My Fair Lady Details

This sumptuous adaptation of Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe's smash Broadway version of George Bernard Shaw's play Pygmalion won eight well-deserved Oscars. It boasts superb performances from Rex Harrison — repeating his stage success as Henry Higgins — and Stanley Holloway as Alfred P Doolittle (Warner wanted James Cagney). At the time, there was criticism that Julie Andrews didn't re-create her original Broadway role, but Audrey Hepburn is still quite wonderful as Eliza. If not coarse enough for the Covent Garden flower girl, nobody, but nobody, could ever blossom as beautifully as Hepburn does in the Cecil Beaton costumes later on, and, despite being dubbed in the singing duties by Marni Nixon, her portrayal is funny and heart-warming in equal doses. A more visually inspired director — Vincente Minnelli or William Wyler — might have brought a little more élan to the work, but, with elegance and taste, George Cukor rightly preserves the theatricality of the enterprise and provides a joyful experience to savour again and again.

"...Glorious....Features [Beaton's] astounding costumes, [Cukor's] stately direction, the best-loved, most hummable of all Broadway scores and a sublime cast headed by [Harrison and Hepburn]..."