My Fair Lady: Much Ado About Doolittle

My Fair Lady (George Cukor, 1964)

One day I'll be famous, I'll be proper and prim 

Go to Saint James so often I will call it Saint Jim 

One evening the king will say Oh Liza, old thing, 

I want all of England your praises to sing 

Next week, on the twentieth of May 

I'll proclaim Liza Doolittle day 

All the people will celebrate the glory of you 

And whatever you wish and want I gladly will do 

Thanks a lot, King says I in a manner well-bred 

But all I want is Henry Higgins 'ead

"Just You Wait, Henry Higgins"

'Tis the 20th of May, and I have come here to argue the future of Ms. Eliza Doolittle. Just the fact that I use that title no doubt betrays my feelings on the matter. 

The movie that studio mogul Jack Warner made of the Lerner and Lowe musical version of "Pygmalion" is a faithful adaptation of the famous Broadway hit (although I find it—despite the many joys of Cukor playing up the fantasy, but making the film immaculately stage-bound—rather elephantine, looking (ironically) at any nearby time-piece around the "Get Me To the Church On Time" number. And the musical is a faithful adaptation of the 1938 film version of Pygmalion, starring Wendy Hiller and Leslie Howard, the screenplay of which is credited to Bernard Shaw*, who wrote the original play. It's a bit more faithful to that movie than the play itself, given the note on which the author ended it.

You know the story: based of the Greek myth of Pygmalion—a sculptor who fell in love with a statue of his making—"Pygmalion"/My Fair Lady tells the story of an academic of grammar, who attempts to turn a cockney flower-girl into a lady of manners, able to pass the scrutiny of the upper-class. The "expert dialectician and grammarian", Prof. Henry Higgins, espouses a belief that the class system is a charade, a veil or pretense in society that is, with the proper dialect and appropriate apparel that can be exposed as a mere veneer. The secret is that Higgins is so comfortable in his own place in society that he can act like a lout and not be considered base.

Higgins is also a misogynist, which makes his taking on the transformation of flower-girl Eliza Doolittle a task that makes him susceptible to transmogrifying his role as teacher/mentor/task-master to possessiveness and coveting her, and then taking umbrage when her transformation emboldens her independent spirit. Once you're used to be the upper-hand of uneven power dynamic, any change will feel like a sacrifice. He will always see her as a creature of the gutter—and never let her forget it—even while he has fallen in love with his creation. Never mind that her soul is of her own making and not his, and she is an individual with her own thinking, her own wishes and dreams, far removed from that of her manipulator.** In Higgins' mind, a student should always be subservient.

Shaw understood that. He took umbrage with producers and directors who would change his play's ending—Eliza chooses a life of independence and walks out on Higgins—and impose a "happy ending" where Eliza comes back to the professor, to supposedly live a life of dependence. Most gallingly, Higgins reacts to this (in the 1938 presentation and the musical) with the line "Eliza, where the devil are my slippers?" It's a knife in the back of an already appalling scene.

Shaw added a post-script to his play, entitled "What Happened Afterwards" in which he argues that, despite the apparent need to sustain the relationship between the two lead characters, it runs counter to his intent of the play (and the inspiration for it). Still, when the 1938 film was made, the producers plopped a five second shot of Eliza, present in the room, returned like an obedient pet, and the musical-makers took their cue from it.

It is so wrong. The triumph of Eliza Doolittle is her own, merely proctored by the professor. Why should she come back, when the musical numbers make their mutual antipathy so clear? Eliza, at one point, imagines overseeing Higgins' demise ("Just You Wait, Henry Higgins") and towards the end calls him out on his narcissism and egotism ("Without You"—"so go back in your shell, I can do bloody well...").

In My Fair Lady, Higgins is given the final number, expressing his feelings for Eliza, both pro and con ("I've Grown Accustomed to Her Face"—really, is that the best you can do?) as he vacillates between his own fantasies of the disastrous consequences of her leaving him and his own measured longing for her. This is not a match made in heaven...even if it sells in the box office.

In recent years, there have been experiments—Bartlett Sher's revival had Eliza return, Higgins delivers his "slippers" line, and then Eliza exits the stage through the audience. Okay, if you want to remain true to the text and the spirit of the film. But, better to be true to Shaw. Instead, have Higgins crawl back to his shell of a study, play his gramophone of Eliza's voice ("I washed me face and hands before I came, I did...") and have him say the line "Eliza, where the devil are my slippers" to empty air, leaving him true to his nature, for all the bloody good it does him. 

Give him his scene, his song, his recordings and his memory and leave him with that. And his illusions.

It may be a tragedy for him. But, it's a triumph for Eliza.

* Also credited are Cecil Lewis, Ian Dalrymple, and W.P. Lipscomb, who all won that year's Oscar for Best Writing (Adapted Screenplay). Shaw added the ballroom scene with Karpathy and added montages of the training (which were directed and edited by a young David Lean).

** If you're looking for a comparable theme in the movies, Vertigo springs immediately to mind, as well as the tendency of its director, Alfred Hitchcock, to transform his actresses into his image of perfection, and then treat them—particularly "Tippi" Hedren—abominably, when they didn't acquiesce to his needs.

I'll use any excuse to show Bob Peak's poster-art

The Scarlet Pimpernel (1934)

The Scarlet Pimpernel (Harold Young, 1934) The classic tale of the foppish member of the elite aristocracy who disguises himself to fight the despotic powers for the good of all. No, it's not Don Diego or Bruce Wayne. It's Sir Percy Blakeney, aka the Scarlet Pimpernel (Leslie Howard), master of disguise and master tactician, who, with his loyal League of the Pimpernel, in the case of this film, frees French noblemen from the ruffians of Robespierre during the French Revolution, circa 1792.  

Waitaminnit! Attendre! The ruffians of Robespierre WERE the common people! All too common as it turns out, as director Young and scripters Robert Sherwood, Lajos Biro and S.N. Behrman would have you believe, demonstrated by the common cruelty of the throng awaiting noble be-headings at the guillotine, distracting themselves with knitting, stuffing their faces, and the things most people do during opening acts at a country fair. Such very public gatherings—and executions—make it very difficult to do any serious rescuing, especially when you have the evil Chauvelin (Raymond Massey), the new ambassador to Britain and enforcer for Robespierre (Ernest Milton) himself, breathing down your neck. And necks were very fragile things during the Reign of Terror.

In other words, it's hard out there for a pimpernel.

But, wait, wait, wait. Hold on there, citizens. The Pimpernel isn't Batman. He isn't Zorro or Robin Hood. He's a member of the aristocracy fighting for the aristocracy. Those other guys are examples of the privileged fighting for the common man. The pimpernel doesn't give a pinch of snuff for them. Nope, he's protecting elites who've been caught up in the Revolution against monarchy, authoritarianism by both aristocracy and clergy, as well as against slavery. He's on the wrong side of History, but I suppose when allies, friends and relatives are facing a blade in the village square, higher ideals and an Age of Reason seem a little dull by comparison.

This is because the stories of The Scarlet Pimpernel were written by the Baroness Emmuska Orczy, who knew something of revolutions, he family having fled their native Hungary in 1868, fearing a peasant uprising. The Baroness settled in London, and married an artist named Montague MacLean Barstow, and although it was a happy marriage, Barstow's career as an illustrator did not keep the Baroness in the manner to which she had grown up accustomed. She began to write, somewhat successfully, but she didn't achieve any real success until the two collaborated on a play about the Pimpernel, based on one of her short stories. That play ran for four years, and her novelization of it became a best-seller, inspiring a continuing series of books, and allowed her to buy a villa in Monte Carlo, where she spent most of the remainder of her life.

So, the Baroness' sympathies weren't exactly with democratic ideals, preferring the joys of imperialism and militarism. So, of course, (given her history) she would side with the aristocracy, rather than with the peasants. After all, they can always eat cake. It's just that a guillotine is rather impractical to slice it with. So, no, the Pimpernel is not for the common good unless it's to preserve the status quo. He wouldn't do well in America.

But, then again, these days, he might.

But, where the Baroness did have a good idea was an invention that might have been partially inspired by the works of Edmond Rostan and Alexandre Dumas, that of the "secret identity" (that is taken for granted in today's super-suffused culture). In order to do "what must be done," the hero operates outside the law, which has every inclination to suppress him for their survival. And so, he must operate in disguise, live a double life, so that his actions cannot be detected by the behavior of his "other life." It is also to protect friends, family, and lovers from being used as pawns against him.

But, even here, the Baroness has an odd wrinkle—for Percy Blakeney, English baronet, is married to the Lady Marguerite (the spectacularly photogenic Merle Oberon), both French and aristocratic by birth, and even though her brother is suspected of being in the Pimpernel's infernal "League," she has no idea that her foppish husband could be the daring Pimpernel (doesn't she wonder about any unexplained absences? Could she be suffering from "Lois Lane blindness?"). Her suspected ties to the Pimpernel (oh, if they only knew) makes her just the sort of weapon that can be used against him, and so her friend, the Chauvelin coerces her to try and find out the true identity of his nemesis. At one point, she actually sends her husband into a trap and only realizes the truth and what she's done in time to warn him.

Of course, there wouldn't be a series of books if he got caught, and the black hat/white hat dichotomy is so starkly presented that no one in their right mind would favor Raymond Massey's fortunes over Leslie Howard's. And so, the Pimpernel persists into legend.

We seek him here, we seek him there, 

Those Frenchies seek him everywhere. 

Is he in heaven? — Is he in hell? 

That damned, elusive Pimpernel 

49th Parallel

49th Parallel (aka The Invaders) (Michael Powell, 1941)
Interesting propaganda film to promote the war effort by the British government, made by "The Archers" (Emeric Pressburger and Michael Powell) before they became "The Archers" and combining the writer-director credits together. More than anything, it was designed to influence isolationist American minds about the threat of the Nazis, by presenting a story where they arrive on our shores.

It is 1941 and a German sub is prowling Canadian waters, sinking any transport they can. Detected, they make a run for Hudson's Bay and the sub commander orders a landing party to capture an outpost in the area. But, soon after leaving the sub, the men see it attacked and sunk by a bomber, sent by the Canadian air force, alerted to their presence. The Commander, Hirth (Eric Portman) continues to land to complete the mission, hoping that they can make their way eventually to the United States which is (gulp!) famously neutral in order to get back to Germany.

But, first they have to get through Canada.  First stop, a trading post, where Finley Currie and Eskimo guide Ley On are welcoming back French trapper Johnnie (Laurence Olivier—with the wildest accent you've ever heard, eh?) after being up north for eleven months. The Nazi's take over the trading post, hoping to entice and hijack a plane to get them across the border. But, it goes badly leading to a skirmish, which barely has the Nazis escaping with their lives. They then make their way to a German Hutterite community led by Anton Walbrook, who first welcomes the visitors to their peaceful enclave, then when the Nazis' arrogance get the better of them and try to teach the community about their "better" way, Hirth and the community leader engage in a lively debate over the merits of each other's systems. The Germans are kicked out, making their way to the wilderness where they are captured by the RCMP, but make their escape using an eccentric writer (Leslie Howard) as a hostage, but even that plan does not go as planned.  

Each encounter has reduced their numbers, and, at the last, only Hirth remains free and on the run.  He hops a freight to try and make it across the 49th parallel into the States, but riding the car with him is AWOL soldier Andy Brock (Raymond Massey), whose sympathies are still with Canada, despite being reluctant to fight, and he makes things very complicated.

It is a propaganda piece, after all, and if the various episodes seem a bit far-fetched and feel like a tortured demonstration on the length and breadth of Canadian diversity ("Meet the Canadians! Even OUR Germans don't like THEIR Germans"), it is with the intent of contrasting that diversity with the sameness of the Aryan lineage and autocratic group-think of the sub crew. If the thing gets a little pedantic, it was to educate reluctant Americans about Nazi philosophy in a dramatic fashion and inspire a feeling of "It CAN happen to YOU" to the "American Firster's." It's a bit clumsy and the fisticuffs are a might ham-fisted, but it's positively sub-tle when you put it up against the thousand goose-stepping hosers of Triumph des Willens.  And Powell and Pressburger were just getting started.

Eric Portman's Commandant wants things a little
more orderly in 49th Parallel