TS: My Fair Lady vs Pygmalion

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Is what is lost from Pygmalion made up for by all the songs in My Fair Lady?

― Johnney B (Johnney B), Monday, 29 March 2004 08:33 (twenty-two years ago)

ANDROCLES AND THE LION

― Jarlr'mai (jarlrmai), Monday, 29 March 2004 08:36 (twenty-two years ago)

Pygmalion has the ending Shaw wanted, My Fair Lady does not.

― suzy (suzy), Monday, 29 March 2004 08:42 (twenty-two years ago)

Ah, but My Fair Lady has Audrey Hepburn + "Wouldn't it be Luverly", which surely makes it firm favourite.

― Johnney B (Johnney B), Monday, 29 March 2004 09:01 (twenty-two years ago)

Ah, a fan of the dulcet tones of Marni Nixon.

Weirdly, when I saw MFL on telly at Christmas, Stanley Holloway came out of it the best.

― suzy (suzy), Monday, 29 March 2004 09:45 (twenty-two years ago)

Yes, but when you watch it, you forget that it ain't Audrey, and it doesn't matter anyway.

I wish Rex Harrison was my uncle.

― Johnney B (Johnney B), Monday, 29 March 2004 09:53 (twenty-two years ago)

Rex Harrison was a Scouser.

― suzy (suzy), Monday, 29 March 2004 10:02 (twenty-two years ago)

Ha, there's one bit at least, where ahem "audrey starts singing" and the change in voice timbre is GLARINGLY apparent. Ms Hepburn's acting + er "vocal characterisations" in this film are so terrible, possibly it's the worst I've seen her do, nevertheless, her whole act is so charming, and the songs are so likeable & memorable, that it easily wins for me. It's one of my favourite films actually.

― Pashmina (Pashmina), Monday, 29 March 2004 10:12 (twenty-two years ago)

Which bit is that, Pashmina? I havn't seen it for a while, but as far as I can remember there isn't really anything that's glaringly obvious.

― Johnney B (Johnney B), Monday, 29 March 2004 12:12 (twenty-two years ago)

It's one of the bits in 'enery 'iggins 'ouse. It's been a while since I saw it, but I remember we were watching it, & Jill was all "her voice just changed!!"

― Pashmina (Pashmina), Monday, 29 March 2004 12:46 (twenty-two years ago)

Pygmalion, easy. It's perhaps the greatest of all comedies of manners. My Fair Lady is a dippy medium-sized musical.

― gabbneb (gabbneb), Monday, 29 March 2004 13:26 (twenty-two years ago)

My Fair Lady does remind me to get my arse down to the NPG for the Cecil Beaton retrospective.

It seemed like they showed the Leslie Howard/Wendy Hiller film about every two weeks on my local PBS channel when I was small. But that's okay as it is brilliant and Shaw had a beady eye of supervision over it.

― suzy (suzy), Monday, 29 March 2004 13:50 (twenty-two years ago)

I have unfortunate school trip associations with "MFL" that culminated in an incident where I got detention because other people spat on me.

― VengaDan Perry (Dan Perry), Monday, 29 March 2004 14:17 (twenty-two years ago)

It's a testament to ...to...to something that MFL can be as flawed as it is, and still be one of the greatest movies ever filmed.

― Skottie, Monday, 29 March 2004 14:19 (twenty-two years ago)

Dan, is this that MN school board edict which says if the victim makes too much noise in protest or speaks out of turn to a disciplinarian, they're the one who gets in trouble?

(I lived in the principal's office waiting area for all of 8th grade for these reasons but never got a detention that I actually served due to 'let's see how this looks tomorrow, out of the heat of the moment' and general reluctance to bite bullet for being attacked by mall rats)

― suzy (suzy), Monday, 29 March 2004 14:30 (twenty-two years ago)

No, it was more the edict that says if you finally snap after putting up with months of bullshit and retaliate against one of the fuckers tormenting you, you get into trouble along with the fuckers despite the fact that your complaints against the asshat are on record.

Basically, eighth grade sucked.

― VengaDan Perry (Dan Perry), Monday, 29 March 2004 14:42 (twenty-two years ago)

The girl version of that is having to go sit in the counselor's office and take MMPIs ad nauseum after you've nearly been drowned by boys in the pool AGAIN and have retaliated by slashing their backs to bloody ribbons with the nails you've been leaving uncut for two weeks so that you've got ammo. You also observe that boys in question are wearing white/printed teeshirts, so their scratches bleed through the t-shirt. Was I hassled again? No.

I do not know what I would have done had my mum and her sibs not done time at that school before me.

To get it back to the topic, I once had to correct an English teacher about Pygmalion and Galatea.

― suzy (suzy), Monday, 29 March 2004 14:54 (twenty-two years ago)

no love for Julie Andrews?

― tokyo rosemary (rosemary), Monday, 29 March 2004 19:04 (twenty-two years ago)

I think the dvd version has the hepburn vocal tracks; I heard her version of "wouldn't it be lurvley" just last week on NPR. It wasn't as nice as the marni nixon version but had it's own charms, I suppose. I love this film btw.

― anthony kyle monday (akmonday), Monday, 29 March 2004 19:06 (twenty-two years ago)

I just watched MFL on DVD, and I wanted to start a thread about its ending and why it bothers me.

― Vitamin Leee (Leee), Monday, 29 March 2004 21:01 (twenty-two years ago)

why does it bother you?

― J.D. (Justyn Dillingham), Tuesday, 30 March 2004 01:49 (twenty-two years ago)

Because it's sort of a return to the status quo, where Higgins sees her as subservient to him once again after seemingly appreciating her for herself (ironic or not, he assumes the pose that would indicate that sort of a hierarchy).

― Vitamin Leee (Leee), Tuesday, 30 March 2004 05:29 (twenty-two years ago)

ten years pass...

pygmalion. not by miles, but comfortably. Hiller streets ahead, harrison surprisingly not so, pickering reasonably close, love both daddy Doolittles (did Pygmalion's ever get the full credit deserved for jack sparrow) and losing Hepburn/Nixon songs is a fair trade for the others.

― blap setter (darraghmac), Tuesday, 15 July 2014 23:37 (eleven years ago)

six years pass...

found a role model lads: https://www.comedy.co.uk/features/comedy_chronicles/rex-harrison-his-greatest-hits/

thanks to his noisy insistence that he was a better judge of French food than most of the French, he made himself thoroughly unwelcome in some of the best-rated restaurants in the area… "[Ce bifstek est brûlé comme la buggère!" he boomed while banging his fist on the table…

― mark s, Monday, 7 September 2020 15:19 (five years ago)

if one reflects on all the stories that others have told about him, a remarkably high number of them end up in much the same way, with the words: '...And then I hit him'.

Legend

― A Short Film About Scampoes (Noodle Vague), Monday, 7 September 2020 15:27 (five years ago)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Doz5w2W-jAY

― A Short Film About Scampoes (Noodle Vague), Monday, 7 September 2020 15:30 (five years ago)

really hoping Wilfred Hyde-White was a complete twat irl now

― A Short Film About Scampoes (Noodle Vague), Monday, 7 September 2020 15:32 (five years ago)

my mum always referred to him as "sexy rexy" -- i think largely bcz she found it funny that this was his industry nickname, tho reading this it seems highly plausible that everyone else was always already deploying it ironically

(the romantic-apology form-letter anecdote also good, in a piece full of very good anecdotes)

― mark s, Monday, 7 September 2020 15:32 (five years ago)

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