Search - My Fair Lady on DVD

MPAA Rating: G Content Advisory: Excellent For Children Movie Release: 1964 DVD Release: 12/08/1998 Format: DVD - Enhanced Wide Screen Letterbox for 16x9 TV - Closed Captioned Edition: Dual Layered,Restored/Remastered Audio Tracks: English, French Subtitles: English, French SwapaDVD Credits: 1 Number of Discs: 1 Run Time: 2 hrs 53 mins Studio: Warner Home Video Members Wishing: 123 Genres: Musical, Musical Comedy, Musical Romance See Also: My Fair Lady [Special Edition], My Fair Lady

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. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Audrey Hepburn - Eliza Doolittle
Rex Harrison - Prof. Henry Higgins
Stanley Holloway - Alfred P. Doolittle
Wilfrid Hyde-White - Col. Pickering
Gladys Cooper - Mrs. Higgins

Fans of Hollywood musicals in general and Audrey Hepburn in particular will be interested in the Warner Home Video DVD edition of My Fair Lady. George Cukor's lavish screen adaptation of the Lerner and Loewe hit stage musical gets the definitive treatment it merits. One of the DVD extras even helps clear up a debate about whether leading lady Hepburn deserved to have her singing voice dubbed by Marnie Nixon during post-production. The film's restoration team found two scenes that feature Hepburn doing her own singing; these scenes show that Hepburn's style was much more in sync with co-star Rex Harrison's own conversational singing than Nixon's highly professional operatics. Too bad Hepburn didn't live to see this release; she was deeply hurt by being dubbed. While fans of the film will be happiest with the peerless anamorphic widescreen transfer, this DVD edition also features an old "making of" documentary and a warm, informative commentary track by the film's restoration team. ~ Nick Dedina, All Movie Guide