"Oh, wouldn't it be loverly?"Now HERE is a good musical, and I don't even care that Audrey Hepburn didn't sing. I'm sorry, I like her better than Julie Andrews for the part. Audrey Hepburn is just so charming and lovely -Julie Andrews isn't quite feminine enough for my taste, at least for this role (of course, she has an amazing voice). And the singer (Marni Nixxon) dubbed in for Audrey is great, and I didn't find the dubbing distracting at all. A fun rags to riches story, good actors, great music, beautiful costumes. A definite classic.
The plot involves a poor flower seller, Eliza Doolittle, who becomes the subject of a bet between Henry Higgins (an elocution coach) and his friend Colonel Pickering. Higgins wagers that he can train Eliza into being a lady in time to pass her off as an aristocrat at an upcoming embassy ball: "Eliza, you are to stay here for the next six months learning to speak beautifully, like a lady in a florist's shop. If you work hard and do as you're told, you shall sleep in a proper bedroom, have lots to eat, and money to buy chocolates and go for rides in taxis. But if you are naughty and idle, you shall sleep in the back kitchen amongst the black beetles, and be wolloped by Mrs. Pearce with a broomstick. At the end of six months you will be taken to Buckingham Palace, in a carriage, beautifully dressed. If the king finds out you are not a lady, you will be taken to the Tower of London, where your head will be cut off as a warning to other presumptuous flower girls! But if you are not found out, you shall have a present... of, ah... seven and six to start life with as a lady in a shop. If you refuse this offer, you will be the most ungrateful, wicked girl, and the angels will weep for you."
Eliza and Higgins begin training, causing them both immense frustration. Higgins laments to Pickering, "Why can't a woman be more like a man?" And Eliza plans her vengeance on Higgins: "Just you wait Henry Higgins, just you wait! You'll be sorry, but your tears'll be too late! You'll be broke and I'll have money. Will I help you? Don't be funny. Just you wait, Henry Higgins, just you wait!... Then they'll march you, Henry Higgins to the wall. And the King will tell me: 'Liza, sound the call.' As they raise their rifles higher, I'll shout 'Ready! Aim! Fire! Oh-ho-ho, Henry Higgins, Down you'll go, Henry Higgins. Just you wait!"
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| "Come on, Dover, move yer bloomin' arse!" -Eliza |
She is taken to the races to test out her improved speech, with humorous results:
Mrs. Eynsford-Hill: I do hope we wont have any unseasonable cold spells, they bring on so much influenza. And the whole of our family is succeptable to it.
Eliza Doolittle: My Aunt died of influenza, or so they said. But its my belief they done the old woman in.
Mrs. Higgins: Done her in?
Eliza Doolittle: Yes, lord love you. Why should she die of influenza, when she come through diptheria right enough the year before. Fairly blue with it she was. They all thought she was dead. But my father, he kept ladling gin down her throat. Then she come to so sudden she bit the bowl right off the spoon.
Mrs. Eynsford-Hill: Dear Me!
Eliza Doolittle: Now what call would a woman with that strength in her have to die of influenza? And what become of her new straw hat that should have come to me?
[pause]
Eliza Doolittle: Somebody pinched it. And what I say is: them 'as pinched it, done her in.
Lord Boxington: Done her in? Done her in did you say?
Lady Boxington: Whatever does it mean?
Mrs. Higgins: Its the new slang meaning someone has killed her.
Mrs. Eynsford-Hill: Surely you don't think someone killed her?
Eliza Doolittle: Do I not? Them she lived with would have killed her for a hatpin, let alone a hat.
Mrs. Eynsford-Hill: But it can't have been right for your father to be pouring spirits down her throat like that, it could have killed her.
Eliza Doolittle: Not her, gin was mother's milk to her. Besides he poured so much down his own throat, he knew the good of it.
Lord Boxington: Do you mean he drank?
Eliza Doolittle: Drank? My word something chronic.
[responding to freddy's laughter]
Eliza Doolittle: Here! What are you sniggering at?
Freddy Eynsford-Hill: The new small talk, you do it so awfully well.
Eliza Doolittle: Well if I was doing it proper, what was you sniggering at? Have I said anything I oughtn't?
Mrs. Higgins: No my dear.
Eliza Doolittle: Well thats a mercy anyhow...
Finally, Eliza gets the hang of it, and she is wonderful at the ball, convincing another elocution expert that she is actually foreign royalty.
Higgins and Pickering congratulate each other heartily, with no credit given to Eliza, and she storms out. She decides that she will marry Freddy, a young man that has fallen in love with her, and Higgins tries to talk her out of it. In the end, Higgins is forced to realize that he has grown fond of Eliza ("I've grown accustomed to her face! She almost makes the day begin! I've grown accustomed to the tune that she whistles night and noon. Her smiles, her frowns, her ups, her downs, are second nature to me now, like breathing out and breathing in... I was serenely independent and content before we met! Surely I could always be that way again... And yet... I've grown accustomed to her looks, accustomed to her voice, accustomed... to her... face."), and she returns to him. I wish I could tell if there is some sort of romantic element here, but I am never quite sure.
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