How My Fair Lady dodged the culture war kvetchers

For some, the 1964 classic is ultimately a movie about men grooming young women. But for most, its charm, style and ambiguity keep the film relevant, writes Geoffrey Macnab

- Geoffrey Macnab

The slippers still cause consternation. At the end of George Cukor's My Fair Lady (1964), when viewers might expect Professor Henry Higgins (Rex Harrison) to embrace the swanlike Eliza Doolittle (Audrey Hepburn), who he has apparently fallen for, he instead grunts, pulls his hat over his face, and snaps out: “Where the devil are my slippers?”

For 60 years, fans have been debating the scene. To some, it’s clear evidence of the film’s underlying chauvinism and prehistoric attitudes toward gender. Eliza is the young ragamuffin, born in Lisson Grove and selling flowers somewhere near Tottenham Court Road. Higgins is the priggish elocution teacher. He takes her under his wing. Through his stern tutoring, she stops dropping her aitches and emerges from her shabby chrysalis as a beautiful, sophisticated and well-spoken woman of the world. She becomes a “lady”. He wins a bet.

That, in a nutshell, is the plot of the movie. But what’s the point of all that personal development, and wearing all those gorgeous Cecil Beaton costumes and hats when, in the end, all Eliza is going to do is fetch slippers and make cups of tea, for the curmudgeonly Higgins? Being his wife or lover would hardly be a liberation. She’d be freer back in the gutter.

From today’s perspective, My Fair Lady can appear a little creepy – a quintessential movie about men grooming women. This is hardly an unusual trope. Throughout Hollywood history, female characters have continually been made to behave in accordance with the attitudes and fantasies of older males. From Joan Fontaine’s nervous wife in Alfred Hitchcock’s Rebecca (1940) and Kim Novak in Hitchcock’s Vertigo (1958) to the computer-generated dream woman Kelly LeBrock in Weird Science (1985) and Rachael Leigh Cook as the would-be prom queen in the teen comedy She’s All That (1999), there are many examples of the trend.