My Fair Lady (film)

1964 film by George Cukor

Olive Reeves Smith as Mrs. Hopkins
Baroness Rothschild as the Queen of Transylvania
Grady Sutton as Ball Guest

CBS head William S. Paley made an arrangement where CBS would finance the original Broadway production in exchange for the rights to the cast album (through Columbia Records). Warner Bros. then purchased the film rights from CBS in February 1962 for the then unprecedented sum of $5.5 million (equivalent to $5.5 in 1962 is equivalent to about <calculated amount> in recent years million in ) plus 47¼% of the gross over $20 million. Paley added a condition to the Warner contract that ownership of the film negative would revert to CBS seven years following release. In spite of her success playing Eliza Doolittle on Broadway, when Jack L. Warner acquired the film rights he replaced a then unknown to filmgoers Julie Andrews in the role with Audrey Hepburn. Alan Jay Lerner broke the news to Andrews when she had moved to his production of Camelot: “I so wanted you to do it, Julie, but they wanted a name." The entire movie was filmed at Warner Bros. Studios, Burbank, California, from August to December 1963. Principal filming took place on six stages of the studio, specifically 4, 7, 8, 11, 16, and 26. With a production budget of $17 million, My Fair Lady was the most expensive film shot in the United States up to that time.

The order of the songs in the Broadway show was followed faithfully with the exception of "With a Little Bit of Luck"; the song is listed as the third musical number in the play, but in the film it is the fourth. On stage, the song is split into two parts sung in two different scenes. Part of the song is sung by Doolittle and his cronies just after Eliza gives him part of her earnings, immediately before she goes to Higgins to ask for speech lessons. The second half of the song is sung by Doolittle just after he discovers that Eliza is now living with Higgins. In the film, the entire song is sung in one scene that takes place just after Higgins has sung "I'm an Ordinary Man." However, the song does have a dialogue scene (Doolittle's conversation with Eliza's landlady) between verses. The instrumental "Busker Sequence", which opens the play immediately after the overture, is the only musical number from the play omitted in the film version. However, several measures from the piece may be heard when Eliza is in the rain, making her way through Covent Garden. All of the songs in the film were performed in their entirety, except that some verses were omitted. For example, in the song "With a Little Bit of Luck", the verse "He does not have a tuppence in his pocket," which was sung with a chorus, was omitted because of its space and length; the original verse in "Show Me" was used instead. The stanzas of "You Did It" that come after Higgins says "She is a princess" were originally written for the stage, but Harrison hated the lyrics and refused to perform the song unless the lyrics were omitted, as they were in most Broadway versions. However, when Cukor threatened to leave the production if the omitted lyrics were not restored for the film version, Harrison obliged. The omitted lyrics end with the words "Hungarian rhapsody" followed by the servants shouting "Bravo" three times, to the strains of Liszt's "Hungarian Rhapsody", before the servants sing "Congratulations, Professor Higgins."

Hepburn's singing was judged inadequate, and she was dubbed by Marni Nixon, who sang all songs except "Just You Wait", in which Hepburn's voice was preserved during the harsh toned chorus, with Nixon on the melodic bridge section. Hepburn sang the brief reprise of the song in tears. Some of Hepburn's original vocal performances were released in the 1990s. Less well known is the fact that Jeremy Brett's songs (as Freddy) were dubbed by Bill Shirley. Harrison declined to prerecord his musical numbers, explaining that he had never talked his way through the songs the same way twice and thus could not convincingly lip sync to a playback recording during filming (according to Jack L. Warner, dubbing had been commonplace for years, stating, "We even dubbed Rin Tin Tin."). George Groves equipped Harrison with a wireless microphone, the first such use during filming of a motion picture. The sound department earned an Academy Award for its efforts.

One of the few differences in structure between the stage version and the film is the placement of the intermission. In the stage play, the intermission occurs after the embassy ball at which Eliza dances with Karpathy. In the film, the intermission comes before the ball as Eliza, Higgins and Pickering are seen departing for the embassy.

Gene Allen, Cecil Beaton and George James Hopkins won an Academy Award for Best Production Design. Beaton's inspiration for Higgins' library was a room at the Château de Groussay, Montfort l'Amaury, in France, which had been decorated opulently by its owner, Carlos de Beistegui. Hats were created by Parisian milliner vertical align=sup at Beaton's request.

The film had its premiere at the Criterion Theatre in New York on Wednesday, October 21, 1964, with its regular run starting the following day with a $500,000 advance. It ran for 87 weeks at the theatre. Its gross in the United States and Canada after the re release was an estimated $72 million.

Bosley Crowther of The New York Times opened his contemporary review: "As Henry Higgins might have whooped, 'By George, they've got it!' They've made a superlative film from the musical stage show My Fair Lady—a film that enchantingly conveys the rich endowments of the famous stage production in a fresh and flowing cinematic form." Philip K. Scheuer of the Los Angeles Times reported from the New York premiere that "when the curtains came together at the finish of just three hours, three hours of Technicolored entertainment, I heard myself all but echoing Col. Pickering's proud summation of Eliza Doolittle's performances as a duchess at the Embassy Ball, 'a total triumph.'" Robert J. Landry of Variety wrote: "It has riches of story, humor, acting and production values far beyond the average big picture. It is Hollywood at its best, Jack L. Warner's career capstone and a film that will go on without limits of playoff in reserved seat policy and world rentals." The Monthly Film Bulletin of the UK declared that "with the range of talent, taste and sheer professionalism at work, from Shaw onwards, Warners could hardly have made a film which would do less than please most of the people most of the time. Their $17,000,000 investment looks as safe as houses." The review opined that Cukor directed with "great tact" but "a rather unnecessary circumspection. Scenes move at a steady, even pace, as though every word were worth its weight in gold (perhaps, in view of the price paid for the rights, it very nearly was). Especially, the decor tends to inhibit rather than release the film." Brendan Gill of The New Yorker wrote that the film "has survived very nearly intact the always risky leap from stage to screen," adding, "Miss Hepburn isn't particularly convincing as a Cockney flower girl, but, having mastered her vowels and consonants in the 'rain in Spain' scene, she comes into her own." Richard L. Coe of The Washington Post also suggested that Hepburn's casting was the film's "basic flaw", describing her as "recognizably exquisite—but not 21—as the flower girl and to the later scenes she brings a real flirtatiousness quite un Shavian." Nevertheless, Coe remarked that "there are some marvelous things which will make this a long loved film," including Rex Harrison giving "one of the classic screen performances" that he correctly predicted was "an absolute certainty for next year's Oscars."

Chicago Sun Times critic Roger Ebert gave the film four stars out of four, and, in 2006, he put it on his "Great Movies" list, praising Hepburn's performance, and calling the film "the best and most unlikely of musicals." James Berardinelli wrote in a 2018 retrospective review, "Few genres of films are as magical as musicals, and few musicals are as intelligent and lively as My Fair Lady. It's a classic not because a group of stuffy film experts have labeled it as such, but because it has been, and always will be, a pure joy to experience." Dave Whitaker of DavesMovieDatabase, a film aggregator site that combines other lists with box office, ratings, and awards, listed My Fair Lady in 2020 as the 100th greatest movie of all time, as the 9th greatest Musical of all time, and as the 30th most awarded movie of all time. Retrospective analysis of My Fair Lady has been more mixed, with disagreement between reviewers about whether the movie critiques or affirms misogynistic and classist tropes.

As of 2023, My Fair Lady holds a 95% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes based on 91 reviews, with an average rating of 8.6/10. The consensus states: "George Cukor's elegant, colorful adaptation of the beloved stage play is elevated to new heights thanks to winning performances by Audrey Hepburn and Rex Harrison." On Metacritic, the film holds a weighted average score of 95 out of 100 based on 15 critics, indicating "universal acclaim".

Award Category Nominee(s) Result Academy Awards Best Picture Jack L. Warner Best Director George Cukor Best Actor Rex Harrison Best Supporting Actor Stanley Holloway Best Supporting Actress Gladys Cooper Best Screenplay – Based on Material from Another Medium Alan Jay Lerner Best Art Direction – Color Art Direction: Gene Allen and Cecil Beaton; Set Decoration: George James Hopkins Best Cinematography – Color Harry Stradling Best Costume Design – Color Cecil Beaton Best Film Editing William Ziegler Best Scoring of Music – Adaptation or Treatment André Previn Best Sound George R. Groves American Cinema Editors Awards Best Edited Feature Film William Ziegler Boxoffice Magazine Awards Best Picture of the Month for the Whole Family (December) George Cukor British Academy Film Awards Best Film from any Source Best British Actor Rex Harrison Cinema Writers Circle Awards Best Foreign Film David di Donatello Awards Best Foreign Production Jack L. Warner Best Foreign Actor Rex Harrison Best Foreign Actress Audrey Hepburn Directors Guild of America Awards Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Motion Pictures George Cukor Golden Globe Awards Best Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy Best Director – Motion Picture George Cukor Best Actor in a Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy Rex Harrison Best Actress in a Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy Audrey Hepburn Best Supporting Actor – Motion Picture Stanley Holloway Laurel Awards Top Road Show Top Male Musical Performance Rex Harrison Top Female Musical Performance Audrey Hepburn Top Male Supporting Performance Stanley Holloway National Board of Review Awards Top Ten Films 2nd Place National Film Preservation Board National Film Registry New York Film Critics Circle Awards Best Film Best Director George Cukor Best Actor Rex Harrison Best Actress Audrey Hepburn Online Film & Television Association Awards Hall of Fame – Motion Picture Writers Guild of America Awards Best Written American Musical Alan Jay Lerner

The film was restored in 1994 by James C. Katz and Robert A. Harris, who had restored Spartacus three years earlier. The restoration was commissioned and financed by CBS, to which the film rights reverted from Warner Bros. in 1971. CBS later hired Harris to lend his expertise to a new 4K restoration of the film for a 2015 Blu ray release, working from 8K scans of the original camera negative and other surviving 65mm elements.