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My Fair Lady 50th Anniversary Edition Available in October

Paramount has announced October 27th as the new release date for their 50th Anniversary Edition of My Fair Lady (1964).

Originally announced last September for a December 2014 release, the studio pushed the film back almost a year for various unconfirmed reasons including possible additions to the bonus content - none of which looks to have been changed - and talks of a theatrical rerelease.

This edition will boast a new 4K restoration as well as a wealth of bonus content, both exclusive and from previous DVDs versions.

At one time the longest-running Broadway musical, My Fair Lady was adapted by Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe from the George Bernard Shaw comedy Pygmalion. Outside Covent Garden on a rainy evening in 1912, dishevelled cockney flower girl Eliza Doolittle (Audrey Hepburn) meets linguistic expert Henry Higgins (Rex Harrison). After delivering a musical tirade against 'verbal class distinction,' Higgins tells his companion Colonel Pickering (Wilfred Hyde-White) that, within six months, he could transform Eliza into a proper lady, simply by teaching her proper English.

The next morning, face and hands freshly scrubbed, Eliza presents herself on Higgins' doorstep, offering to pay him to teach her to be a lady. 'It's almost irresistable,' clucks Higgins. 'She's so deliciously low. So horribly dirty.' He turns his mission into a sporting proposition, making a bet with Pickering that he can accomplish his six-month miracle to turn Eliza into a lady.

This is one of the all-time great movie musicals, featuring classic songs and the legendary performances of Harrison, repeating his stage role after Cary Grant wisely turned down the movie job, and Stanley Holloway as Eliza's dustman father. Julie Andrews originated the role of Eliza on Broadway but producer Jack Warner felt that Andrews, at the time unknown beyond Broadway, wasn't bankable; Hepburn's singing was dubbed by Marni Nixon, who also dubbed Natalie Wood in West Side Story (1961). Andrews instead made Mary Poppins, for which she was given the Best Actress Oscar, beating out Hepburn. The movie, however, won Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor for Harrison, and five other Oscars, and it remains one of the all-time best movie musicals.

BONUS FEATURES:

  • Video from The British and Los Angeles Premieres
  • 1963 Production Kick-Off Dinner
  • Rex Harrison's BFI Honor and Golden Globe Acceptance Speech
  • George Cukor Directors Baroness Bina Rothschild
  • Academy Award Ceremony Highlights from 1965
  • An Interview with Martin Scorsese
  • More Loverly Than Ever: The Making of My Fair Lady Then and Now
  • Alternate Audrey Hepburn Vocals
  • Show Me Galleries
  • Production Tests
  • Comments on a Lady
  • Trailers