by Chris Marshall:
I don’t know whether or not I agree with Roger Ebert’s
assessment that My Fair Lady is one
of the greatest of all musicals, but I will admit that it has a certain charm
to it, a great deal of which is attributable to its lead actors. Audrey Hepburn
and Rex Harrison may seem like an odd couple on the surface, but as it turns
out, they have a great deal of chemistry.
Hepburn, as Eliza Doolittle, sells flowers on the streets
and is from the lowest of the lower classes. Henry Higgins, or ‘Ennery ‘Iggins
as Eliza calls him, is a linguist/phonologist/speech pathologist who believes
that, in six months’ time, he can train anybody to speak “properly.” Higgins
bets a fellow linguist, Pickering, that he will be successful.
Contrary to popular belief, though, or at least contrary to my belief, the speech lessons are not
originally Higgins’s idea. Instead, Eliza seeks him out for lessons, believing
that she will never be able to work in a flower shop unless she changes the way
she speaks. She even offers to pay, although she can only afford to pay one
shilling per lesson. Here is where the bet comes into play. Because Higgins won’t
do it for such a low price, Pickering offers to pay for the lessons up front,
on the condition that Higgins can “change” her in six months.
The comedy—and it is a funny movie at times—comes mostly
from Eliza’s lower-class roots appearing at the most inopportune times. Higgins
decides to take her to a horse race, even though they’ve only been working
together a short period of time, and the excitement of the race overstimulates
her, leading to her completely breaking character. It’s a nice moment and one
of several genuine laughs the movie provides.
As the film progresses, it becomes something of a love story
between the two, although these feelings are covert and never stated directly. Their
main conflict is that Eliza feels like Henry thinks she’s beneath him, while
Henry, well, thinks that Eliza is beneath him. He’s a misanthrope and a
classist, and he doesn’t really feel any shame in that.
There was controversy surrounding My Fair Lady when it was filmed, mostly related to the casting of
Audrey Hepburn instead of Julie Andrews, who played Eliza on Broadway. However,
the producers felt that Hepburn was more marketable, so she was chosen instead.
Andrews, of course, had the last laugh, going on to win Best Actress for Mary Poppins and starring in next year’s
Best Picture winner, The Sound of Music.
Unfortunately, this semi-scandal drew attention away from
Hepburn, who was fantastic in the role. She was able to flawlessly switch
between “low” and “high” English, and her portrayal of Eliza’s evolution toward
being a high society woman was superb.
 |
| Eliza post-transformation. |
But the real unsung (pun unintended but left in because I
liked it so much) star of the film was Marni Nixon, who sang almost all of
Eliza’s songs. What’s more is that she was also the singing voice for Natalie
Wood in West Side Story and appeared
in The Sound of Music as well. Nixon
truly became the voice of the stars during this period, and of course she was
never fully appreciated for it, receiving only 0.5% of Leonard Bernstein’s
personal royalties for West Side Story.
I find it strange that Rex Harrison’s two most famous roles
involve the name “Do(o)little.” In this film, he teaches Eliza Doolittle how to
speak like a lady. But he also played the titular role in the original Dr. Dolittle. I wonder how much of a
link there really is between the two. Was he cast as Dr. Dolittle because the
producers of the film subconsciously linked him with that name? The world will
never know.
For what it’s worth, I discovered while writing this post
that Rex Harrison was a quite unpleasant man, so maybe that’s why he was so
convincing as Henry Higgins, himself an unpleasant man. Meanwhile, by almost
all accounts, Audrey Hepburn was a very pleasant person, just as Eliza was a
fundamentally decent woman in the movie. The old cliché says that life imitates
art, but I find that the best results often occur when art imitates life.
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