Classic Film Friday: My Fair Lady

Ok, I admit it, I completely screwed up my Netflix cue and really didn’t have a classic movie to review this week. However My Fair Lady is a perennial favorite of mine that everyone should see at least once. The story (an adaptation of Pygmalion) is a true rags to riches or ugly duckling epic. Eliza Doolittle (Audrey Hepburn) is an impoverished flower girl that struggles to make ends meet while daydreaming of a better life.

Enter Professor Henry Higgins (Rex Harrison), a pompous, egotistical, and arrogant language/phonics professor. Eliza realizes that education is her only ticket out of poverty and enters into an agreement with Higgins along with Colonel Hugh Pickering (Wilfrid Hyde-White) to turn her into a “lady”. Of course she is a fish out of water and blunders her way through lessons but with Higgins cruel tenacity and Eliza’s own brand of stubbornness, she eventually meets her goal.

Meanwhile Eliza’s miscreant-deadbeat father Alfred Doolittle (Stanley Holloway) makes an appearance for nothing more than to cash in at his daughter’s expense. Needless to say being the unapologetic drunkard, Alfred is the movie’s comic relief and social critic.

The movie outlines a woman’s struggle to get the credit she deserves and even after she achieves the seemingly impossible, her efforts go unrecognized. The movie is endearing (to me) because it pokes fun at words and shows how common sense is just as important as anything one might learn from a book. My Fair Lady’s musical numbers are memorable, the cinematography is award winning, and Hepburn’s eloquence shines throughout.

Through the magic of YouTube, I give you a day at the races: