How old is eliza doolittle in my fair lady

I've seen the movie of course and I've seen it on stage and it's usually cast as someone about 30 it seems , does anyone know if a 19 year old and I could look with stage makeup Eliza is acceptable?

Or should I just aim for the chorus with the knowledge that I simply don't fit the age-profile? For some reason, I seem to remember Eliza being about twenty, but I don't recall for sure. Whether or not the director casts someone as young as you is up to his own personal discretion. I think you are right in assuming that most directors pick actresses in their thirties, but if a younger person were impressive enough, things might be different.

So, what you audition for depends on one thing: if you audition for Eliza, and don't make it, will you be given the oppertunity to be in the chorus? If so, go ahead and audition. Even if you don't get the role, it'll be good practice, and you might get chosen for a smaller speaking or singing part. If, in order to be in the chorus, you must audition for chorus, then it's your own choice to make.

You have to ask yourself how much the role means to you, and how fitting you are for the role in other ways appearence, voice, acting abilities. Good luck! At Audrey Hepburn 's insistence, director George Cukor shot all of her scenes in sequence so that she could grow into the role and hold her own against Sir Rex Harrison and Stanley Holloway , who had both done the play for several years. It also allowed her to do the most difficult scenes first, those before Eliza's transformation, while she was still fresh.

Alan Jay Lerner was very annoyed by producer Jack L. Warner 's decision to have the entire movie filmed on soundstages in Hollywood, even for outdoor scenes. Nevertheless, it went on to become one of the biggest grossing movies of Production designer Gene Allen was never given a budget with which to work.

He just designed and had built all of the sets without having to worry about how much they cost. After screening the rough cut, producer Jack L. Warner , who had not wanted to cast Sir Rex Harrison , rose in silence, turned to the actor, and bowed. Of the main cast, only Stanley Holloway Alfred P. Doolittle actually sang. The others were either dubbed or just talked their way through the songs. Although Sir Rex Harrison was desperate to be cast as Professor Henry Higgins, he refused to do a screentest since he felt this was beneath his dignity.

He did, however, promise to producer Jack L. Warner that he would not simply repeat his stage performance, but would instead adapt his performance accordingly for the movie.

Warner Brothers had tried to keep the dubbing of Audrey Hepburn 's singing a secret, but when the movie opened, it was hard not to notice it.

The publicity department then issued a statement that Marni Nixon had only done half the singing, which triggered an angry denial from the dubber's husband. The secrecy triggered a backlash against Hepburn's performance, with gossip columnist Hedda Hopper writing, "With Marni Nixon doing the singing, Audrey Hepburn gives only half a performance. We've been doing it for years. We even dubbed the barking of Rin Tin Tin.

Although her singing was dubbed by Marni Nixon , Audrey Hepburn 's singing does actually appear in the form of the first verse of "Just You Wait, Henry Higgins," However, when the song heads into the soprano range one minute and sixteen seconds in , Nixon takes over vocals. Hepburn sings the last thirty seconds of the song, as well as the brief reprise. She also sings the sing-talking parts for "The Rain in Spain. That was far more than what she expected, as she was initially promised that most of her vocals would be used.

According to Nixon, Hepburn was upset that she could not play the role vocally, and always blamed herself for that. Rodgers and Hammerstein felt that Shaw's style of writing intellectual dialogue and the emotionless character of Professor 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 Sir Rex Harrison , and they adopted the idea that Higgins should not sing outright but talk on pitch, less an expression of emotions than ideas.

The controversy over Audrey Hepburn being cast as Eliza Doolittle over Dame Julie Andrews , who originated the role on Broadway, went as far as journalists claiming there was a feud between the two actresses. This, of course, was untrue, as Hepburn and Andrews were friends in real life and had great respect for one another.

The feud was debunked at The 37th Annual Academy Awards , where Andrews recalled Hepburn telling her, "Julie, you should have done it, but I didn't have the guts to turn it down. American Marni Nixon had to practice a Cockney accent before she could dub all of Audrey Hepburn 's singing in the movie. However, this reason has been strongly doubted by those who believe audiences would have flocked to see the movie regardless of who played the leading role.

It is also reported that producer Jack L. Warner didn't think Andrews would be photogenic enough. He invited her to do a screentest, but she refused, so he forgot about her altogether. Amusement park trams were rented to carry ballroom scene extras across the studio lot, in order to prevent their makeup and costumes from getting dirty or damaged. The movie was advertised as the most eagerly anticipated production since Gone with the Wind Rex Harrison nailed his vocal performance of each song on the first take.

An entire soundstage was used for doing hair and make-up for the Ascot race scene. The 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 65 mm negative or separation masters and output back to VistaVision and enlarged back to 65 mm.

Some shots were simply recomposited 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 70 mm 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. When Sir Rex Harrison had problems performing his final song, "I've Grown Accustomed to Her Face", out of sequence claiming he needed the weight of the show behind him to do it justice , director George Cukor let him move anywhere he wanted on the large street set.

Since it would be impossible to follow him with a microphone boom, he wore one of the first wireless microphones. He also shot with two cameras simultaneously, one for the long shot and one close up, so they would have fewer problems matching shots. During the parts of "Wouldn't It be Loverly" featuring Audrey Hepburn 's own singing voice, her lip-synching 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 Nixon "looped" her vocals to the song after the number was already filmed, and was given multiple attempts to match Hepburn's lip movements precisely as was the case when she dubbed Natalie Wood in West Side Story Nixon discusses this in her autobiography, where she actually praises Hepburn for lip-synching very well to her own track.

Also, according to the DVD commentary, instead of using the vocal track that was used during filming, a new vocal track had to be created for use on the "Audrey dub". While the movie received generally favorable reviews, critics were divided on Audrey Hepburn 's performance as Eliza. While some were critical of the fact that she was dubbed, others, such as esteemed British dramatist Sir John Gielgud , went on record as saying that Hepburn was "better than Dame Julie Andrews!

The original Broadway production of "My Fair Lady" opened at the Mark Hellinger Theater in New York on March 15, , and ran for 2, performances, which, at the time, was the longest run a Broadway show had ever had. In February , the original production is still the 20th-longest-running production in Broadway history. Sir Rex Harrison and Stanley Holloway re-created their roles in the movie. Alfred P. The entire Ascot Gavotte sequence was shot with all of the characters dressed in shades of black, white, and gray with one light yellow hat and one small red flower.

One of the reasons Audrey Hepburn 's entrance to the scene is so striking is the total contrast of her dress, pure white with green stripes, lilac and red decorations, to the relatively bland coloration of the musical number preceding it. Many of the Ascot Gavotte fashionable ladies of the chorus also were barmaids and pub customers in the "I'm Getting Married in the Morning" number. The play first had been staged on Broadway in March and opened in London in A clause in the contract stated that the movie version could not be made until the play had finished running, which finally took place in September In the scene where Professor 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 this movie. For the early part of Eliza's transformation, Cecil Beaton insisted that Audrey Hepburn wear weights around her lower legs so that she would keep some of the flower girl's early gawkiness.

This movie is the only Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe stage musical to have been filmed totally complete, with no omission of any songs from the stage version or dialogue, for that matter. There are even some added lyrics to the song "You Did It", in which Professor Henry Higgins goes more into detail about the speech "expert" Zoltan Karpathy's evaluation of Eliza Doolittle at the ball, that were not in the stage version.

This movie, West Side Story , and South Pacific may be the most complete movie adaptations of Broadway musicals ever made. The suggestion that Nancy Olsen inspired Alan Jay Lerner to come up with "I've Grown Accustomed To Her Face" is unlikely, given that George Bernard Shaw 's Higgins uses precisely that line when speaking of Eliza at precisely the same point, in the original "Pygmalion" of , and that many of Shaw's lines made it into the musical's script.

Regarding the assertion that "My Fair Lady" is derived from the children's nursery rhyme, "London Bridge Is Falling Down," a story circulated years ago, suggested it was, in fact, a clever in-joke: Higgins proposes to make Eliza into a "Mayfair lady" no, he doesn't say this in the script, more's the pity , but Eliza's Cockney accent would contort that to sound like "Myfair Lydy.

Most roadshow movie presentations made at that time had an overture recorded especially for the movie, 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 movie 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 movie'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 movie 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. Cinematographer Harry Stradling Sr. Both films are based on George Bernard Shaw's play, "Pygmalion. Director and friend George Cukor thought that Daniell, acting in his seventh Cukor movie, looked unwell, and the year-old actor died from a heart attack a few hours later on Halloween night at his house in Santa Monica, California.

When director George Cukor asked to do expensive retakes of the Ascot sequence, Warner Brothers refused. When Cukor persisted, the company had the set torn down. It would be another twenty-five years before it had another Best Picture statuette with Driving Miss Daisy Most costumers and make-up artists had to camouflage Audrey Hepburn 's square jaw, but for her early scenes, production designer Cecil Beaton actually emphasized it by putting her in a straw hat.

That allowed for a more dramatic transformation, accentuated by the upswept hairdos he designed for her later in the movie to show off her bone structure. James Cagney was originally offered the role of Alfred P. When he pulled out at the last minute, it went to the man who played it on Broadway, Stanley Holloway. The title of the movie appears nowhere in the dialogue nor any of the song lyrics. Audrey Hepburn had signed for the movie with the understanding that she would do her own singing.

At the beginning of the film, Eliza is described as a poorly-educated, insignificant woman who slowly transforms into an authentic lady. Also, one may see that Eliza as a compassionate person who is not able to defend herself. However, the woman is far away from being a romantic figure and is quite an introverted person. In fact, he transforms a poorly-educated girl into an intelligent woman. However, it is not poorly his achievement. Hence, from some perspectives, Eliza was her own creator.

Eventually, at the end of the play, Eliza gains a lot of confidence and is not afraid to argue her point, defending her own rights. However, it is complicated for Eliza to become a lady as she is merely forced to sacrifice her personality and feelings.

Lastly, even though the girl gains self-confidence by the merit of her accomplishments, she is still not a completely independent woman as she relies on the reassurance of Higgins and Pickering. Warner Bros. Entertainment Wiki Explore. Swackhammer Dorian Tyrell. Animaniacs Pinky and the Brain Detention Histeria! Superman: The Animated Series. DC Comics. Explore Wikis Community Central. Register Don't have an account? Eliza Doolittle.

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