Destination: London, England
Director: George Cukor
Cast: Audrey Hepburn, Rex Harrison, Stanley Holloway, and Wilfred Hyde-White
Running Length: 170 minutes
It’s off to England we go!
In 1956, songwriters Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe turned playwright George Bernard Shaw’s play Pygmalion into a musical. It was a hit on Broadway and in London, so Warner Bros. wasted no time in nabbing the screen rights for a whopping $5.5 million and it was made into a big-budget movie.
My Fair Lady takes place in early 20th century London and tells the story of an English phonetics professor, Henry Higgins (Rex Harrison) who makes a bet that he can pass Eliza Doolittle, a poor cockney flower girl (Audrey Hepburn), off as a lady in high society.
Although set in London (Covent Garden & the Ascot Racecourse make appearances), the film was shot entirely on the Warner Bros. lot. Production designers Cecil Beaton and Gene Allen went to great lengths to make the sets and costumes as realistic as possible. Allen spent hours aging Hepburn’s flower-girl costumes and even the cobblestones of the Warner Covent Garden were each made individually.
Originally a hit broadway show starring the wonderful Julie Andrews in the title role, the controversial decision was made to pass over Andrews as the lead for the more famous (at the time) Audrey Hepburn.
There was quite an uproar over the decision among the theatre-going crowd. But with the set-back, Julie Andrews found her schedule freed up so she was able to accept the title role in Mary Poppins. And thank goodness for that! She ended up winning a Golden Globe for her performance and here’s what happened:
Thank you indeed, Mr. Jack Warner, for allowing Andrews to make Mary Poppins and for making a beautiful film like My Fair Lady.
Reference:
Whitlock, Cathy and the Art Directors Guild. Designs on Film: A Century of Hollywood Art Direction. New York: Harper Collins, 2010.
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