised we’re all upset that the academy chose My Fair Lady as if the Academy ever gets it right. Rare is the occasion that they’ve had the forsight and the guts to pick the dangerous/innovative film. I don’t put any stock into the Academy awards and using My Fair Lady’s win to overemphasize it’s drawbacks seems to be redundant. I also don’t recall anyone ever putting this into the Respected category of cinema.
Judy, that was a most engaging article – one that made me want to watch the film again, even though I haven’t seen it in 20+ years.
Dennis, your arguments for me don’t stand up. The Academy Awards mean jack all in the history of the art and craft of film.
I’d say that that it is debatable that ‘Dr. Strangelove’ is the best black comedy, I’d place ‘Kind Hearts and Cornets’ in the same bracket. Maybe not your cuppa tea!
Also, you seem to be making a case for Kubrick as the “upstart” – which seems like you making a straw man to knock down with the Oscars – when during this most turbulent decade, they chose escapism again and again. There were also ‘Oliver’ and ‘The Sound of Music’. Both done by old pros.
More likely the Academy chose ‘My Fair Lady’ because people were looking for something safe and familiar after the recent Cuban Missile Crisis and the Kennedy assassination (which in some quarters – hedged on by the authorities, was being blamed Cuba and the Soviets). Hardly likely to get the vote for a film about the end of the world.
It’s never being about the art and craft of film, the Oscars were created to stifle and give a sop to the various guilds being established.
BOBBY J-
I totally agree with you that tthe Oscars are often skeptic-inducing. However, where they weren’t likely to go with a film as bleak as DR STRANGELOVE (or as great), they had more than their share of better escapist entertainment than MY FAIR LADY in the nominations. MARY POPPINS was a better all-around film and musical and the Academy went against it and all the other nominations because of the popularity of the stage play (not a good reason), because of the pressures and wining and dining Jack Warner was hitting the Academy over the head with to get it the prize (not a good reason) and because Cuckor was an old bird that never got a chance to nest with the big birds that were already occupying branches of that elite tree (really not a good reason).
If the Academy were about merit, artistic expression and visionary film-making, then Kubrick would have taken the PICTURE and DIRECTOR categories in a landslide. The Academy is about preserving their “people” and, say what you want, Stanley was NEVER one of their people. Art has nothing to do with the Academy particularly in the BEST PICTURE and DIRECTOR races, and, sometimes as well in the acting categories. In this case, of the five big cetegories, the only one they seem to have gotten right was the BEST ACTRESS category.
As for DR STRANGELOVE being the best Black Comedy of them all over KIND HEARTS AND CORONETS, I love them both, but STRANGELOVE has me laughing out loud whereas there are long stretches in KIND HEARTS that play more like melodrama than comedy at all. As for the Ealing comedies, I like KIND HEARTS well enough, but prefer the more raucously funny THE LAVANDER HILL MOB.
Thank you very much, Bobby – hope you enjoy the film if you do watch it again. Interesting comments about the Oscars choosing escapism again and again in the 1960s, and about the reasons for them being created.
Peter, thanks for the over-the-top praise – much appreciated.:) And I agree that the love for the stage play goes together with the love for the film.
A wonderfully smooth, engaging, and observant essay. One of the pleasant surprises of the musical countdown has been the extent to which the different writers focus on the history of these productions. I wonder if this says something about musical fans, since the medium is so prone to remakes and adaptations and various versions, and what with songs coming in and out of different plays and movies – it’s a very hybrid, souped-up form.
Dennis’ comment cracks me up and is one of my all-time favorites of his. While not sharing his level of indignation, I too don’t find the movie very engaging and despite being a Hepburn fan the whole thing seems a bit dead, though the songs are catchy and Harrison is fun. Dennis is probably right about Cukor, and this tradition continues today – Oscar waits and waits to reward directors and actors for relative mediocrities (I thought The Departed was great fun, but c’mon, after a dozen or so more worthy films? And, while vaguely amusing, wasn’t it fairly condescending to have Coppola, Lucas, and Spielberg present the Oscar as if now Marty was finally allowed into “the club”? And hell, what if some other director had won? I’d name another nominee here but I can’t even remember who was nominated that year so forgettable are Oscars’ choices. /Digression & rant)
But very nice piece.
Thanks very much, Joel – must agree that musicals do seem to be very fluid in the way they come together. I like your description of the medium as a “hybrid, souped-up form.”
On the Oscars, I haven’t followed them all that closely but they are often a mystery to me – must agree that it seems as if directors and actors often get the awards for the wrong film, and often it is a case of waiting until late in someone’s career and then desperately giving them a gong for something which doesn’t match their earlier work.
Judy, a lovely and loving review. I too became familiar with the wonderful score, one of the all-time great collection of songs for a Broadway musical–surely only “West Side Story” and a couple of the Rodgers & Hammerstein musicals are its equals–from the original cast album. Which led me to the opinion that Marni Nixon’s vocals in the movie are too perfect and too anonymous to put across the emotions in the songs as effectively as Julie Andrews did. I think even Audrey Hepburn’s singing voice, despite its limited range, would have been preferable. At least it would have sounded authentic. I have nothing but admiration for the musical play the film is based on, and Judy I think you covered all its fine qualities thoroughly. I love the 1938 version of “Pygmalion,” but I think the musical film stands in its own right and is a great complement to it. I also thought the Covent Garden set was remarkably realistic looking, although not so much so after I saw “Frenzy.” But I have to say that Dennis’s criticisms of Cukor’s direction are right on the mark. Cukor was a great director, but he makes this film seem at times almost embalmed. He treats the material so reverentially and his style seems so impersonal that he keeps this from being the great musical film it might have been. The film succeeds in spite of his professional but uninspired direction.
As for Hepburn, I love her, she’s one of my favorites, and I think she turns in a remarkable performance. I remember Pauline Kael criticized her casting, saying that because everyone was already familiar with her polished, ladylike screen image, the transformation didn’t hold any surprise. I must say she had a point, especially if you think of Wendy Hiller’s performance in the same light. Still, I found Hepburn enchanting and very convincing as the Cockney flower girl, even though I knew in advance she would “scrub up” just fine. Harrison, of course, got the role of a lifetime, and he made the most of it. Of the great supporting cast, I’m especially fond of Stanley Holloway, even if his character has been softened to bring it more in line with audience expectations for a musical comedy. But then I like Holloway in everything. He and Margaret Rutherford are my favorite British character actor and actress. A few years ago the US cable channel AMC showed a documentary (narrated by Jeremy Brett) on the restoration of “My Fair Lady” and it was a delight. One of the revelations was that Harrison told Cukor he couldn’t lip sync the songs, that they would work only if recorded live, so he was fitted with a tiny microphone that fit on his lapel. If you look very closely, you can see it. Anyway, just a fine, fine post, Judy.
R.D., thanks for this wonderfully detailed comment, and for the encouragement. I do agree that Andrews puts more emotion into the songs than Nixon does – it is also very interesting to hear Hepburn’s versions, which again get the emotion even if she doesn’t have the technical virtuosity of the other two. I’ll add a link to one of her numbers from Youtube in a minute. I like Holloway a lot too.
I think that AMC documentary may be on the two-DVD sets of ‘My Fair Lady’, but I’m resisting those as I already have the film in a Audrey Hepburn box set. The DVD which I own does have a commentary giving a lot of detail about the restoration, but unfortunately I found it very difficult to listen to and gave up after a while. For some reason they haven’t turned down the sound of the movie very much while they are speaking, so you have a few pundits talking quietly below the songs! However, they did say about Harrison recording the songs live in the commentary too, and they keep pointing out the tiny microphone, though I must admit I couldn’t see it!
Here is a link to Audrey Hepburn’s own vocal of ‘Without You’, synched to the film by a Youtube poster going under the name Lostvocals, who specialises in this kind of thing – she also has a video of Hepburn’s vocals for ‘I Could Have Danced All Night’ and a complete version of ‘Just You Wait’.
http://www.youtube.com/user/lostvocals4#p/search/2/QQonS7wLqG4
Here’s another link, to Hepburn’s own vocal of ‘Wouldn’t It Be Loverly?’
Judy–
This is a fabulous addition to your great review and spirited comment section!! Hepburn is better than I figured she would be, but we can see why Marni stepped in. That’s one of my favorite songs in the score, but I’m hardly alone on that point!
Sam, thanks – for some reason the first of my two links, to Without You, didn’t embed properly, so I will try it again!
Good, it worked that time! As I said above, the same Youtube poster, Lostvocals, has also put up Audrey’s vocals of ‘Just You Wait’ and ‘I Could Have Danced All Night’. I do like her singing although it obviously isn’t technically as good as Marni.
Judy, I found this to be one of your most appealing and informative essays (I was unaware of Cecil Beaton’s involvement). As I mentioned in another comment this is one of those musicals I have not seen though as you mention the score contains many well known standards. God knows on how many variety shows back in the day entertainers included On the Street Where You Live, I Could have Danced All Night, I’m Getting Married in the Morning and Wouldn’t it be Loverly and others as part of their songbook.
The Andrews snub was big news here too, true she wasn’t the big star she would soon become, but actually she got the last laugh with the success of Mary Poppins, though I would think it has irked her over the years that she never got the role. Great job here Judy!
John, thanks very much – sounds like we agree on the greatness of the score. Apparently Cecil Beaton tried to make out he had more involvement than he did. Gene Allen says in the commentary on the DVD that Beaton tried to make people think he had done the set/art design for both the stage show and the film, whereas in fact he had only done the costumes for both – Allen did the set design for the film and didn’t appreciate Beaton’s attitude! But anyway the costumes were something to be proud of in themselves. Julie Andrews has published her autobiography and I believe she wrote it herself rather than using a ghostwriter, so it would be interesting to see from that what she has to say about this whole controversy.
Judy, your account is an intriguing and very well presented look at the business preoccupations and craft components of bringing onstream a potential gold mine. Not being a musical connoisseur and having very little interest in prizes and such, I liked My Fair Lady for its clash between smug, ruling class intellectualism and physical graces (including vocal accents). That those graces are distilled for the sake of petty advantages leaves the film, for me at least, a plush display of asserting ultimately horrific priorities. From this perspective, I think the film needed Audrey to show vivid glimpses of the treasures being smothered, and the quirkiness of the struggle.
Great comment, Jim, as ever – I always have to read your comments several times and think them over to really take them in, and I always learn something! Shaw was fully aware of those horrific priorities and satirising them, but I suppose the glossiness of the film might offer a temptation to overlook that at times, although I think the satire of the class system is inescapably there. Your description of Hepburn’s performance here is absolutely right, that she “shows vivid glimpses of the treasures being smothered” – the flashes of Cockney wit in the midst of all her ladylike scenes do just that. Thanks very much.
Judy,
I can sense your love of the film in your excellent write-up. Great to read it. This is an enjoyable musical, one which I do appreciate on different levels. The music is very fine as are the sets and costumes. I think the placement of around 40ish is right in my opinion. I would absolutely adore this film if they had allowed Audrey to sing. I think it would have elevated the film. Myself, I am not a fan at all of dubbing in musicals. Let people sing and if you’re not, then get someone else who will sing. I think this was not a good move to have Audrey dubbed. This is also a problem I have with West Side Story, although that film has a lot more going for it. I admit it’s a big distraction for me, though I still like the film. I much prefer Funny Face though if we’re talking Hepburn in a musical, mostly for these reasons.
I want to make note though, that I actually prefer Wendy Hiller’s performance in Pygmalion (1938) as Eliza. I think she’s one of the most underrated actresses of all time.
JON-
Absolutely on WENDY HILLER. I recently borrowed Sam’s CRITERION version of that Anthony Asquith/Leslie Howard directed film version of Bernard Shaw’s play and could not agree with you more on Hiller’s performance. She is a bomb of muted sexuality and a pure, violently apposed innocent to the mandates of the polite society she has left herself to be changed by. Her moments with Howard (the difinative Higgins on screen) have a smoldering, often funny dynamic to them and they all hint at building love. Hiller has been a revelation in just about every major film she has done and personal favorites of mine after PYGMALION include her Oscar winning turn in SEPERATE TABLES, her work in Powell and pressburgers I KNOW WHERE I’M GOING (which I screened at home just last week) and her devastating turn as Thomas Moore’s put-upon wife in A MAN FOR ALL SEASONS.
Sorrily, she was never used as much on screen as she should have been.
Eliza Doolittle is her role, her best one and I get a quesy stomach when people immediately associate the part with the mediocre Hepburn in MY FAIR LADY. PYGMALION is available for viewing on YOUTUBE for anyone who has not seen it, and would like to see it for free, and I’m including the link for the film right here below…
Jon, you are spot on on this point, methinks….
Dennis yes we are on the same page! Hiller is F***** amazing in everything. I’ll even add Major Barbara to the list of her brilliant performances. Though the film is not as good as her performance, it’s another one of her brilliant turns. Yes she was used more as a stage actress. I love her!
Thanks, Jon – I’m also a fan of ‘Funny Face’ and should really have put it higher in my list, as I belatedly realised after watching it again recently. I like Hepburn’s singing in that and agree with you that she could have done it in MFL too if they had just lowered the key a little. I admire Wendy Hiller’s performance in ‘Pygmalion’ too, but my problem with that film is Leslie Howard, as I find him a hard actor to warm to, somehow. Anyway, thanks very much again.
When it comes to elegance and melodic tunes, I’d say this stands with the best of them. It’s not perfect because of the dubbed voices, but it’s never less than delightful. I kind of think Julie Andrews would have been the text book Eliza, but I still don’t think one could seriously criticize Hepburn as an actress.
I agree with everyone else that Judy Geater has written as enjoyable a review as any that has appeared in the countdown.
Frank, I agree Andrews would have been great, but at least we have the recording of her voice on the Broadway soundtrack as a glimpse of how she played the part . Thanks so much for the encouragement.:)
“I think in Britain in particular there was a feeling that Andrews had been robbed and had her part given to a Hollywood star. (She soon hit back with Mary Poppins.)”
The press throughout the USA really took the ball and ran with it: Much sentiment was stirred up for Julie Andrews when she lost the Eliza role to Hepburn. I remember reading the newspaper the day after the Oscars where the featured photo showed Jack Warner congratulating Andrews for her win while his back was turned on Hepburn. Whatever Andrews’s accomplishments were in Mary Poppins, her Oscar win was a sympathy vote if there ever was one. The press made out Hepburn to be the “bad girl” in this affair, though this never really succeeded because of her immense popularity.
Hepburn would’ve been fine had her voice been used, but such occurrences just weren’t being done at the time.
I find the film version to be elegant but flat. It seems its popular and critical success at the time was a foregone, obligatory conclusion because the times were as they were.
Thanks for the interesting article.
It’s interesting that this was also a controversy in the USA – thanks, Pierre. Interesting about that photo of Jack Warner, too, turning his back on his own casting decisions! I do wonder if Andrews might have been cast if Cary Grant had gone for the Higgins role – that way they would still have had the mix of Hollywood and Broadway. I agree it would have been good if Hepburn’s own voice had been used – but, as you say, there was a lot of dubbing then, and I do think she brings her own qualities to the role anyway. Thanks very much for your comments.
Regarding that photo, Warner turning his back on Hepburn was inadverdent, no doubt, but whoever wrote the caption tried to make something of it.
All this goes to show how important casting is. What would All About Eve have been if Claudette Colbert hadn’t been injured on the set of another film? I suppose the best example of casting would be Scarlett O’Hara and David O. Selznick’s seemingly obsessive quest to cast the perfect actress in that role. GWTW just wouldn’t have been the same with Hepburn, Davis, Goddard, etc. For that matter, we have an inkling of what that film would’ve been had Cukor remained as director: A you may know, black-and-white outtakes of Leigh as Scarlett — while Cukor was still at the helm — have been kicking around for years that show a deeper, darker version of Scarlett
I love My Fair Lady and consider it to be one of the best two or three musicals ever made–as a play. The film, while very enjoyable, comes off as being rather stilted. Most of the elements are there, but lack a certain “life” to them. All one has to do is listen to the score’s last incarnation before the movie was made: i.e. the original London cast recording. It is full of life, punch, and verve–qualities that many of the film’s musical numbers are lacking, and I place most of the blame on both Audrey and Marni Nixon.
Audrey’s cockney accent sounds forced, and is forced, and it undermines her effectiveness in the first half of the movie. She is definitely better in the second half when she can get back to ner natural accent, albeit not a British one.
Marni Nixon’s recordings have several problems: she doesn’t sound like Audrey’s speaking voice (a major flaw), her vocals aren’t emotionally strong (compare Marni’s rather tepid interpretations with Julie Andrews’ impassioned ones) and often don’t match Audrey’s stronger body language. Finally, Audrey’s lip-syncing is not spot-on and would NOT have passed muster in the golden era of the American musical. They may have had their faults, but sloppy lip synching was usually not one of them.
As for Dr. Strangelove, I’ve only seen the last hour or so of the film (I’ve never been able to catch the whole thing from the beginning), and didn’t find it to be very compelling. BUT, it’s certainly true that in that era the Academy usually honored the big-budget, big-production, prestige film over movies with more cutting-edge themes and execution–in hindsight not necessarily a bad thing, considering the filth that’s been coming out of Hollywood ever since. I agree with Dennis that as much as I enjoy My Fair Lady, Mary Poppins is the better-executed of the two. It has vitality, an engaging score, and an excellent performance from Julie Andrews (Dick Van Dyke’s accent was the weak spot here). While My Fair Lady is enjoyable and beautiful to look at, it strikes me that the creators were so determined not up screw up its quality and prestige, that the production wound up being an act of preservation rather than a living, breathing, work of art.
Thank you for your thoughtful comments, Tom, much appreciated. I’m very familiar with the Broadway cast recording, but, although I’m British, I don’t think I’ve heard the original London recording, and in any rate not for many years – I must put that right. I have seen other productions, including a West End revival, and do agree that the musical is at its greatest on stage, but the film version has grown on me and I do find it very enjoyable.
I’d agree that Nixon’s singing voice isn’t a very good fit with Hepburn’s speaking voice, but I still think Hepburn gives a fine performance despite the problem of the dubbing. Must say I love Dick Van Dyke in ‘Mary Poppins’, despite his terrible Cockney accent!