So, another of my favourite musicals. I’m going to do one more week of this and then move on to something else. I’ve been thinking about my favourites and, after some deliberation, I decided on this one as I have some strong memories of it from childhood.
My Fair Lady
With sterling performances from Rex Harrison (who won an Academy Award for Best Actor for his portrayal of Higgins) and Audrey Hepburn, George Cukor’s 1964 interpretation of George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion, adapted for the screen by Alan Jay Lerner, won him the Oscar for Best Director. It also is blessed with some really standout supporting performances, most notably from Wilfrid Hyde-White as Colonel Pickering and Stanley Holloway as Alfred P Doolittle.
There are quite a few stories that go with the vocals in the film. For one thing, Audrey Hepburn’s voice was deemed not good enough by the producers who brought in Marni Nixon to provide dubbing. I never realised growing up that I was listening to the same person when I watched this, West Side Story and The King and I. Hepburn was not happy when she found out.
Rex Harrison, in all his stage performances of the play had never quite spoken the lines in his songs the same way twice and felt it would be impossible to accurately lip sync his songs during shooting. The sound department came up with a brand new solution; the birth of the wireless microphone which allowed him to record his performance live. This innovation won yet another Academy Award. The fact that he was completely in sync meant that everyone else who was singing looked out of sync, so the sound engineers had to lengthen or shorten some of Harrison’s notes so that it wouldn’t appear perfect and would therefore be less noticeable.
That’s about all the trivia I could dig up.
Here are a few of my favourite songs from the film..
Thanks for reading. If you fancy some more random bits of music, click the links below. Otherwise, have a good week.
Thanks,
Have a great week.
Richard
The Ardenna Crossing 
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