My Fair Lady (1964) Movie Trailer
My Fair Lady is a musical based on George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion, with book and lyrics by Alan Jay Lerner and music by Frederick Loewe. The story presents Eliza Doolittle, a Cockney flower girl who takes speech lessons from professor Henry Higgins (Rex Harrison), a phoneticist, so that she may pass as a lady.
The 1964 film version presented in the trailer below, with Audrey Hepburn and Rex Harrison, is perhaps the most famous adaptation. A critical and commercial success, it became the second highest-grossing film of 1964 and served as a feather in the cap of even its supporting cast, such as Stanley Holloway and Gladys Cooper. The theatrical release won eight Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Actor, and Best Director and in 2018 was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant.”
Of course, like most successful musicals My Fair Lady has been produced and performed on the stage as well as on the silver screen. While this film version of the musical is somewhat shorter than the customary theatrical adaptations, its performances are timeless and it is well worth seeing. My Fair Lady is not currently in Broadway production, having been performed for the last time on July 7th, 2019. However, all is not lost for lovers of the stage, as recorded versions of its 2018 performance are available through the Lincoln Center Theater website.
***
If you found this trailer for My Fair Lady to be helpful in visualizing the story and characters, you may enjoy some of our other Introduction to Literature (E1) videos.
***
When will you read George Bernard Shaw’s writing in Excellence in Literature?
