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Audrey Hepburn presenting Rex Harrison the Oscar® for Best Actor for his performance in "My Fair Lady" at the 37th Academy Awards® in 1965.
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In 1964 Harrison reprised his 1956 stage performance as Henry Higgins in My Fair Lady, for which he won an Oscar for Best Actor. He was one of several stars in the popular The Yellow Rolls-Royce (1964), and played the Pope opposite Charlton Heston in Fox's The Agony and the Ecstasy (1965), for Carol Reed.
- Overview
- Production notes and credits
- Cast
- Academy Award nominations (* denotes win)
My Fair Lady, American musical film, released in 1964, that was adapted from the long-running Broadway musical of the same name and proved to be a great popular and critical success. The movie, which starred Rex Harrison and Audrey Hepburn, won eight Academy Awards, including that for best picture.
The film, set in London in 1912, opens outside the Covent Garden opera house, where noted phonetics expert Henry Higgins (played by Harrison) is taking notes on the accents of those around him, especially the Cockney flower seller Eliza Doolittle (Hepburn). He tells language expert Col. Hugh Pickering (Wilfrid Hyde-White) that, given enough time, he could teach Eliza to speak English well enough for her to be taken for a duchess. The following morning Eliza arrives at Higgins’s home, seeking elocution lessons in order to gain employment at a flower shop. Pickering declares that he will pay for such lessons if Higgins can make good on his claim. Higgins agrees to help Eliza, who moves into his home. A few days later Eliza’s father, Alfred P. Doolittle (Stanley Holloway), a dustman, arrives, asking after his daughter and seeking money. He accepts £5. Impressed by his approach to ethics, Higgins recommends him to a wealthy American who is studying morality.
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Higgins subjects Eliza to many forms of speech training, none of which is successful. Just as Higgins and Pickering are about to give up, Higgins gives Eliza an encouraging speech, extolling the glories of the English language, and she experiences a breakthrough. As a test, Higgins takes her to the Ascot racecourse. Here she meets a number of people, including Higgins’s mother, Mrs. Higgins (Gladys Cooper), and a young man, Freddy Eynsford-Hill (Jeremy Brett). All are charmed by her impeccable accent and not fully reformed grammar, but she relapses into Cockney when urging on a racehorse. After further training, Eliza is put to the final test. She attends an embassy ball, where Zoltan Karpathy (Theodore Bikel), a Hungarian phonetics expert, declares that she is Hungarian and of noble birth. After Eliza’s success at the event, Higgins and Pickering are elated with their achievement, and they congratulate each other with great enthusiasm. However, both ignore Eliza’s contribution to her transformation. Higgins’s indifference enrages Eliza, and she leaves.
Accompanied by Freddy, who is smitten by her, Eliza returns to her home, only to find that her former neighbours no longer accept her. She discovers that her father has inherited a substantial sum of money from the wealthy American, and, though he is less than thrilled about having to be respectable, he is about to marry his longtime girlfriend. Eventually, Eliza takes refuge with Mrs. Higgins. The next day Higgins searches for her and finds her with his mother. Eliza refuses to return with him, however, saying that she plans to marry Freddy and work for Karpathy. Higgins returns to his study to lament her absence. As he is consoling himself, listening to tapes of her speaking lessons, she returns.
•Studio: Warner Brothers
•Director: George Cukor
•Writer: Alan Jay Lerner (screenplay)
•Music: André Previn (uncredited)
•Rex Harrison (Henry Higgins)
•Audrey Hepburn (Eliza Doolittle)
•Wilfrid Hyde-White (Col. Hugh Pickering)
•Stanley Holloway (Alfred P. Doolittle)
•Picture*
•Lead actor* (Rex Harrison)
•Supporting actor (Stanley Holloway)
•Supporting actress (Gladys Cooper)
•Art direction*
•Cinematography (color)*
- Pat Bauer
Sep 23, 2024 · Rex Harrison, English stage and film actor best known for his portrayals of urbane, eccentric English gentlemen in sophisticated comedies and social satires. The best known of these is My Fair Lady, in which he starred onstage and onscreen, winning a Tony and an Oscar, respectively, for his performances.
- The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
Rex Harrison dedicated his Oscar to "two fair ladies": Julie Andrews and Audrey Hepburn.
- March 5, 1908
- June 2, 1990
The film stars Audrey Hepburn as Eliza Doolittle—replacing Julie Andrews from the stage musical [4] —and Rex Harrison as Henry Higgins—reprising his role from the stage musical—with Stanley Holloway, Gladys Cooper and Wilfrid Hyde-White in supporting roles.
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