Some straight plays cry for music. "Green Grows the Lilacs", "The Matchmaker", "Auntie Mame". And for George Bernard Shaw's "Pygmallion", all it took was the ingenuity of Moss Hart to get together with Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Lowe to create a classic Broadway musical that not only ran for years but began several long-running touring companies and created a legendary film that is absolutely perfect in structure even if slightly overlong and featuring a leading lady some say was not right for the ingénue role.
I disagree when it comes to the presence of Audrey Hepburn in this part. Yes, Julie Andrews had what it took on Broadway not to only be the messy looking flower girl but the great lady in beautiful gowns as well. She also had the windpipes to belt out such classics as "Wouldn't It Be Loverly?" and "I Could Have Danced All Night". Jack Warner obviously didn't want to take the chance on an unknown (even though she really wasn't unknown; She was popular for TV and theater, having played Guenevere in "Camelot") so Audrey Hepburn was cast. Envisioned by audiences and critics as too glamorous for the rags she wore while selling flowers, she didn't get the praise she deserved, even if those same audiences and critics did go "ooh" and "ah!" when she stepped down the stairs in her glamorous outfits for the Ascot Gavotte and the later ball sequence.
Rex Harrison does repeat his role as the very ego-maniacal Henry Higgins, the eternal teacher of language who bets his pal Colonel Pickering (Wilfred Hyde White) that he can turn a flower girl into a duchess. It takes lots of chocolates and marbles being swallowed before Eliza (Hepburn) can be presented to London society where she meets Higgins' aristocratic but kind mother (Gladys Cooper). Eliza bedazzles society with her earthiness, especially Freddie Eynsford Hill (Jeremy Brett) who of sings his love for her in the breathtaking "On the Street Where You Live". But can Eliza escape from her past, especially when she keeps running into her blaggard father Alfred (the wonderful Stanley Holloway) who first sings of "With a Little Bit of Luck" as he avoids work, cops, and getting married.
That last part of course, changes when he announces he's "Getting Married in the Morning". The extremely heavy set woman Holloway dances with in this big production number is none other than Ayllene Gibbons, the bed-ridden mother who devours a whole turkey in the cult classic "The Loved One". This film is jam-packed with moments of greatness, from the rose-filled opening credits and that fabulous overture, the delightfully campy "Ascot Gavotte" (two wealthy matrons eying each other when each of them shows up in the same "original"), the presence of Higgins' former student (Theodore Bikel) who "exposes" Eliza as a "fraud", and finally the show-down between Higgins and Eliza after he has exploited her and the venomous "Without You" that leads to her declaring to him that "you shall never see me again".
Yes, there's something about Higgins that makes him a male chauvinist pig, but there's also something very gentle and tender about him, even if he is adverse to showing it. You can see men like this existing in this time and sure in their ego of who they are and how they lived their life. All Eliza wanted was the chance to become a lady and work in a real flower shop rather than sell them on the street, so no gold digger is she. Mona Washbourne plays housekeeper Mrs. Pearce with a loving yet imperious character who finally stands up for Eliza, and Gladys Cooper is noble yet not without spunk as Higgins' moral but outspoken mother. Sharp-eyed classic film fans will recognize Isobel Elsom as Freddie's mother, remembering her with glee as the matron murdered by Ida Lupino and her sisters in "Ladies in Retirement" 23 years before.
Artistically, musically and technically speaking, this is outstanding on every level. It is one of those films one must try to see on a big screen during one's lifetime, and with its 50th anniversary coming up, a big-screen re-release is certainly not a bad idea. Director George Cukor finally won his long-awaited Oscar for this, and while Audrey Hepburn failed to be nominated (in a year where Julie Andrews won for "Mary Poppins"), her contributions to the film cannot be ignored, either. Some may quibble that Marni Nixon's dubbing of Hepburn too quickly looses its cockney accent when, after declaring "The Rain in Spain Stays Mainly in the Plain" she begins to sing of "Dancing All Night" with narry an "aye" or "garn" in earshot, but when you've got all this other brilliance, why care?
I disagree when it comes to the presence of Audrey Hepburn in this part. Yes, Julie Andrews had what it took on Broadway not to only be the messy looking flower girl but the great lady in beautiful gowns as well. She also had the windpipes to belt out such classics as "Wouldn't It Be Loverly?" and "I Could Have Danced All Night". Jack Warner obviously didn't want to take the chance on an unknown (even though she really wasn't unknown; She was popular for TV and theater, having played Guenevere in "Camelot") so Audrey Hepburn was cast. Envisioned by audiences and critics as too glamorous for the rags she wore while selling flowers, she didn't get the praise she deserved, even if those same audiences and critics did go "ooh" and "ah!" when she stepped down the stairs in her glamorous outfits for the Ascot Gavotte and the later ball sequence.
Rex Harrison does repeat his role as the very ego-maniacal Henry Higgins, the eternal teacher of language who bets his pal Colonel Pickering (Wilfred Hyde White) that he can turn a flower girl into a duchess. It takes lots of chocolates and marbles being swallowed before Eliza (Hepburn) can be presented to London society where she meets Higgins' aristocratic but kind mother (Gladys Cooper). Eliza bedazzles society with her earthiness, especially Freddie Eynsford Hill (Jeremy Brett) who of sings his love for her in the breathtaking "On the Street Where You Live". But can Eliza escape from her past, especially when she keeps running into her blaggard father Alfred (the wonderful Stanley Holloway) who first sings of "With a Little Bit of Luck" as he avoids work, cops, and getting married.
That last part of course, changes when he announces he's "Getting Married in the Morning". The extremely heavy set woman Holloway dances with in this big production number is none other than Ayllene Gibbons, the bed-ridden mother who devours a whole turkey in the cult classic "The Loved One". This film is jam-packed with moments of greatness, from the rose-filled opening credits and that fabulous overture, the delightfully campy "Ascot Gavotte" (two wealthy matrons eying each other when each of them shows up in the same "original"), the presence of Higgins' former student (Theodore Bikel) who "exposes" Eliza as a "fraud", and finally the show-down between Higgins and Eliza after he has exploited her and the venomous "Without You" that leads to her declaring to him that "you shall never see me again".
Yes, there's something about Higgins that makes him a male chauvinist pig, but there's also something very gentle and tender about him, even if he is adverse to showing it. You can see men like this existing in this time and sure in their ego of who they are and how they lived their life. All Eliza wanted was the chance to become a lady and work in a real flower shop rather than sell them on the street, so no gold digger is she. Mona Washbourne plays housekeeper Mrs. Pearce with a loving yet imperious character who finally stands up for Eliza, and Gladys Cooper is noble yet not without spunk as Higgins' moral but outspoken mother. Sharp-eyed classic film fans will recognize Isobel Elsom as Freddie's mother, remembering her with glee as the matron murdered by Ida Lupino and her sisters in "Ladies in Retirement" 23 years before.
Artistically, musically and technically speaking, this is outstanding on every level. It is one of those films one must try to see on a big screen during one's lifetime, and with its 50th anniversary coming up, a big-screen re-release is certainly not a bad idea. Director George Cukor finally won his long-awaited Oscar for this, and while Audrey Hepburn failed to be nominated (in a year where Julie Andrews won for "Mary Poppins"), her contributions to the film cannot be ignored, either. Some may quibble that Marni Nixon's dubbing of Hepburn too quickly looses its cockney accent when, after declaring "The Rain in Spain Stays Mainly in the Plain" she begins to sing of "Dancing All Night" with narry an "aye" or "garn" in earshot, but when you've got all this other brilliance, why care?