An Enchanting Classic: “My Fair Lady”

Today, we present a long-loved classic film “My Fair Lady,” which has been called by the prominent Chicago Sun-Times critic Roger Ebert “the best and most unlikely of musicals.” Ms. Audrey Hepburn plays the leading role, as Eliza Doolittle, with her singing voice dubbed by the prolific American soprano Marni Nixon. Set in London in 1912, the film takes us outside the Royal Opera House. There, we meet Professor Henry Higgins, a proud scholar of phonetics, played by Sir Rex Harrison, and Colonel Hugh Pickering, a phonetics expert who has just come back from India, played by Wilfrid Hyde-White.

At work in the market square is Eliza Doolittle. Eliza first mistakes Professor Higgins as a policeman and then is ridiculed by him for her Cockney accent. As upset as Eliza is, she still takes Professor Higgins’ words seriously when he boasts to Colonel Pickering that if he were to start teaching her proper English, he could “pass her off as a duchess at an Embassy Ball” in just six months. Impressed by Eliza’s courage and innocence, Colonel Pickering reminds the professor what he had said yesterday. He convinces him it would be an interesting challenge to change the young girl from a “draggle-tailed guttersnipe” into a beautiful lady through language education.

“Eliza, you are to stay here for the next six months learning how to speak beautifully, like a lady in a florist shop.” “The noblest thoughts that ever flowed through the hearts of men are contained in its extraordinary, imaginative, and musical mixtures of sounds. And that’s what you’ve set yourself out to conquer, Eliza. And conquer it you will.”

Professor Higgins now has full confidence in Eliza and takes her to the Embassy Ball. After she comes back from the ball, she doesn’t wait until the next morning to leave Professor Higgins’ home. But where does she go? Will she join Freddy Eynsford-Hill, a young aristocrat who has fallen in love with her? Or will Eliza go back to being a flower girl? Can she ever realize her dreams?

“My Fair Lady” was adapted from the stage play of the same name by Alan Jay Lerner with brilliant music by Frederick Loewe, based on the acclaimed Irish playwright and vegetarian George Bernard Shaw’s 1913 play “Pygmalion.” “My Fair Lady” won multiple awards, including eight Oscars, three Golden Globe Awards, and the BAFTA Award for Best Film from any Source, among numerous others. In 2018, the film was selected by the US Library of Congress for preservation in the National Film Registry for being “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant.”