User Reviews

Covent Gardens in the 1910's was not a safe place to be at night, so I wonder how Henry (Peter O'Toole) would have fared analyzing the crowd of different classes after an opera or ballet ended, leaving the crowds to fight for taxi's. This is a seemingly edited version of George Bernard Shaw's play, and I'm not talking about the absence of songs by certain Broadway composers. When I first saw Margo Kidder as Eliza Doolittle, I immediately thought of Wendy Hiller in the 1938 movie, and looked up who else had played the non-musical Eliza. Mrs. Patrick Campbell originated the role in London and on Broadway, playing the part for a good decade. Gertrude Lawrence also played the role a few years before originating the role of the musical Anna Leonowens, a decade before the rain in Spain fell mainly down that plain.

So in looking at this from the point of view of the play rather than the musical (which I have seen on Broadway), I came to like Kidder as Eliza, but Peter O'Toole seemed absolutely mad in his efforts to capture the role of Higgins. Certainly, sexy Rexy wasn't likeable most of the time either, but O'Toole only settles down a few times, but either seems like Henry is either eternally drunk or overly caffeinated, jumping up and down like he's performing the part on a trampoline.

Faring better are John Standing as the gentlemanly Colonel Pickering, Frances Hyland as the no-nonsense Mrs. Higgins and as much as I disliked the character as portrayed here, Donald Ewer as Eliza's father. His characterization is brilliant because it is closer to the type of dustmen that I had seen in other classic British motion pictures. You're supposed to be disgusted by him, not want to break into song and dance like I did with Stanley Holloway. If they ever revive the play, they really need to show the deprivation of Eliza's life and not the glamor surrounding what she longs for. This came close, but is missing key moments that would have been more realistic. No ball, either, but I'm pretty sure that wasn't part of the play script I read years ago. Best to watch this and keep the song lyrics out of your head, even when they crop up in the dialogue.

This is a funny play and, in my not-very-exalted opinion, Shaw's best. It's not only amusing but incorporates all sorts of comments on ethics, social class, responsibility, and affection. It makes mincemeat of some of them.

There are many versions of the story but it isn't easy to get them confused. Especially eminent is the version with Audrey Hepburn, Rex Harrison, and Wilfred Hyde-White. One of the reasons it's primus inter pares is that it cost so much. The budget must have been as generous as Hepburn's ridiculous bonnets.

That one was a musical, which is too bad. The tunes are nice and the lyrics appropriate but the play isn't a musical and the numbers, however smart, remind us that it's just a movie and detract from the more powerful elements of the plot.

Alas -- and I hate to say this -- but the performances in the Hepburn version are better than those here. Everyone in this version shouts as if they were in a play and must address the balcony. But when it's filmed, it's no longer a play but a movie, and the screeching sometimes becomes irritating.

Maybe it's partly for that reason, along with the budget, and along with the extra latitude the budget gives for retakes, that Rex Harrison seems so much more comfortable with the role of Henry Higgens than Peter O'Toole does. Harrison's voice seemed to convey an innate sneer.

Margot Kidder is a decent actress but she's simply not the gamin, both succulent and vulnerable, that Audrey Hepburn was. Nor is she the knockout that Hepburn was. Nobody was. As Colonel Pickering, John Standing loses to Wilfred Hyde White. Standing is a colorless nonentity, while Wilfred Hyde White was perfect as the sidekick. If nothing else, his presence was established by his bony face and nasal voice. Finally, as Alfred Doolittle, Liza's father, Donald Ewer comes on like a ton of bricks, while Stanley Holloway gave us his practiced and practical working man. He was cheerfully resigned while digging graves in Olivier's "Hamlet." I'm really reluctant to say this because I think most of the difference between the two productions may simply be a matter of money, a vulgar consideration. Peter O'Toole has been outstanding elsewhere, when he's not required to rant ALL the time. However, regardless of fine differences in performances and production values, it's still a funny play with an edgy undertone, and the play, of course, is the thing.