The tweed hat Rex Harrison wore as Henry Higgins would become his trademark for the rest of his life.

In Charade (1963), which started filming the month Audrey Hepburn found out she would be starring in My Fair Lady, Cary Grant's character tells her she's "on the street where you live," a reference to one of the musical's songs.

In an attempt to cash in on the success of My Fair Lady, 20th Century-Fox cast Harrison to star in the musical Doctor Dolittle (1967). They even hired Alan Jay Lerner to write the screenplay, though he left the project. Unfortunately, the film lost half of its $18 million investment.

The feud between George Cukor and Cecil Beaton persisted long after the film's release. Beaton wrote critically of Cukor's behavior in his memoirs, and Cukor often dismissed Beaton's contributions to the film in interviews. When Cukor spoke critically of Beaton's work in a 1973 interview for British television, the designer sued him for slander.

The film was restored in 1994, with technicians using most of the original camera negatives and the original six-part soundtrack to create new prints with Dolby sound. Nonetheless, some images, including most of the opening credits, had to be digitally re-created and restored.

My Fair Lady has been revived several times on Broadway since the hit film version. In 1976, George Rose won the Tony Award for Best Actor in a Musical for playing Doolittle in a revival starring Ian Richardson and Christine Andreas. Harrison returned to the Higgins role in 1981, while Richard Chamberlain gave it a try in 1993. The original Pygmalion has also had numerous revivals, with Peter O'Toole finally getting to play Higgins in a 1983 television version with Margot Kidder and the 1987 Broadway revival (with Amanda Plummer). A 1968 Swedish television production teamed Ingmar Bergman stalwarts Gunnar Bjornstrand and Harriet Andersson, while model-turned-actress Twiggy starred in a 1981 TV version in England.

Pretty Woman (1990) with Julia Roberts and Richard Gere and Educating Rita (1983) with Julie Walters and Michael Caine bear more than superficial resemblances to My Fair Lady in their depiction of women being educated and enriched by men who fall in love with them.

by Frank Miller