My Fair Lady

Released: December 25, 1964

Studio: Warner Bros.

Genre: musical/romance/comedy

Box Office (numbers in millions):

Domestic: 72.00 Worldwide: ?

Adjusted for Inflation:

Domestic: 589.27 Worldwide: 1015.95

Directing: George Cukor

Screenwriting: Alan Jay Lerner, Frederick Loewe

Starring: Rex Harrison, Audrey Hepburn, Stanley Holloway, Wilfrid Hyde-White, Gladys Cooper, Theodore Bikel

Review:

Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe crafted one of Broadway’s most successful musicals of all time out of George Bernard Shaw’s 1913 play Pygmalion and then adapted the screenplay to be one of Hollywood’s most successful films of all time.

Rex Harrison repeated his Tony Award-winning Broadway performance of Henry Higgins, an arrogant linguistics professor, for the screen and was awarded again, this time with an Oscar for Best Actor. He bets he can transform Eliza Doolittle (Hepburn), “a lowly, unrefined flower girl into a sophisticated, elite woman,” ^VD “just by teaching her to speak properly.” ^A98 Higgins ends up falling for his street-urchin-pupil-turned-proper-lady by the end.

The ”lushly produced” ^VD is marked by “terrific tunes” ^VD including “I Could Have Danced All Night,” and “Wouldn’t It Be Lovely,” and “The Rain in Spain.”

Sources:

^A98 American Film Institute (1998). “AFI’s 100 Years, 100 Movies”
^A07 American Film Institute (2007). “AFI’s 100 Years…100 Movies – 10th Anniversary Edition”
^VD Video Detective (1997). “Top 100 Films of All Time”

Awards/Honors/Lists:

Dave’s Movie Database Lists:

Dave’s Movie Database Genre Lists:

Box Office:

Oscars:

Wins: 8 – including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor (Harrison), Best Color Cinematography, Best Color Art Direction/Set Decoration, Best Sound, Best Score, Best Color Costume Design

Nominations: 12 – including Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Supporting Actor (Holloway), Best Supporting Actress (Cooper), Best Film Editing