Cinematographer Harry Stradling Sr. also shot the 1938 straight filming of the play, "Pygmalion".
Despite extensive vocal training after landing the part of Henry Higgins in My Fair Lady, Rex Harrison was unable to sing a note. In the end the director gave up and told him to quasi-speak the whole thing as he had done in the stage version.
Despite intensive vocal training during pre-production, and constant practicing until her final re-recording during the post-production, most of Audrey Hepburn's own singing was omitted from the finished product. The only significant song in which Audrey's own vocals were largely retained is "Just You Wait", where her voice can be heard in two thirds of the number.
Audrey also rendered the brief "Just You Wait" reprise all on her own, nailing the dramatic, emotional intensity of the song in a way that Marni Nixon would never have been able to.
Audrey Hepburn also did the opening to some of the songs on her own, including the lines 'Bed, bed, I couldn't go to bed!' and 'Sleep, sleep, I couldn't sleep tonight!' in the introductory verse of "I Could Have Danced All Night".
During the parts of "Wouldn't It be Loverly" featuring Audrey Hepburn's own singing voice, her lip-syncing does not match her own singing as well as it does Marni Nixon's singing, even though Hepburn filmed the scene with her own track.
This shouldn't be surprising considering that Marni Nixon "looped" her vocals to the song after the number was already filmed - and was given multiple attempts to match Audrey Hepburn's lip movements precisely (as was the case when she dubbed Natalie Wood in 'West Side Story (1961)' ). Marni Nixon discusses this in her autobiography, where she actually praises Audrey Hepburn for lip-synching very well to her own track, despite what the first paragraph of this piece of trivia says.
Filmed entirely in the studio.
Final film of veteran actor Henry Daniell, who is unbilled as The Ambassador. He died of a heart attack on 31 October 1963, just hours after completing the dress ball sequences.
For the 30th anniversary re-release in 1994, the film was painstakingly restored by Robert A. Harris and James C. Katz - the same team that restored Lawrence of Arabia, Spartacus and Vertigo. The restoration was called for because Warner Brothers only owned the rights to their film for a certain period of time before the rights reverted to CBS. Who discarded most of the basic materials. The digital restoration of the film - saving it from extinction - took 6 months and cost $600,000.
In her 2004 autobiography "Tis Herself", Maureen O'Hara claimed that Jack L. Warner asked her to dub Audrey Hepburn's singing voice in the film.
In the scene where Eliza is practicing her "H's", she sits down in front of a spinning mirror attached to a flame. Every time she says her "H's" correctly, the flame jumps. If you look closely at the paper she is holding in her hand when it catches fire, you will see handwritten upon it the dialog that she and Professor Higgins have been saying previous to this. "Of course, you can't expect her to get it right the first time," is the first line written on the paper.
In the scene where Henry Higgins knocks a record player that is playing a recording of vowel sounds, the voice on the record is that of Dr. Peter Ladefoged, a linguist who worked as a consultant on the film.
Most of Audrey Hepburn's singing was dubbed by Marni Nixon, despite Hepburn's lengthy vocal preparation for the role. A dubber was required because Eliza Doolittle's songs were not transposed down to accommodate Audrey Hepburn's "low-mezzo voice" (as Marni Nixon referred to it), the way Guenevere's songs were transposed down to accommodate Vanessa Redgrave's limited vocal range in 'Camelot (1967)'.
Audrey Hepburn sang most of "Just You Wait", as well as the reprise to the song, herself, showcasing her ability to sing perfectly at ease when the songs were set in a reasonable tessitura. Audrey also sang one or two lines, elsewhere in the score, such as 'Sleep, sleep, I couldn't sleep tonight!' in "I Could Have Danced All Night".
Thus, the claim that Marni Nixon dubbed all of Audrey Hepburn's singing (as asserted by such people as syndicated columnist Hedda Hopper), is false.
Most roadshow film presentations made at that time had an overture recorded especially for the film, meant to be heard while the lights in the theater were still up and the movie screen curtains were still closed. Then, at the end of the overture, the lights would go down and the film would start with what was known as its Main Title music. The overture to the stage version of "My Fair Lady" was longer than the film's opening credits, but Lerner and Loewe apparently still wanted to use it. So, rather than using the typical roadshow format of Overture and Main Title music to get around this, the filmmakers shot the film so that half of the Overture is heard against shots of flowers appearing on the screen; then halfway through the Overture, the lights go down and the opening credits begin.
Musical theater writers Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II had attempted to adapt George Bernard Shaw's "Pygmalion" as a musical long before Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe, but had abandoned the project as unadaptable. Rodgers and Hammerstein felt that Shaw's style of writing intellectual dialog and the emotionless character of Henry Higgins did not lend themselves to a musical. Lerner and Lowe overcame these problems by leaving Shaw's dialogue largely intact, and working under the notion that Higgins must be played by a great actor, not a great singer. Thus, they wrote the role especially for Rex Harrison, and adopted the idea that Higgins should not sing outright, but talk on pitch, less an expression of emotions than ideas.
On average, Rex Harrison would nail his vocal performance of each song on the first take.
One of only 4 productions to win the Best Play Tony (1957) and the Best Picture Oscar (1964). The other 3 are The Sound of Music (1960/1965), A Man for All Seasons (1962/1966) and Amadeus (1981/1984).
Production designer Gene Allen was never given a budget to work from. He just designed and had built all the sets without having to worry about how much they cost.
The 1994 restoration by Robert A. Harris used a variety of methods to return the film to its original condition. The opening credits were digitally re-created using pieces of surviving frames. A few shots were digitally restored by scanning the 65mm negative or separation masters and output back to VistaVision (and enlarged back to 65mm). Some shots were simply re-composited via separation masters. Despite this, most of the film was able to be restored directly from the camera negative. For the sound, only the six-track magnetic print master (used to add sound to 70mm prints) survived. This was digitally restored and used to create a new six-track mix (faithful to the original version), as well as new Dolby Digital and DTS 5.1 mixes for modern sound systems.
The American Marni Nixon had to practice a Cockney accent before she could dub all of Audrey Hepburn's singing in the movie.
The movie was advertised as the most eagerly anticipated production since Gone with the Wind.
The musical was to have been called "Lady Liza", but Rex Harrison refused to countenance a title based on the name of the female lead.