1964--My Fair Lady, George Cukor

 

1964--My Fair Lady—George Cukor

Nominated: Becket, Dr. Strangelove or: How I learned to stop worrying and love the bomb, Mary Poppins, Zorba the Greek

Should have won: Mary Poppins

Be sure to see: A Shot in the Dark, At Midnight I'll Take Your Soul, Spider Baby or the Maddest Story Ever Told, 2000 Maniacs

“There even are places where English completely disappears. In America they haven't used it for years”--Professor Henry Higgins

     The birth of this movie was long before Audrey Hepburn brought Eliza Doolittle to the screen. George Bernard Shaw wrote the play Pygmalion in 1912. In 1956, it became a stage play and, under a new title My Fair Lady, was the longest run of any musical theater production in history.  This version of the film was originally supposed to have Julie Andrews in the Doolittle role, Peter O'Toole or Cary Grant as Henry Higgins, and James Cagney as Eliza's father. I think I could see some of those roles panning out but not James Cagney. I know it isn't right to typecast someone but I'll forever see Cagney as the ruthless gangster in White Heat. Instead of singing “Just a little bit” he might fill Higgins with lead.

     It is London (as if the annoying accents didn't give that away) and Professor Henry Higgins (or is it Iggins?) and Colonel Hugh Pickering make a bet on whether Higgins could take a slummy flower-selling woman and teach her phonetics so that she could be passed off as a proper speaking aristocrat. This woman is Eliza Doolittle and painstaking lessons go underway as Higgins attempts to get Eliza to pronounce words properly. Lessons to get her to pronounce her “A's” (The rain in Spain stays mainly in the plain) and “H's” (In Hartford, Hereford, and Hampshire, hurricanes hardly happen) correctly. When she finally grasps the long “A” concept I was relieved for two reasons. One, it sets off a song that I kind of liked and also so I didn't have to listen to her pronounce “A” incorrectly anymore. It was murder listening to her say “The rine in Spine sties minely in the pline.” I think the most difficult thing for me to accept while watching this movie is the British accent is so annoying to my ears that even when they speak correctly it is still sounds bad. But for what it is worth, Pickering and Higgins didn't exaggerate the accents, particularly the way Eliza's father does in the movie. Or watch the 1968 Oscar winner Oliver! Talk about annoying accents. As for scenes of a speech coach teaching dictation to a woman who can't grasp it, see the hilarious scene in Singin' in the Rain when a diction coach is trying to get Lina Lamont to pronounce “And I can't stand him” to no avail.

     Roger Ebert has said that for a movie to be great it should have three great scenes and no bad ones. In the case of My Fair Lady it exceeds this total of great scenes but it does have one bad one as far as I am concerned. Eliza's father has a musical number where he sings “Just a little bit” and it goes on forever, has silly dance steps that don't fit the complexity of most musical numbers, and it got old fast. All right, so this movie has a bad scene for me but it didn't really drag the movie down. And one other scene that had me scratching my head is after Eliza is prim and she goes to a horse race and attracts a young man who is taken aback by her beauty and charm. For days he stays outside her house just in case she invites him in. I suppose it should be taken that he would go home and then return to the house and ask the housekeeper if he can see her from time to time, but the movie gives me the impression he just camped out there.

     I liked My Fair Lady. The story is familiar, borrowed by films like She's All That or perhaps Pretty Woman. Some of the music was catchy and the cast is great. I kind of liked, but bet most women will despise, the song “Why can't a woman be more like a man?” The lyrics are ridiculously offensive but I wonder if that was the joke or, if because of the time, they were legit. It is a good movie but it is hard to accept it beat Mary Poppins, a superior movie and, incidentally, a superior musical.