"what I fool I was"

Yes Eliza, you were a fool for thinking Henry Higgins of all people was deserving of your attention, but you're a bigger one for going back to him at the end! I'm talking about the film My Fair Lady, as opposed to the play Pygmalion, which has a different, and in my opinion, much more satisfactory denouement.

So today I'm going to write about the most unlikely relationship to ever grace stage or screen, that of Eliza Doolittle and Professor Henry Higgins. His interruption in the clip above, his fierce assertion of 'by george I really did it' is an echo of an earlier musical number in the film where he dances around with Colonel Pickering celebrating their success in turning Miss Doolittle from a 'common flower girl' to a 'lady' without at any point acknowledging her own effort, or even her very presence in the room. His arrogant nature coupled with a racist and misogynistic world view make him, in my opinion one of the most abhorrent characters to ever hold the title of Professor (although Professor Moriarty springs to mind here, I might deal with him another time!) Higgins' mother gets it right at the Ascot race when she says: 'you're a pretty pair of babies playing with your live doll'.

And it is not as if Eliza herself is without options, having been proposed to by an exceedingly charming young (and rather wealthy we assume) Freddy Eynsford-Hill, who is so in love with her, he is willing to stay outside her house for days and days. To have a man outside your house singing and dancing to the sound of soaring violins at all hours of the night might in real life amount to an anti social behaviour order, but in the glossy technicolor paradise of 'the musical', nothing could be a surer sign of love.

The marvellous Jeremy Brett as Freddy

He is not entirely without faults of course, and it is easy to see why in the subsequent musical number 'Show Me' why Eliza is so annoyed by his occasional verbosity...

However, it still remains (and look away now if you don't want the ending spoilt for you) that Eliza returns to Professor Higgins at the end of the film. He famously asks 'where the devil are my slippers' and the audience are led to believe that they will get married and live happily ever after. But then again perhaps not, the text of Pygmalion contains a lengthy epilogue (available here) which suggests that even if Eliza were to marry Freddy, things wouldn't be quite so idyllic as our 'enfeebled' imaginations could create, what with our 'lazy dependence' on the romantic happy ending. (Shaw's words, not my own). So Shaw, in any case was not a defender of the kind of Hollywood conclusion so familiar to us we begin to expect them in our own lives. But there still remains a fundamental question when considering My Fair Lady as a film. Though the audience is privy to Higgins' radical change of opinion about the woman he previously called a 'gutter snipe' through (as always) the medium of song, Eliza herself is completely unaware that the Professor has 'grown accustomed to her face'. And so I don't think her sudden change of heart in returning to Higgins' house will ever sit comfortably with me. It is significant to mention her last words in the film, 'I washed my face and 'ands before I come I did', an echo of some of her very first lines in the film on entering the Higgins' household. This exact mirroring of words, incorrect grammar and all, take her right back to where she started, her decision then, in my opinion completely undermines her entire character progression. 

Eliza & Higgins

And yet, and yet... 

I still love the film! The costumes are fantastic, the colours are both rich and pastelly, the acting is marvellous, the songs are memorable and well written! I suppose all I have to do is make my own epilogue to the film version in which Eliza throws the slippers at Higgins' ungrateful head and gets her own flower shop, and, if she wants to, marries Freddy. (I'm sure I'm only saying that because I would!)

Colonel Pickering (on the left) - But where is he now?

There is one more thing I'd like to mention, especially for my friend Thom. What on Earth happens to Colonel Pickering?! He disappears entirely after leaving to try and find Eliza towards the end of the film, and never ever returns. It is one of film's greatest mysteries, and perhaps we'll never know. Perhaps he's still wandering the streets of London to this day...