Enchanted Evenings:The Broadway Musical from 'Show Boat' to Sondheim and Lloyd Webber Block, Geoffrey (large ebook reader .txt) 📖

The brief exchange between Higgins and his mother that follows Ascot, for example, is new in the film. Between what corresponds to act I, scenes 8 and 9, the film also offers a short scene in which Pickering cancels his bet six weeks before the Embassy Ball.

When Eliza returns to Covent Garden after leaving Higgins, her reprise of “Wouldn’t It Be Loverly?” is sung as both a voice-over and a flashback. Not only are these techniques cinematically useful, but they also effectively demonstrate the extent of Eliza’s transformation. Perhaps now that she is a lady she doesn’t want to wake up her former neighbors so early in the morning. For the most part, however, the film does not take advantage of the possibilities cinema offers to “open up” the show onto a wider “stage” via quick-yet-elaborate scene changes and location settings. One modest exception is the short scene in which we discreetly observe the undressing and bathing of Eliza by Mrs. Pearce and other servants, an offstage event in the theater. The most obvious lost opportunity for cinematic extravagance is the “theatrical” Ascot scene. Although visually interesting with its suitably colorless black and white costuming for the rigid and lifeless upper crust of society—Eliza gets a conspicuous touch of red in her hat to match her inappropriate but refreshing enthusiasm for the event—we hear but do not see the horses actually racing. Perhaps we might conclude that the film adaptation works so well because of moments like this one, where cinematic excess is avoided in favor of a consistent, theatrical focus on the principal players and their interactions. At this and many other moments, we are reminded that we are seeing a film of a play rather than an original film—and this is a good thing.

In an effective cinematic juxtaposition, the shot of Higgins’s laughter at the ball when he hears about Karpathy’s erroneous conclusion regarding Eliza’s national identity merges seamlessly with the continuation of this same laughter now shot in Higgins’s study after the ball. When it ran in theaters the film included an intermission after the stunningly beautiful Hepburn descends the staircase in Higgins’s apartment before they leave for the ball (about 100 minutes into the film). On Broadway, the act I curtain closes at the Embassy Ball with the suspense of whether Eliza will be able to fool the wily Karpathy. Theater audiences would have to wait to learn whether Higgins’s former student would expose Eliza’s lowly origins. Since the film intermission had taken place before the ball, Higgins’s laughter provides a welcome linkage between Eliza’s triumph at the ball and “You Did It,” in which Higgins and Pickering insensitively and undeservedly appropriate all the credit for her achievement.

Despite the iconic stature of Cukor’s My Fair Lady, Comingsoon.net announced in 2008 that Duncan Kenworthy, who “has produced three of the most successful British films of all time, Four Weddings and a Funeral, Notting Hill, and Love Actually,” all starring Hugh Grant, together with Cameron Mackintosh, the phenomenally successful stage producer who brought Les Misérables, Miss Saigon, and The Phantom of the Opera from London to New York, have cleared the rights with Columbia Pictures and CBS Films to produce a new version of Lerner and Loewe’s classic. Discussions have begun with their chosen lady, the very fair Keira Knightly, in significant contrast to the casting process in both the stage and earlier film versions, in which the starting point was Higgins. While respectful of Cukor’s treatment, Kenworthy and Mackintosh are confident they can improve on the 1964 original by shooting on location. In their press release Doug Belgrad, a president of Columbia Pictures, espoused the view that “by drawing additional material from Pygmalion” Mackintosh would create an updated version that “will preserve the magic of the musical while fleshing out the characters and bringing 1912 London to life in an authentic and exciting way for contemporary audiences.”21 To reach this lofty prediction Mackintosh will need more than just a little bit of luck.

West Side Story (1961)

Writers on West Side Story seldom neglect to mention that it was the film rather than the stage version that catapulted the show into universal popular consciousness. Indeed, the film, produced by Mirisch Pictures, won ten out of its eleven Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture and Best Direction (Robert Wise and Jerome Robbins). The other awards were for Best Supporting Actor and Actress (George Chakiris as Bernardo and Rita Moreno as Anita), Best Art Direction, Cinematography, Costumes, Film Editing, Scoring, and Sound Mixing.22 With graceful irony, the Academy even presented a Special Award to Robbins, who had been fired from the film after directing the Prologue for falling behind the production schedule. The only nomination that did not result in an award was Ernest Lehman’s for Best Screenplay. Lehman did, however, receive an equivalent award from the Writers Guild of America.

West Side Story, 1961 film. Tony (Richard Beymer) and Maria (Natalie Wood) meet at the Gym and fall in love at first sight.

In the early 1960s, most movie theaters continued the then-common practice of offering two films for one admission price, a feature presentation and a B-movie. Longer films appeared as a single feature with an intermission, a break in the action that presented an opportunity for audiences to purchase refreshments. At 152 minutes, West Side Story merited an intermission. Theoretically, it was possible to divide the film at the end of act I directly after the Rumble and begin the second act with “I Feel Pretty.” Instead, director Robert Wise revamped the scenario and moved the Rumble closer to the end of the story where it was followed rather than preceded by “Cool.”

Despite such adjustments, in marked contrast to the pillaged film version of Bernstein’s On the Town and even such relatively faithful film adaptations as Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Oklahoma!, all the West Side Story songs are present and accounted for. This may be a first (to be followed by My Fair Lady’s film adaptation three