New "My Fair Lady"

[dirac]

Emma Thompson is set to write the screenplay for a projected remake of “My Fair Lady,” evidently a non-musical one:

The new version will draw additional material from “Pygmalion,” the play by George Bernard Shaw on which “My Fair Lady” is based.

http://www.broadway.com/gen/Buzz_Story.aspx?ci=569051

I've been hired to write a new screenplay for My Fair Lady, based on the foreword and afterword of Shaw's Pygmalion—different from the musical and not as sweet an ending."

I was wondering what was meant by "additional material" until I saw the quote from Thompson. After all, Lerner's book is so close to Shaw - more specifically, so close to the film adaptation starring Wendy Hiller and Leslie Howard - that it's possible to question his credit line. On the other hand, if it's not a musical, and it doesn't seem to be, why not call it a remake of Pygmalion and have done with it, even with the extra material?

[PeggyR]

Quoted from the linked article:

"According to press reports out of London, Keira Knightley will play Eliza Doolittle in the feature film remake..."

Dear God, is there no escape?

[glebb]

One good thing is that TCM will probably start showing the Wendy Hiller version again!

Loved her in "The Elephant Man" the other night.

[cubanmiamiboy]

Quoted from the linked article:

"According to press reports out of London, Keira Knightley will play Eliza Doolittle in the feature film remake..."

Dear God, is there no escape?

No, there is not. Sickening.

[papeetepatrick]

I just watched the Leslie Howard/Wendy Hiller film last night for the first time. Lerner's book follows it closely, but everything is hugely elaborated and made bigger--there's no Ascot in Pygmalion, and there's no big moment that parallels 'The Rain in Spain'. For those of us who know 'My Fair Lady' first, 'Pygmalion' is lovely, but seems very abbreviated from what we're used to. I had thought someone said Eliza ended up with Freddie--well, if she does, she drives off with him but then shows up at Higgins's just like in 'My Fair Lady', and he demands the slippers. Without the music, it's not a remake of 'My Fair Lady' even if they call it that. And that needs no remake either: I saw that also again about 3 weeks ago, and it has aged marvelously. It's not perfect, but close to it. I see it as the best of all the big Broadway adaptations (except 'Call Me Madam', which was perfect), the show is the best ever made for Broadway to begin with IMO, and while there is something to the imperfect matching of Marni Nixon to Audrey Hepburn (it is not as seamless as Deborah Kerr), the restored version is primarily at fault for leaving the verse of 'Without You' in Audrey's voice, and then the body of the song all of a sudden in Nixon's. I've never been more convinced, though, that the casting was absolutely right and that it is Audrey Hepburn's best picture. Except that, even so, Rex Harrison, is the star. He is simply perfection in my book. The main flaw with the movie to me is too long a number for 'Get Me to the Church on Time'; that should have been cut in half.

But the Howard/Hiller movie is also very good, with some casting not sparkling enough in the supporting roles--I missed Gladys Cooper enormously, who is so perfect as Higgins's mother, and Mona Washbourne as Mrs. Pierce. Colonel Pickering, though, is wonderfully handsome here, in the person of Scott Sunderland, and David Tree is very cute as Freddy, but he doesn't get to be quite as thrilling as Jeremy Brett, who makes 'On the Street Where You Live' appear as something unexpected but ineluctable all the same.

But--I don't care too much what they do. Unless it's very surprisingly cast, I wouldn't see it, because I don't see it as needing a remake.

Edited to add (from wiki): "Despite the intense central relationship between Eliza and Henry, the original play ends with her leaving to marry the eager young Freddy Eynsford-Hill. Shaw, annoyed by the tendency of audiences, actors, and even directors to seek 'romantic' re-interpretations of his ending, later wrote an essay[1] for inclusion with subsequent editions, in which he explained precisely why it was impossible for the story to end with Higgins and Eliza getting married.

Some subsequent adaptations have changed this ending. Despite Shaw's insistence that the original ending remain intact, producer Gabriel Pascal provided a more ambiguous end to the 1938 film: instead of marrying Freddy, Eliza apparently reconciles with Henry in the final scene, implying that they probably will get married. The musical version My Fair Lady and its 1964 film have similar endings. However, some productions of the play have emphasised that Eliza does marry Freddy."

It's interesting that Shaw was right that marrying Freddy was actually the less romantic alternative (he didn't know about 'ON the Street Where You Live'), but I was surprised that the ending to Howard/Hiller was essentially the same as that of 'My Fair Lady'.

[dirac]

Lerner's book follows it closely, but everything is hugely elaborated and made bigger--there's no Ascot in Pygmalion, and there's no big moment that parallels 'The Rain in Spain'. For those of us who know 'My Fair Lady' first, 'Pygmalion' is lovely, but seems very abbreviated from what we're used to.

Lerner eventually admitted – after many years of claiming he’d developed new scenes for the musical from incidents only talked about in the play – that the script of the old film was his blueprint.

I knew the play and the old movie version first, which I suppose is unusual these days. We did the play in high school and our drama teacher showed us the old movie – where he got it I’ll never know – deliberately steering us away from the musical. (He had nothing against it, he just thought the old film was better as a whole, and years later I still agree with him.) I like the movie of “My Fair Lady” just fine, although it’s bloated and overlong - some scenes just go on forever.

I suppose Leslie Howard is not as good as Harrison, but I like him better because he’s in the right age bracket to make the implied romance more believable, and it’s always nice to be reminded that he could be funny. Also, he hadn’t been playing the role for years and years before the shoot and his performance is the fresher for it. The old movie also has the great Marie Lohr as Higgins’ mother, and Rupert Brooke’s old flame Cathleen Nesbitt makes an appearance. Hiller is just wonderful.

Quoted from the linked article:

"According to press reports out of London, Keira Knightley will play Eliza Doolittle in the feature film remake..."

Dear God, is there no escape?

No, there is not. Sickening.

I'm ready to put a contract out on the lassie. Well, she was okay in Atonement.

[Ostrich]

The main flaw with the movie to me is too long a number for 'Get Me to the Church on Time'; that should have been cut in half.

Nah, I love the part, but otherwise I think that's a very accurate assessment.

OK, everyone seems to agree that we don't want to see Keira Knightley in the role, but if there has to be a remake, who'd be a good candidate?

[papeetepatrick]

I suppose Leslie Howard is not as good as Harrison, but I like him better because he’s in the right age bracket to make the implied romance more believable, and it’s always nice to be reminded that he could be funny. Also, he hadn’t been playing the role for years and years before the shoot and his performance is the fresher for it.

And yet Howard is wonderful too. It's just I guess as years have gone by, I appreciate Harrison in a way I didn't at first--really until now (something like the way I'm finally beginning to understand Maria Callas, although in her case it's finally understanding the voice itself). Just this morning, I found this from Bryan Forbes's wonderful biography of Edith Evans: "There was a quality of silence about Edith's major performances that few, if any, equalled. She used silence, she listened, and this to my mind is one of the hallmarks of greatness in an actor. A great actor has an ear for the pause and can calculate its bearable duration with the exactness of a scientist. In comedy, timing is everything. Edith had it, Rex Harrison has it to perfection; dropping the laugh line into the silence like a stone falling to the bottom of a well."

I may try to find Nesbitt in the film, Evans said that she and Gladys Cooper were the perfect beauties, but I'm not really familiar with Nesbitt, so I missed her. Agree Hiller is wonderful, but I've never seen her be anything else but superb.

I'm so behind on some of the new actors I'm not even in on what Keira Knightley is like, what the joke is.

[sidwich]

I actually prefer Leslie Howard's Professor to Rex Harrison's. For some reason, I just find him much more believable as the socially oblivious intellectual.

Edited to add (from wiki): "Despite the intense central relationship between Eliza and Henry, the original play ends with her leaving to marry the eager young Freddy Eynsford-Hill. Shaw, annoyed by the tendency of audiences, actors, and even directors to seek 'romantic' re-interpretations of his ending, later wrote an essay[1] for inclusion with subsequent editions, in which he explained precisely why it was impossible for the story to end with Higgins and Eliza getting married.

Yes, Shaw was very against a romantic conclusion to the play, and wrote extensively about how Eliza DID NOT end up with Higgins. When I have seen stage revivals of "Pygmalion," they have ended with the original Shaw script with Eliza leaving. (As an aside, I can see how this would be an intriguing assignment for Thompson).

Romantic interpretations of the ending still prevail, though, dating back to the original production when Mrs. Patrick Campbell (with whom Shaw had been involved and for whom he wrote the play) returned to the stage after the ostensible ending (Eliza's "You will not be be seeing me again, Professor Higgins" and Higgin's charge to pick up some new gloves for him while she is out), and asked "What size?"

I'm not that fond of the film of "My Fair Lady" for a number of reasons, and I do think that it could be improved upon. However, I don't think that there's anyone currently capable of making a better film. I think what would be an interesting film would be a film about Shaw and Mrs. Patrick Campbell, though, the real-life Pygmalion in writer/director Shaw and the Galatea of his actress muse who eventually left him.

OK, everyone seems to agree that we don't want to see Keira Knightley in the role, but if there has to be a remake, who'd be a good candidate?

If singing were not required, probably Emily Blunt. If singing required... I don't know. There are a few people who could do it onstage, but I think Hollywood would require a star, and I can't think of one in the right age range with a legit soprano.

[PeggyR]

OK, everyone seems to agree that we don't want to see Keira Knightley in the role...

Well, it's not so much that I don't want to see her in the role; I just don't want to see her at all. She's not a bad actress, just limited; for my taste, much too limited for the number and variety of roles she's getting. According to IMDb, she's been cast in a movie version of Lear, not, despite what I'm sure are the best efforts of the Hollywood types, in the title role , but as Cordelia. Ah, well.

[Quiggin]

When I was in high school, I liked the original cast recording an awful lot and knew the lyrics well, especially for the lessons about accent and class and the wonderful chewiness of cockney ("lots of cowl mike-ing lwots of 'eat"). I was torn between Eiza Doolittle's rebelliousness and Henry Higgens' suavity. The movie was quite a disappointment, brittle and overproduced, and Audrey Hepburn was fairly underwhelming as Eliza (it was a bit of show biz scandal that she had been cast, just as it was for Roz Russell to play Ethel Merman's part in Gypsy). Perhaps if Minelli, who had done Gigi, had directed My Fair Lady instead of Cukor...

And it was also Rex Harrison's soft-shoe phrasing--he couldn't sing, so had made do with what he had--that was so brilliant and winning. ("Pickering, why can't a woman be more like [great pause]...ME")

But Shaw, both in Pygmalion and over into My Fair Lady, focuses on Alfred Doolittle, Liza's charmingly good-for-nothing father, almost as much as Liza and HH, and on Doolittle's various speeches on work/not working and being respectable or not. (Isn't there something of Renoir's Boudu--remade as Down & Out in Beverly Hills--in him?).

Stanley Holloway was great as Alfred Doolittle in My Fair Lady, but Wilfred Lawson was interesting too in Pygmalion with his charcoaly face and wheezey voice. Wendy Hiller's transitions from Cockney to upperclass were troubling to me, but I did like Leslie Howard, though yes, he was a completely different Henry Higgins than the fierier Rex Harrison.

It's interesting to watch the Rex Harrison (with Wendy Hiller) in the 1941 Major Barbara and try to imagine him so youthful in Pygmalion.

[sidwich]

According to IMDb, she's been cast in a movie version of Lear, not, despite what I'm sure are the best efforts of the Hollywood types, in the title role , but as Cordelia. Ah, well.

Depending on who plays Lear, the producers/director may decide to shift the focus to Cordelia, though, which is the problem with "Atonement." Even though Knightley played what should have been a supporting character, because she was the biggest name, the director spent a disproportionate amount of time on her character which threw off the balance of the entire film.

Anyway, Keira Knightley is rather like the Gwyneth Paltrow of the current decade. She's actually a decent actress, but for a number of reasons (not all her fault) she has become the current Hollywood "It" girl and so suffers from major overexposure.

[dirac]

Even though Knightley played what should have been a supporting character, because she was the biggest name, the director spent a disproportionate amount of time on her character which threw off the balance of the entire film.

I agree, but it wasn’t just that Knightley was the star and accordingly favored – Atonement was presented primarily as a romance, which it’s far from being – the British Costume Drama of the season. The new Brideshead Revisited has been remade in much the same way, only more radically (although Atonement was much better as a film).

If singing were not required, probably Emily Blunt. If singing required... I don't know. There are a few people who could do it onstage, but I think Hollywood would require a star, and I can't think of one in the right age range with a legit soprano.

I’d settle for an illegitimate one, as they say in Victor/Victoria. Blunt is an excellent choice – she has the acting chops for Shaw. I gather this will be a non-musical, but I wouldn’t be against choosing Blunt for a musical version and dubbing her.

Well, it's not so much that I don't want to see her in the role; I just don't want to see her at all. She's not a bad actress, just limited; for my taste, much too limited for the number and variety of roles she's getting.

Knightley is still very young and she has time to improve, but I agree she’s getting an awful lot awfully soon. Usually even if I don’t like a star I can see why others do, but in Knightley’s case I’m somewhat baffled. The camera loves her, true.

(I'm not Gwyneth Paltrow's biggest fan I think she was a much better actor than Knightley when she was Knightley's age. You could see what the fuss was about.)

Wendy Hiller's transitions from Cockney to upperclass were a bit troubling to me,

Most actresses have difficulty with this. However, the fault may not lie with our stars – Kenneth Tynan said it was Shaw’s fault, the early Eliza is horribly overwritten and exaggerated. I think it’s safe to say that if it’s awkward for Hiller it would be awkward for anyone. Hepburn was quite wrong for the part, though.

It's interesting to watch the young Rex Harrison (with Wendy Hiller) in Major Barbara and try to imagine him so youthful in Pygmalion.

In 1938 he was too young and callow, but the Harrison of, say, “Unfaithfully Yours” as Higgins would have been something to see. It's not that he's bad in the film - he's superb - just a little too practiced, and too old, for my taste.

But Shaw, both in Pygmalion and over into My Fair Lady, focuses on Alfred Doolittle, Liza's charmingly good-for-nothing father, almost as much as Liza and HH, and on Doolittle's various speeches on work/not working and being respectable or not. (Isn't there something of Renoir's Boudu--remade as Down & Out in Beverly Hills--in him?).

That's right, and as I remember Shaw's preface it's clear that Doolittle's speeches were at least as important to him as anything else in the play.

[Quiggin]

In 1938 he was too young and callow, but the Harrison of, say, “Unfaithfully Yours” as Higgins would have been something to see. It's not that he's bad in the film - he's superb - just a little too practiced, and too old, for my taste

Yes, Rex Harrison would have been too young and callow, and is too practiced later. Even the first original cast album is preferable to the second, redone a year later in a stereo version. And sadly Rex Harrison went onto play Henry Higgins on stage well into the 80's, 17 years after the movie. What a personal life, half noble, half heartbreakery, the noble part the subject of a Terrence Rattigan play. There is a fun amateur clip of RH accompanying Vivien Leigh (their's would be an interesting conversation to imagine overhearing) to the movie premier of My Fair Lady on YT.

Unfaithfully Yours is the one Preston Sturges movie I could laugh at/with, with heart (if one laughs with their heart) and mind.

[sidwich]

Knightley is still very young and she has time to improve, but I agree she’s getting an awful lot awfully soon. Usually even if I don’t like a star I can see why others do, but in Knightley’s case I’m somewhat baffled. The camera loves her, true.

She's a good (enough) actress, while being tall, white, blonde and thin enough to wear a model sample size which makes her a darling of fashion designers and photographers. "Pirates of the Carribean" launched her onto the A-list, but the fashion magazines have secured that spot for a while. What will be interesting is how long she can hold onto that spot, when a new 22 year old bursts onto the scene.

I'm not Gwyneth Paltrow's biggest fan I think she was a much better actor than Knightley when she was Knightley's age. You could see what the fuss was about

That's probably true, although I think there are other actresses as good or better who just didn't have either Paltrow's luck, family connections, or Brad Pitt. Ten years ago, she probably would have been offered Eliza, and she might have been an interesting choice, considering her singing ability is not half-bad.

A more offbeat choice might be Zooey Deschanel who is a very good actress and sings very well, although I'm not sure she has a legit soprano either.

[papeetepatrick]

Hepburn was quite wrong for the part, though.

Julie Andrews fans always say that. I tend to agree with critic David Thomson that Ms. Andrews is never interesting, although I tried to think so, and tried to like 'Victor, Victoria' and couldn't. I no longer even want to hear her voice in 'I Could Have Danced All Night', although she sang that well. Many people, including herself, think she will always own the role of Eliza in the musical, but many don't by now; I certainly don't, and I grew up with her Broadway albums.

Having seen what Hiller did, which is a much less detailed role (in the sense that it is made much more extravagant in the musical) than Eliza of 'My Fair Lady' is, I looked closely this time at what Hepburn did in both parts of 'My Fair Lady', and I cannot see her as less than ideal. Her Cockney was much better than most will admit, and there is much more opportunity to show it off in 'My Fair Lady' than there had been in 'Pygmalion'. Really, Hiller just needed more material. Hepburn was an actress, and had proved it in 'The Nun's Story'. It's unfortunate she got stuck in those mannequin roles like 'How to Steal a Million' and 'Paris When It Sizzles', but of course she was not capable of going into the dark ranges too much. But that has nothing to do with Eliza, and I can't prove she was right for it any more than someone else can prove she was wrong. Many liked her--my brother came fresh from seeing Julie Andrews in the B'way 'Victor, Victoria', and said that 'My Fair Lady' was his favourite movie, that he thought it was so much better that Audrey Hepburn did it. Also that Julie Andrews was 'never sexy'. So what does he know? What do any of us know? Her more aristocratic mien played off well against Harrison. Incidentally, Ms. Andrews was more than gushy about Hepburn's Eliza during the period ("Oh yes, Audrey was just soooo wonderful in it"), and only retracted it after Audrey's death. She then said, in a PBS retrospective of her own career, 'Well, at the time I understood why they did it; but now, looking back on it, I really do wish I had put the stamp on that role'. Nothing was ever enough for her, and so, as her own star began to wane, she could no longer be bothered to appear generous. You didn't see the other rejected ladies getting big movie careers as consolation prizes, nor spending so much time on their self-importance after their initial disappointment.

One thing that is never quite right in the musical is 'Show Me', simply because it doesn't equally apply to both Higgins and Freddy, and this the old 1938 proves (it only applies to Higgins, of course, but the song demands that it also apply to Freddy). It just seems like Higgins was right about 'female irrationality' for Eliza to keep singing 'Show Me' to Freddy, since, even if he's not interested in working, he's more than willing to make love to her and does then kiss her right there in 'Pygmalion'l and she tells him to do so again, and she does. I am very surprised that they didn't figure out a better way to deal with this in the musical, as the scene works a thousand times better in the original, with the policeman admonishing Freddy 'This isn't Paris, you know'. But frankly, the ascent to becoming a lady in 'Pygmalion' has little of the magic that Lerner gave it. Both the Ascot scene and the ball scenes are far more effective in 'My Fair Lady' (of course, there is no actually Ascot scene in the play), although some of the domestic comedy is better or as good in the 1938 version. The drilling of Eliza is not nearly painful enough in the old one, that is the one part that should be a little interminable.

I dread any remake, but I doubt it will be with singing. A Gwyneth Paltrow type sounds okay, but ordinary, pedestrian.

[dirac]

Quiggin writes:

And sadly Rex Harrison went onto play Henry Higgins on stage well into the 80's, 17 years after the movie.

Like Yul Brynner, going on and on and on.

I understand the whole Kay Kendall business was more convoluted than Rattigan knew, or let on. Harrison was a piece of work, all right.

We haven’t talked about him much, but Day-Lewis is an.....interesting choice for Higgins.

[Ostrich]

One thing that is never quite right in the musical is 'Show Me', simply because it doesn't equally apply to both Higgins and Freddy

I thought the idea was that it didn't need to apply to Freddy - Eliza is merely taking her frustration about Henry Higgins out on him because he's an easier target. At least in the "My Fair Lady' interpretation (as opposed to 'Pygmalion). But it's never been my favourite part.

[papeetepatrick]

One thing that is never quite right in the musical is 'Show Me', simply because it doesn't equally apply to both Higgins and Freddy

I thought the idea was that it didn't need to apply to Freddy - Eliza is merely taking her frustration about Henry Higgins out on him because he's an easier target. At least in the "My Fair Lady' interpretation (as opposed to 'Pygmalion). But it's never been my favourite part.

Good pont, I hadn't thought of that, and likely so.

[dirac]

One thing that is never quite right in the musical is 'Show Me', simply because it doesn't equally apply to both Higgins and Freddy

I thought the idea was that it didn't need to apply to Freddy - Eliza is merely taking her frustration about Henry Higgins out on him because he's an easier target. At least in the "My Fair Lady' interpretation (as opposed to 'Pygmalion). But it's never been my favourite part.

I think you're right, Ostrich. Freddy's just in the wrong place at the wrong time.

[papeetepatrick]

Along the same lines, she also over-defends Pickering in front of Higgins and his mother, just to make her point to Higgins. Even though Pickering was just as much at fault in ignoring her after the ball, and went to bed almost immediately in 'Pygmalion' (not that he hadn't been kinder in the past, but still, not at that crucial point). In 'My Fair Lady', Eliza can never get his attention any more than she can Higgins's in the 'You Did It' scene. In fact, the very song itself proves Pickering's own insensitivity, even if temporary.

[dirac]

Along the same lines, she also over-defends Pickering in front of Higgins and his mother, just to make her point to Higgins.

But Eliza’s main point was that Pickering treated her better from day one, which is perfectly true, and his manners a contrast (and reproach) to Higgins’ lack of concern. She’s not the sort to hold a momentary lapse against a man she knows to be kind at heart.

A more offbeat choice might be Zooey Deschanel who is a very good actress and sings very well, although I'm not sure she has a legit soprano either.

Interesting idea, sidwich. (Although of course Deschanel is no slouch in the family connections department, either. There’s talk of her doing a Janis Joplin biopic, for which I think she’d be quite wrong – not necessarily on a vocal basis, but she’s far too pretty.)

[canbelto]

I admit to admiring the Hiller/Howard movie more than liking it, if that makes sense. I love Hiller as Eliza, although I think Hepburn was very underrated as Eliza. But Howard does nothing for me -- I find him cold and dull, and his Higgins is too mean. I love Harrison's more genial interpretation.

I actually like Kiera Knightley. I loved her in Pride and Prejudice and think that with the right coaching and guidance she could make something of the part.

[dirac]

I admit to admiring the Hiller/Howard movie more than liking it, if that makes sense. I love Hiller as Eliza, although I think Hepburn was very underrated as Eliza. But Howard does nothing for me -- I find him cold and dull, and his Higgins is too mean. I love Harrison's more genial interpretation.

I actually like Kiera Knightley. I loved her in Pride and Prejudice and think that with the right coaching and guidance she could make something of the part.

Thanks for speaking up for Knightley, canbelto. I personally don't think Hepburn is underrrated - that's one performance where I think the conventional wisdom has it right. (Not that she's terrible by any means, just miscast. )

[carbro]

Thank you, canbelto, for summing up my thoughts on Howard-vs.-Harrison so well. I never understood Leslie Howard's appeal. I've always found him a bit offputting. Harrison manages the delicate balance of making Higgins a self-centered boor and yet somehow charming, attractive.

The first shot of Hepburn dressed for the ball at the top of the staircase alone justifies her casting.

Stanley Holloway was great as Alfred Doolittle . . .

My sister saw the touring production some years ago starring Richard Chamberlain ("looks good in a cardigan," was her reaction). Doolittle was played by Holloway's son, Julian.