Product Description

At one time the longest-running Broadway musical, My Fair Lady was adapted by Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe from the George Bernard Shaw comedy Pygmalion. Outside Covent Garden on a rainy evening in 1912, dishevelled cockney flower girl Eliza Doolittle (Audrey Hepburn) meets linguistic expert Henry Higgins (Rex Harrison). After delivering a musical tirade against "verbal class distinction," Higgins tells his companion Colonel Pickering (Wilfred Hyde-White) that, within six months, he could transform Eliza into a proper lady, simply by teaching her proper English. The next morning, face and hands freshly scrubbed, Eliza presents herself on Higgins' doorstep, offering to pay him to teach her to be a lady. "It's almost irresistable," clucks Higgins. "She's so deliciously low. So horribly dirty." He turns his mission into a sporting proposition, making a bet with Pickering that he can accomplish his six-month miracle to turn Eliza into a lady. This is one of the all-time great movie musicals, featuring classic songs and the legendary performances of Harrison, repeating his stage role after Cary Grant wisely turned down the movie job, and Stanley Holloway as Eliza's dustman father. Julie Andrews originated the role of Eliza on Broadway but producer Jack Warner felt that Andrews, at the time unknown beyond Broadway, wasn't bankable; Hepburn's singing was dubbed by Marni Nixon, who also dubbed Natalie Wood in West Side Story (1961). Andrews instead made Mary Poppins, for which she was given the Best Actress Oscar, beating out Hepburn. The movie, however, won Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor for Harrison, and five other Oscars, and it remains one of the all-time best movie musicals.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #502 in DVD
• Brand: Par
• Released on: 2009-10-06
• Rating: G (General Audience)
• Aspect ratio: 2.35:1
• Formats: Color, DVD, Original recording remastered, Widescreen, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Dimensions: 1.20 pounds
• Running time: 172 minutes

Customer Reviews

MY FAIR LADY
This was my late husband's very favorite movie. My video of
My Fair Lady was lost, and I was so glad to find it now on DVD.
It provides many hours of entertainment and enjoyment.

loverly new "Fair Lady" release
This is Paramount's first chance to release MY FAIR LADY on DVD; following a lapse in the distribution/copyright formerly controlled by Warner Brothers. No doubt they'll later include it in an Audrey Hepburn box-set with their other Hepburn titles ("Roman Holiday", "Funny Face" and "Sabrina" among them).

MY FAIR LADY is a true cinema classic; one of the last major Hollywood musicals and the film which finally netted director George Cukor a belated Academy Award for 'Best Director'. Based on the long-running Broadway musical and G.B. Shaw's "Pygmalion", the story follows the grooming of Cockney flower-seller Eliza Doolittle (Audrey Hepburn) into a lady of refinement by linguistics professor Henry Higgins (Rex Harrison). These two opposites could hardly be more different, until the day that Higgins admits he's "grown accustomed to her face"...

With a star-studded supporting cast (Wilfred Hyde-White, Jeremy Brett, Gladys Cooper and Stanley Holloway chief among them) and the soaring score of Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe, MY FAIR LADY is the glittering jewel which capped off the era of the great Hollywood musicals. Seldom again would audiences be treated to such a sumptuous spectacle on the screen.

Despite a huge critical backlash (concerning Julie Andrews not cementing her most acclaimed stage role on film), Audrey Hepburn gives a spirited performance as feisty Eliza. She worked hard to get her limited singing voice into the necessary shape to meet the demands of the score, yet at the 11th hour was replaced by noted Hollywood "ghost singer" Marni Nixon. Rex Harrison, having starred in both the Broadway and London productions of the show, was confident enough in his performance to sing his songs live (via a hidden microphone). Stanley Holloway--another veteran of the stage show--also triumphantly reprises his role for the screen.

Warner's previous double-disc Special Edition release (using the 1997 restored print of the film) was quite definitive. I can't imagine how Paramount is going to top that release--unless they perform a new remaster of the 1997 print. Still, MY FAIR LADY is one of those movies which deserves to always be in circulation, constantly enjoyed and discovered by new audiences. I can only hope a shiny new Blu-ray release is just around the corner...

EXTRA FEATURES:
* Audio commentary with restoration experts Robert Harris and James Katz, art director Gene Allen, and singer Marni Nixon
* Vintage featurettes, footage and audio
* Alternate Audrey Hepburn vocals
* poster and lobby card galleries (with Rex Harrison radio interview)
* "Comments On A Lady"
* trailers

On the street where you live
Professor Henry Higgins (Rex Harrison) who specializes in the English language makes a bet with Colonel Hugh Pickering (Wilfrid Hyde-White) that he can take someone who speaks with a lower-class language and by correcting the speech can pass off as upper-class or royalty. Overhearing this bet is a flower girl Eliza Doolittle (Audrey Hepburn); she wants to work a flower stand. But they will not take her unless she can speak more "genteel". Professor Higgins takes up the challenge.
Will he succeed?
What does her father (Stanley Holloway) thing finding that she moved in whit the two professors and did not want any clothes?

This is a musical version of the movie Pygmalion (1938), based on a play by George Bernard Shaw.

As people find that music and movies bring memories of the time in which they heard or viewed it. His movie has a meaning to me as I too was in love and found my self singing "On the street where you live." One of the strengths of the movie is that many of the songs instead of being classical and just stuffed into at odd times actually are songs that you would initiate in your life and they did so in the lives of the characters in the movie.

I am sure that technology, as Blu-ray will try to improve on this film. In addition, I suspect there will be other DVD extras. Yet no matter which product you buy, you will be satisfied with this film.

Pygmalion - Criterion Collection ~ Wendy Hiller