It Was 50 Years Ago Today: ‘My Fair Lady’
January 13, 1965
My Fair Lady
#1 film at the US box office, December 27, 1964 – February 20, 1965
The Golden Age of Movie Musicals stretches from the development of sound synchronization in the 1930s through the 1960s, when musicals formed the backbone of movie studios’ prestigious roadshow productions. While the genre began primarily as an excuse to put catchy tunes and flashy spectacles up on the screen, by its maturity it had grown remarkably more sophisticated, interweaving complex storylines, fleshed-out characters, and songs that advanced the plot. The primary team associated with this rebirth of musicals is Rodgers and Hammerstein, writers of Oklahoma!, The Sound of Music, and The King and I, among many others, but right behind them were Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe. Lerner and Loewe’s first theatrical hit, 1947’s Brigadoon, flopped in its 1954 film adaptation, but the written-for-the-screen musical Gigi (1958) fared much better, winning a record-breaking nine Academy Awards.
The duo’s most celebrated collaboration, however, was My Fair Lady, a musical adaptation of George Bernard Shaw’s 1912 play Pygmalion. My Fair Lady opened on Broadway in 1956, soon setting the record for the longest-running musical theatre production ever at that point. For the 1964 film adaptation, Rex Harrison reprised his stage role as Henry Higgins, the arrogant, snobby linguist who bets he can elevate a Cockney flower girl to “proper society” simply by teaching her to speak “correctly.” While Julie Andrews had originated the role of Eliza Doolittle on stage, she was deemed not famous enough, so the role went to Audrey Hepburn instead. (Coincidentally, Mary Poppins, the film that would make Andrews a star, would be released the same year My Fair Lady).
While the leading lady may have been swapped out, most of the rest of the stage musical remained intact in its film incarnation, from Cecil Beaton’s set design to Stanley Holliday’s performance as Eliza’s layabout father, Alfred P. Doolittle. Most notably — and rather unusually for film adaptations of musicals — all of the much-beloved songs also survived the transition to the screen. Few musicals can rival My Fair Lady for sheer number of memorable tunes that have seeped into popular culture: “Wouldn’t It Be Loverly?” “I Could Have Danced All Night,” “I’ve Grown Accustomed to Her Face,” “Get Me to the Church on Time,” “The Rain in Spain,” “With a Little Bit of Luck,” “On the Street Where You Live.” Even “filler” songs, like “Why Can’t the English Learn to Speak?” and “A Hymn to Him (Why Can’t a Woman Be More Like a Man?),” are emblematic of the play.
Besides the iconic characters, beloved songs, and tightly-structured, fairy tale-like plot, however, lurk surprisingly trenchant social commentary. Shaw championed the rights of women and the working class, which are reflected in the original Pygmalion and carry over to its musical incarnation. (Shaw detested that his play’s ending was frequently altered so that Eliza and Higgins ended up together, believing this undermined her hard-won independence.) While it may be a stretch to call My Fair Lady feminist, Higgins’ misogyny is portrayed as a major character flaw and object of ridicule, while Eliza is the driving agent of her own fortune. It is she who seeks out Higgins demanding elocution lessons, and she’s determined to pay for them out of her own modest wages. She defiantly fights back against his attempts to subdue her, and at the end of the film, it is she who chooses her destiny — which may or may not be beside Higgins.
Likewise, My Fair Lady respects Eliza’s dignity as a member of the working class, yet never reduces her to the stereotype of the noble poor. The musical mocks the stilted social mores and arrogant paternalism of the rich, while also subverting the audience’s assumptions about the difference in morality of the two classes. (As the character of Alfie Doolittle shows, there’s a thin line between the “undeserving poor” and the “undeserving rich.”) My Fair Lady demonstrates that it’s possible for a hardworking, determined person to elevate themselves to a higher place in society, but also shows that it’s a major struggle, requiring far, far more than “a little bit of luck.”
While My Fair Lady was both a commercial and critical triumph, and has come to be one of the most widely beloved films ever, it was also one of the last hurrahs of the big movie musical. The next two film versions of Lerner and Loewe shows, Camelot (1967) and Paint Your Wagon (1969), notoriously flopped, and adaptations of their contemporaries’ work at the end of the ‘60s seldom fared any better. Big showy musicals had fallen out of vogue, rendered obsolete and stogy by the rawer, more realistic New Hollywood style. Meanwhile, rock ‘n’ roll was replacing showtunes as the default popular music in the charts.
Major musical films would continue to be produced occasionally throughout the ‘70s, but they tended to have darker themes, rock-influenced scores, and New Hollywood-inspired film techniques. (Hits that include two or more of these characteristics include 1972’s Cabaret, 1973’s Jesus Christ Superstar, and 1979’s Hair.) Although My Fair Lady is set in the 1910s and premiered onstage in the 1950s, however, its theme of equal rights and the breakdown of class barriers seems remarkably topical for its mid-’60s release — proving that perhaps the “old-fashioned musical” still had a place, even in a decade defined by social change.
It Was 50 Years Ago Today examines a song, album, movie, or book that was #1 on the charts exactly half a century ago.
