The Great Movies III

This fusion functions at such an elevation of sophistication and wit that when poor smitten Freddy sings "On the Street Where You Live," a song that would distinguish any other musical, this one drops Freddy entirely rather than risk another such simplistic outburst. His sincerity seems childlike compared with the emotional fencing match between the guarded Higgins and the wary Eliza. It is characteristic that in a musical that has love as its buried theme, no one ever kisses, or seems about to.

The story involves a meeting of two egos, one belonging to the linguist Henry Higgins, the other, no less titanic, to the flower girl Eliza Doolittle. It is often mistakenly said that they collaborate because Higgins (Rex Harrison) decides to improve Eliza's Cockney accent. In fact it is Eliza (Audrey Hepburn) who takes the initiative, presenting herself at Henry's bachelor quarters to sign up for lessons: "I know what lessons cost as well as you do, and I'm ready to pay."

Even in this early scene, it is Eliza's will that drives the plot; Higgins might have tinkered forever with his phonetic alphabet and his recording devices if Eliza hadn't insisted on action. She took seriously his boast the night before, in Covent Garden: "You see this creature with her curbstone English? The English that will keep her in the gutter till the end of her days? Well, sir, in six months, I could pass her off as a duchess at an Embassy Ball. I could even get her a job as a lady's maid or a shop assistant, which requires better English."The final twist, typical Shavian paradox, is what Eliza hears, and it supplies her inspiration: "I want to be a lady in a flower shop instead of sellin' at the corner of Tottenham Court Road. But they won't take me unless I can talk more genteel."

It is her ambition, not Henry's, that sets the plot in motion, including the professor's bet with his fellow linguist Pickering, who says he'll pay for the lessons if Higgins can transform her speech. Higgins's response will thrum below the action for most of the play: "You know, it's almost irresistible. She's so deliciously low. So horribly dirty." If Henry will teach Eliza to improve her speech, she will try to teach him decency and awaken his better nature.

It is unnecessary to summarize the plot or list the songs; if you are not familiar with both, you are culturally illiterate, although in six months I could pass you off as a critic at Cannes, or even a clerk in a good video store, which requires better taste.

It is difficult to discuss George Cukor's 1964 film as it actually exists because, even now, an impenetrable thicket of legend and gossip obscures its greatness. Many viewers would rather discuss the film that wasn't made, the one that would have starred Julie Andrews, who made the role of Eliza her own on the stage. Casting Audrey Hepburn was seen as a snub of Andrews, and so it was; producer and studio head Jack L. Warner chose Hepburn for her greater box-office appeal, and was prepared to offer the role to Elizabeth Taylor if Hepburn turned it down.

One of the best-known items in the history of movie trivia is that Hepburn did not sing her own songs, but was dubbed by the gifted Marni Nixon. So notorious became this dubbing, so egregious was it made to appear, that although My Fair Lady was nominated for twelve Oscars and won eight (including best picture, actor, director, and cinematography), Hepburn was not even nominated for best actress; Julie Andrews was, the same year, for Mary Poppins, and she won.

At this remove, can we step back and take a fresh look at the controversy? True, Hepburn did not sing her own songs (although she performed some of the intros and outros), and there was endless comment on moments when the lip-syncing was not perfect. But the dubbing of singing voices was commonplace at the time, and Nixon herself also dubbed Deborah Kerr (7heKing andl) and Natalie Wood (West Side Story). Even actors who did their own singing were lip-syncing to their own pre-recorded dubs (and an occasional uncredited assist). I learn from Robert Harris, who restored My Fair Lady in 1993, that this was apparently the first musical to use any form of live recording of the music, although "only of Mr. Harrison, who refused to mouth to playbacks. His early model wireless microphone can be seen as a rather inflated tie during his musical numbers." Harrison's lips are therefore always in perfect sync, as opposed to everyone else in this film and all previous musicals.