Crooning like a bilious pigeon to waltzing at an embassy ball: 'My Fair Lady' remains lovely at 60

Audrey Hepburn's charming Eliza lives rent-free in the minds of musical fans, even if she missed out on an Oscar

SLOUGH, ENGLAND:

Whisper the words ‘Audrey Hepburn’, and most people will instantly picture a black-clad gloved fashionista gazing back at them soulfully from underneath a marvellous beehive holding an extendable cigarette held betwixt her fingers.

As someone who swore allegiance to My Fair Lady a quarter of a century ago, I am not one of these people. To me, Audrey will forever be Eliza Doolittle: a graceful vision in white lace peering out from underneath a hat that could double as an umbrella, blossoming from an uncouth flower girl issuing wildly inappropriate instructions to Ascot race horses to a woman who finally realises her true worth. Hepburn may have first won hearts in Roman Holiday (1953) and captured a good many more with the beehive and the black dress in Breakfast At Tiffany’s (1961), but it was with My Fair Lady (1964) that she cemented her forever place in cinema, despite being cruelly deprived of an Academy Award for reasons beyond her control. Coupled with Rex Harrison’s faultless and acerbic Professor Higgins, My Fair Lady is the film every literary snob needs to memorise, particularly those who experience physical heartache at the murder of the English language on social media.

‘My Fair Lady’: What to expect

To the tragically unversed, here is a rough summary of the My Fair Lady plot, based on George Bernard Shaw’s play Pygmalion. Wandering the streets of London, a snooty linguistic professor with a robust ego (Higgins) stumbles upon a poor flower girl (Eliza) whose Cockney speech leads him to eventually declare, “Woman! Cease this boo-hooing instantly! Remember that you’re a human being with a divine gift of articulate speech! Don’t sit there crooning like a bilious pigeon!” Eliza’s bilious crooning ceases long enough for Higgins to announce that with enough speech lessons, he can pass her off as royalty. Eliza takes these words to heart, and arrives at the Higgins residence, ready for lessons. Although Higgins swears to never let a woman in his life (whom he considers “a damn nuisance”), he appears to not consider Eliza a woman (or a human) and agrees to take her on as his very own linguistics project.

The hapless subject of the linguistics project is then put through a punishing regime where, among other things, she must recite, ad nauseam, that the rain in Spain stays mainly in the plain. “Every night in place of your prayers, I want you to say ‘The rain in Spain stays mainly in the plain' fifty times,” advises Higgins. “You’ll get on much further with the Lord if you learn not to offend His ears.”

To everyone’s astonishment (including Eliza’s), Higgins’ insane lessons actually work. So elated is Higgins that he decides to present her Eliza to that haven of English high society: the Ascot horse races. Higgins realises he may have jumped the gun when Eliza betrays her Cockney roots by urging Dover, a horse, to, well, speed up. (Eliza uses a slightly more colourful phrase that causes a fainting fit amongst the surrounding posh ladies.) Eventually, however, Eliza’s speech is moulded sufficiently enough for her to waltz her way across an embassy ball. She is furious that Higgins hoards all the credit later post-ball that night. As revenge, she packs her things and walks out (without informing the long-suffering housekeeper that the boss wants coffee instead of tea the following morning.) The next day, a tea-laden Higgins is simultaneously fuming over the coffee and also bewildered about what could have possessed Eliza to vanish.

“Mrs Pearce,” he says to his housekeeper. “You’re a woman. Tell me – why can’t a woman be more like a man?”

Higgins never does get his answer, but he manages to track Eliza down for one final showdown. Here he finally understands that Eliza is more than just his personal project, and finally realises her value in his life. (Hint: he now understands Eliza is more than just a messenger for his housekeeper and the finder of his slippers.) For her part, Eliza realises her self-worth and returns to and returns to Higgins, warts and all.  

The subtle takeaways to cherish forever

As far as musicals go, My Fair Lady is the one that gets overlooked. In a world containing the gang violence of West Side Story, the escapism magic of Mary Poppins and the nazi threat of The Sound of Music, My Fair Lady – where the main ‘villain’ is class snobbery - is the tale that gets short shrift. Matters are not helped by its nearly three-hour run time.

Stephen King once famously said, “It is the tale, not he who tells it.” However, this could be because King has a penchant for finding subject matters that speak for themselves like murderous clowns (It) or little girls who can start fires (Firestarter) or writers who descend into madness (The Shining), in which case the tale itself is sufficient. But a commentary on upper-class snobbery? That is a tale that requires consummate skill to tell. As bored literature students who have suffered through Pygmalion will be able to attest, it is most certainly not the tale, but he who tells it. To properly sell this tale, what you really need to be able to sell such a tale is a soundtrack for the ages, a costume department that is a fashion designer’s dream, and a face that can launch a thousand ships.

In casting Hepburn, producer Jack Warner was acutely aware of the launch-a-thousand-ships angle, and ruthlessly cast aside Julie Andrews, who had played Eliza to perfection in the Broadway play. As Mary Poppins trivia fans know, Warner’s calculated decision indirectly led to Andrews’ 1964 Best Actress Oscar for her role in Mary Poppins. Meanwhile, Hepburn – a non-singer whose vocals were dubbed by Marni Nixon, Hollywood’s go-to ghost singer of the sixties – didn’t even get a nomination. Hepburn did record her own vocals for every My Fair Lady song, but as musical director of the film, Andre Previn, later revealed, the fruitless promise of her own recordings was dangled before her just so she would take the part. It was an underhanded move that stayed with Hepburn lifelong, and she vowed never to take part in a musical again.

However, we My Fair Lady devotees care little about operatic vocals, because sixty years down the line, we know that no one could have portrayed that rags-to-riches transformation better than Hepburn. As for My Fair Lady’s other lessons? We now know that the rain in Spain stays mainly in the plain. We absorbed that one does not bellow encouragement (of any kind) to horses named Dover at Ascot. And most of all, we learned the glorious phrase ‘crooning like a bilious pigeon’, and will keep it tucked away in our arsenal, ready to whip out when the occasion arises.

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