Page 4 | My Fair Lady

maddiemookins16mum · 2022-12-27T11:10:58+00:00

I’d forgotten just how vile (bullying, sexist etc) Henry Higgings is to Eliza. Shame as the costumes were great. (and of course the fact Julie Andrews should have had the role instead of Audrey Hepburn who was dubbed by Marni Nixon (the Mother of Andrew Gold).

tobee · 19/01/2023 00:55

Catspyjamas17 · 06/01/2023 12:55

I know Julie Andrews did it in the West End but I can really only see Audrey Hepburn in the film. JA is Maria Von Trapp and Mary Poppins and a bit prim and posh, definitely not Eliza Doolittle, for me. I think the cockney accent was quite accurate for 1913, it would have been much broader then. Her accent matches quite well with Stanley Holloway's in it, who is almost a cockney himself.

I agree. When I first saw the film I didn't know about the Julie Andrews situation. I think Audrey Hepburn was absolutely stunningly beautiful.

I was just reading about how Rex Harrison was an absolute bastard to everybody; which I already knew as I remember my dm reading the biography of one of his wives Rachel Roberts. I've got a biography of Harrison myself but I can't quite face reading it at the moment.

Fun fact though, Sophie Dahl is Stanley Holloway's granddaughter. Her father is his son actor Julian Holloway who was in Carry On films and the like.

tobee · 19/01/2023 00:56

Housewife2010 · 19/01/2023 00:05

My all time favourite song from a musical is "If I loved you" from Carousel.

Yeah I just sob all the way through Carousel, even when just listening to the songs

mewkins · 19/01/2023 07:38

Trofie · 16/01/2023 18:21

He does some sports at school and puts on a cardigan. She reinvents herself as Slutty Barbie.

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Excellent summary 😃
I loved Grease as a kid but again, not rules I would live by 😆

ppeatfruit · 19/01/2023 10:03

Oh God talk about films I sob through; West Side Story, I start at Maria and don't stop (excepting I Feel Pretty then right away out comes the tissue at the wedding song) . I haven't seen the new version, anyone? My sis wasn't impressed.

I cry at the end of Carousel (at the college scene) and at the Walk Through a Storm song. I sobbed through the live opera of Madame Butterfly (I felt such an idiot we were in expensive seats, 'cos dh's friend worked at the box office!) but it was impossible to stop!

thinkfast · 19/01/2023 10:25

Looking at the thread I'm wondering if I've misunderstood the ending of My Fair Lady..... I always thought that she came back to Rex Harrison in a kind of companionship, platonic friendship kind of way. Did I mis-understand that?

lollipoprainbow · 19/01/2023 10:35

ppeatfruit · 19/01/2023 10:03

Oh God talk about films I sob through; West Side Story, I start at Maria and don't stop (excepting I Feel Pretty then right away out comes the tissue at the wedding song) . I haven't seen the new version, anyone? My sis wasn't impressed.

I cry at the end of Carousel (at the college scene) and at the Walk Through a Storm song. I sobbed through the live opera of Madame Butterfly (I felt such an idiot we were in expensive seats, 'cos dh's friend worked at the box office!) but it was impossible to stop!

Me too but then it was my lovely mums favourite film we had somewhere played at her funeral needless to say there were tears. Find it hard to watch now.

LiteralSycamore · 19/01/2023 10:39

thinkfast · 19/01/2023 10:25

Looking at the thread I'm wondering if I've misunderstood the ending of My Fair Lady..... I always thought that she came back to Rex Harrison in a kind of companionship, platonic friendship kind of way. Did I mis-understand that?

I think the film is undecided between the various endings of the play. Shaw was determined that Eliza leaves her ‘creator’ for an independent life, but there was a lot of pressure to soften that from various theatre producers, so there are lots of more ambiguous endings where we need to decide what her return means, because it’s never made clear, and the play just ends.

DorritLittle · 19/01/2023 10:48

In the musical version she gets fed up with him after the ball, so leaves. He is gutted so begs her not to but it's too late. She does not marry Freddie but implies she might, but that she wouldn't marry him unless she could support him financially. She feels sorry for him, having been brought up as an upper class dreamer who doesn't know how to work, and he is portrayed as a lovesick idiot. Henry's mother thinks he was a fool, and sides with Eliza. Eliza says the old professor was the only man who treated her as a lady, and therefore made her feel like one.

What happens in the film? I haven't seen it for ages. I love all the songs - agree Henry Higgins is a sexist pig though. Men probably were then though. Shame Julie Andrews was bumped for Audrey Hepburn - in my opinion.

Catspyjamas17 · 19/01/2023 16:59

thinkfast · 19/01/2023 10:25

Looking at the thread I'm wondering if I've misunderstood the ending of My Fair Lady..... I always thought that she came back to Rex Harrison in a kind of companionship, platonic friendship kind of way. Did I mis-understand that?

That's what I've always thought. She's free to have a good think about what she wants to do next - now that she has options.

Catspyjamas17 · 19/01/2023 17:06

Actually I think it's great that it doesn't end with her marrying someone, and it feels like she needn't get married at all, which was rare in the mid 1960s, never mind in Edwardian England. I like to think she will open a fashionable florist shop in St James.

One day I'll be famous, I'll be proper and prim
Go to St. James so often I shall call it St. Jim

PermanentTemporary · 19/01/2023 17:20

Another vote for On The Street Where You Live as a wonderful song.

I never quite come down on one side or the other with old films, books and plays tbh. I like MFL because the musical was huge in the 50s and it reminds me of my parents (I'm planning to play I Could Have Danced All Night at my mum's funeral). Likewise at school in the 80s we studied a lot of Shaw, so that detached, rather cardboard 'wit' with flashes of genuine artistry is familiar. I would hate to lose any of these lovely things just because you do have to make adjustments for them.

But then do I recommend these things to others? A book I grew up loving that's really funny and enjoyable, but it's also incredibly sexist, homophobic and so racist that it uses the n word as a casual aside. Realistically I can't wish that book on other people. And yes it's of its time, but my mum knew not to use that word growing up in the 40s.