My Fair Lady (1964)

[Meganda]

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Title: My Fair Lady (1964)

Tagline: The loverliest motion picture of them all!

Genre: Romance, Drama, Music

Director: George Cukor

Cast: Audrey Hepburn, Rex Harrison, Stanley Holloway, Wilfrid Hyde-White, Gladys Cooper, Jeremy Brett, Theodore Bikel, Mona Washbourne, Isobel Elsom, John Holland, Colin Kenny, Bert Stevens, Frank Baker, Marjorie Bennett, Betty Blythe, Arthur Tovey, Marni Nixon, Al Bain, William Beckley, Lillian Kemble-Cooper, Henry Daniell, Brendan Dillon

Release: 1964-10-21

Runtime: 170

Plot: A snobbish phonetics professor agrees to a wager that he can take a flower girl and make her presentable in high society.

 

[Meganda]

This is for the Turkish serial version of Pygmalion which was a play by George Bernard Shaw, named after the Greek mythological figure. It premiered at the Hofburg Theatre in Vienna on 16 October 1913 and was first presented in German on stage to the public in 1913. The turkish serial is called Gönülçelen and can be found on Youtube with english subtitles titled Becoming a Lady. Story outline is a turkish gypsey flower girl with a rich turkish composer occuring in Istanbul.

 

[skylark]

That's very interesting! ^^^

For anyone interested, who's also good at looking up/locating stuff: Several years ago, I saw on TMC a version of "My Fair Lady" with Audrey Hepburn singing, with her own actual voice. Rather than the version with Marni Nixon's dubbed vocals.

I'd never known such recordings existed. Apparently, it was originally planned that Hepburn would do her own singing. My guess is that they wouldn't change the key for "I Could Have Danced All Night" -- or possibly they couldn't get permission for her to sing it in a lower key.

The thing is, I enjoyed the musical numbers more, with Hepburn singing. Her charm comes across, full force. There's always going to be a disconnect between two people's voices, even if it's just slight differences in tone or timbre. And her performance gained, in my humble opinion, from being all of a piece. Her singing and speaking voices gained integrity, subtlety and nuance.

It's a magical movie, and always worth a re-watch!

 

[Meganda]

Yes Audrey was a magnificent actress. I remember when that movie came out and everyone loved it. I'm not sure what version I originally saw, but she was endearing in it.

 

[iluvtodd]

I loved the movie (even though Julie Andrews wasn't in it - since she was involved with The Sound of Music & Mary Poppins). The musical is one of the greatest, ever (I'm a huge Lerner & Loewe, & Rodgers & Hammerstein fan). I thank my parents for exposing my brother & me to the original Broadway cast recordings of so many classic musicals. Audrey Hepburn is one of the great actresses of her time, no doubt!

 

[skylark]

Yes Audrey was a magnificent actress. I remember when that movie came out and everyone loved it. I'm not sure what version I originally saw, but she was endearing in it.

The version that was released to the public was the one where Marni Nixon's singing was dubbed into the songs, so that had to be the one you saw. I agree that Audrey's performance was both endearing and very, very skillful. From "Wouldn't It be Loverly" to "Just you Wait, 'Enry 'Iggins, Just you Wait" -- even though the singing wasn't her voice, her acting of the songs was so wonderful.

I read a bio of her called "Dutch Girl." About her childhood in Nazi-controlled Holland. It was really great.

 

[skylark]

I loved the movie (even though Julie Andrews wasn't in it - since she was involved with The Sound of Music & Mary Poppins). The musical is one of the greatest, ever I'm a huge Lerner & Loewe, & Rodgers & Hammerstein fan). I thank my parents for exposing my brother & me to the original Broadway cast recordings of so many classic musicals. Audrey Hepburn is one of the great actresses of her time, no doubt!

Yes, Julie starred in Mary Poppins, but that wasn't until after she'd been passed over for the part of Eliza. In her acceptance speech on winning the Golden Globe for her Poppins performance, she ended by thanking the man who'd made it possible -- "Mr. Jack Warner" -- because he'd given the part of Eliza to Audrey instead of her, which was why she was free to accept Mary Poppins. It got a huge laugh from the audience, who were all in the know about it. The following is a 1-minute edit of the speech. (Both movies were nominated for all the awards that year.)

Julie Andrews - Golden Globes Acceptance Speech - Mary Poppins (1964)

Julie's famous speech while accepting the Golden Globe for Best Actress for "Mary Poppins" in February of 1965.

www.youtube.com

Years after "My Fair Lady" came out, I had a boyfriend who was a singer, who'd get very prickly about it. For him, Julie Andrews' singing voice should have decided the issue. For me, though, it all played out as it should have been. No one else could have created Mary Poppins the way Julie did. And Audrey had a role in My Fair Lady that really did highlight her pure acting ability.

p.s. My son bought the 50-year dvd edition of Mary Poppins, which has incredible interviews of the stars, the Sherman Brothers who wrote the music, and so many others. Julie said that wearing the Mary Poppins wig was so hot that she cut her hair very short. And that became her hair style for The Sound of Music. Such a short haircut was unusual for women at the time ... it pre-dated Twiggy!

I am just a fountain of useless information. But when a detail picques my imagination, it sticks.

 

[elbkup]

My very favorite quote from a movie ever spoken in Rex Harrison’s raspy cackle: “oozing charm from every pore, he oiled his way across the floor..”

 

[Azikin]

One of my all time favourites.