my fair lady..

[ghost]

Ooh! Look I'm putting in a thread! Amazing!

Anyways, I saw this musical a couple of years ago-my old music teacher was the main part (can't remember the name) and i thought it was quite good, I liked the idea of this guy trying to make this woman acceptable and then falling for her ragtag charm as much as she ends up trying to be like him to make him happy. I haven't seen the Audrey Hepburn movie of it though... any good? dad tells me I look like her >.<

[Tinechorwen]

*Shakes head* The film was alright, but nothing in comparison to what it could have been if they had cast Julie Andrews as Eliza. Julie Andrews originated the role of Eliza and became famous for it, but when the film came along it was decided she wasn't famous enough to be in it, so they cast Audrey Hepburn. And she didn't do that bad a job, but she was dubbed for the singing because she didn't have the voice.

And just remember, that Julie Andrews won the oscar for Mary Poppins that year, over Audrey. Of course, I’m not saying that it’s Audrey fault, and she did a reasonable job with the acting, but I still would have preferred Andrews to record her version.

[Buff]

I would have loved to have seen Julie Andrews do Eliza. Would have been fantastic.

The school where I work are performing "My Fair Lady" this year. The girl who is Eliza is an excellent actress and singer, so she will be good. The guy playing Higgins is a good singer, but his acting is a little overdone, but still will be good. In last years show, Annie, she was Miss Hannigan and he was Daddy Warbucks.

And I've just been asked to play trumpet in the orchestra...I just have to convince my wife it won't take up too much time

Buff

[Talissa]

I heard somewhere that Julie Andrews had been offered the role, but had turned it down. Apparently she hadn't even wanted to play Eliza on stage and hated working with Rex Harrison, who was every bit as bad as Higgins.

I think the main song in which the dubbing really let the film down was I Could Have Danced All Night. Even before I realised it was dubbed, I just couldn't watch that scene and believe it.

You never seem to stop being asked to do shows, Buff You're certainly Mr Popular

~Julia

[Rosie Alvarez]

I agree. I think the stage version is much better than the movie. I saw it when I was in England one year. It was amazing! I also agree Julie Andrews should have been Eliza in the movie.

[Tinechorwen]

I've never heard that about Julie Andrews not wanting to work with Rex Harrison...wow, that's strange! I think she did want to do the movie though, or maybe this isn't accurate but I'll post up one of the things I've recently read about it...I think she definitely wished she'd done it in recent times.

Yes, I agree about I could have danced all night, it's really annoying! And it's supposed to be the song from the show, well, at least one of them. I've got the best of julie andrews cd here, so if I ever get depressed I'll put it on and listen to her medley of the songs.

[Tinechorwen]

This is from Julie Andrews: A life on stage and screen"...

[Julie Andrews was]working at the Disney Studios in nearby Burbank even though My Fair Lady was in pre-production, with a new Eliza, at Warner Brothers, less than a mile away. 'It may have been that celebrated ill wind,' Julie said, years later. 'I had Mary Poppins to soften the blow.' My Fair Lady was the one movie she had hoped for most, and not being familiar with the motion picture business, even in Britain, Julie didn't really understand the Hollywood star system that had worked against her. Warner Brothers had invested a record $5.5 million in acquiring the screen rights to the musical and Jack Warner, who was both head of the studio and the producer of My Fair Lady, had been convinced to sign Rex Harrison as Henry Higgins. Warner had wanted to use Cary Grant instead, as box office insurance. Grant himself told Warner, 'If you don't hire Rex Harrison, I won't even go to see My Fair Lady.' Harrison was not a potent box office name in America, or anywhere else in movies at that time. But he *was* Henry Higgins."

"A string of fair ladies had followed Julie on Broadway and played Eliza rather well, so the feeling at Warner Brothers was that while it might have been difficult to 'get' the role on stage, any number of stars who were also good actresses could probably get by on screen, especially under George Cukor's direction- even if the singing had to be dubbed by someone else. At the time, more than half the box office receipts from any Hollywood movie came from outside the United States. Musicals, particularly those with difficult lyrics, were a particularly hard sell in non-English-speaking countries. Warner needed a proven international star as Eliza, and so he hired one."

"Julie had stayed in the running for the $17 million production (then a record budget for a movie) simply because she had been brilliant in the part for three and a half years. That just made it all the harder to take when Audrey Hepburn got the part- and a fee of $1 million. Hepburn was not even going to do all her own singing; that job would fall once again to Marni Nixon, the mimic ghost-singer of many movie musicals (without formal acknowledgement or screen credit, as usual). Nixon had sung for Deborah Kerr in The King and I, Rosalind Russell in Gypsy, and Natalie Wood in West Side Story, among others. The morning she found out about Audrey Hepburn's being cast in the role, Julie was in her agent's office for a conference. He and his associates already knew about the announcement and assumed that Julie did. But she didn't, and asked how My Fair Lady was going. 'Haven't you heard?' someone said. 'They've signed Audrey Hepburn.' 'Oh...I see,' was the quiet, composed reply, as Julie struggled to get hold of herself. After a pause, she said, 'Well, that's that, isn't it?' Later that same morning, Julie was riding by the Warner Brothers studios. Out of a protracted, deliberate silence came, in a crystalline, high-pitched voice, 'And a good morning to you, Mr. Warner, and the best of luck.'"

"Julie often said that if it had been anyone but Audrey Hepburn, an actress she didn't really know but did admire, she 'would have been blazing mad. Of course I wanted to play it. Who wouldn't want to play Eliza? But in a way it's a good thing having to play a different role. People at least will know I can do something else.' Some of her other comments at the time smacked of stiff-upper-lipping: 'I would have taken the part if Mr. Warner had asked me even though I had had about enough of Eliza,' or 'I wasn't desperately upset over not getting the role; I didn't hold out much hope in the first place.' Logistically, it would have been possible for Julie to have played both Eliza and Mary Poppins because the principal photography involving Eliza didn't begin until Julie's part in Mary Poppins was completed. However she could not have played Eliza and done either The Americanization of Emily or The Sound of Music. 'I was more than compensated by three marvelous roles,' she said."

[Talissa]

Ah, now that's an interesting article. I think it would be safe to assume that the people I got my sources from had read some of those last sorts of statements and taking it as it appeared. Thanks for that

~Julia

[Buff]

Eowyn said:

Hepburn was not even going to do all her own singing; that job would fall once again to Marni Nixon, the mimic ghost-singer of many movie musicals (without formal acknowledgement or screen credit, as usual). Nixon had sung for Deborah Kerr in The King and I, Rosalind Russell in Gypsy, and Natalie Wood in West Side Story, among others

I still find it amazing that Marni Nixon doesn't get credit for the work she did. I'd love to get a copy of each soundtrack and play one song from each so I could compare her voice. I wonder if she changed it some way to sound more like the person she was providing the singing for?

Buff

[Tinechorwen]

Buff said:

I wonder if she changed it some way to sound more like the person she was providing the singing for?

I've also thought the same thing Buff...after all I think they didn't mention her in the credits for a reason, if they could get away with people thinking it was Hepburn then they would, or maybe they just didn't mention her.

She might have sung it differently, well, at least 'acted' differently, through the songs, if that makes sense? Probably not. I've got the video of West side story somewhere, I should rent My Fair Lady out and compare them. Marni Nixon should release a CD of all the musicals she has technically starred in, well, at least been a part of.

[Talissa]

I watched part of WSS today (my, some of that dubbing was fun to watch), and some of the scenes felt like watching I Could Have Danced All Night all over again. I think that part of the problem, as well as the timing not quite matching up, is that the actresses Marni Nixon dubbed in both MFL and WSS are rather delicate light-voiced actresses, while Marni has a much richer voice. So, no matter how much she alters her voice to match the actress, it would be extremely difficult to get that quality without affecting the sound itself.

Also, I felt that Marni's PR accent for Maria wasn't quite the same as Natalie Wood's, so that was another giveaway. That may be because I didn't see the whole thing that I felt that, though. However, she matched herself with Audrey Hepburn's street accent in MFL very well.

~Julia

[Tinechorwen]

Urgh, I hate it when it's blantantly obvious like that...I haven't seen WSS in awhile so I can't remember...but considering when it was made I doubt they had really refined the technique of dubbing. And you think they'd at least get a singer with a singing voice similar to the actresses speaking voice. *sigh* I think we should take over Broadway and making musicals into films...we'd do a lot better job than some of them, well...maybe not technically, but sometimes their stupidity is irritating!