‘Lady’ Is Fairer Than Ever

For years, trying to watch the Alan Jay Lerner-Frederick Loewe Broadway musical blockbuster “My Fair Lady” on home video was a frustrating experience. The pan-and-scan videotape destroyed director George Cukor’s carefully framed pictures and Cecil Beaton’s letter-perfect costumes and production. Only the well-known score seemed intact, if not a sonic experience.

Now, CBS-Fox Video has released a newly remastered wide-screen edition--a vast improvement over a disastrous earlier letterbox release--that shows every inch of the big-screen extravaganza from the opening overture through intermission and exit music (171 minutes, 1964, $70). Along the way, it’s a pleasure listening to one of Broadway’s wittiest scores.

As with many CBS-Fox releases, however, the soundtrack is too low and not full-bodied enough. The laser cover boasts “stereo surround,” but it is anemic sound in which the volume must be pumped up to adequately hear every bit of dialogue. Even the musical numbers fail to have the vibrancy of other releases. Nevertheless, 29 chapter stops make it easy to find any number from “Why Can’t the English?” to “I’ve Grown Accustomed to Her Face.”

The casting of Audrey Hepburn as Eliza Doolittle outraged many who wanted to see Julie Andrews reprise her star-making stage role. But Hepburn’s regal performance, Marni Nixon’s dubbed singing voice and the passage of time help diminish the issue. Rex Harrison owns the role of Prof. Henry Higgins, and in this crisp transfer his Oscar-winning performance is given its due. Stanley Holloway also reprises his role as Alfred P. Doolittle.

Listen by comparison to the new Warner release of Lerner & Loewe’s “Camelot” (180 minutes, 1967, wide-screen, digitally processed stereo, $40). The sound booms out of all the speakers, as alive as a stage production. The letterboxing is essential for this film, because so much of the action takes place in all parts of the large screen and so many of the colors are dark and muted. The pan-and-scan videotape makes nonsense of the composition for Panavision.

Unfortunately, the belabored story, directed by Joshua Logan, is no match for “My Fair Lady,” but there are pleasures to be found in the score, notably the title song. Thirty-seven chapter stops mark everything from the overture to each number to special dramatic moments, the exit music and the original theatrical trailer. Richard Harris is no Richard Burton (who played the role on Broadway), and Vanessa Redgrave is definitely no Julie Andrews as Guenevere. Anyone might be better as Lancelot than Broadway’s Robert Goulet, but Franco Nero wasn’t an inspired choice.

Other Lerner & Loewe musicals available on laser include a wide-screen edition of “Paint Your Wagon” (Paramount, 166 minutes, 1969, $36) and a newly released version of “Brigadoon” (MGM-UA, 108 minutes, 1954, $35).

Logan also directed “Paint Your Wagon,” a successful adaptation of the Broadway musical about gold-rush days in No-Name City, Calif. Lee Marvin and Clint Eastwood, of all people, team up with Jean Seberg and Harve Presnell (the only real singer in the cast, and he steals the show, especially when he sings “They Call the Wind Maria”). The script is surprisingly modern, written by Paddy Chayefsky.

“Brigadoon” has one of Lerner & Loewe’s most beautiful scores, if a rather dated fanciful story. But the production starring some of MGM’s shining lights from its stable of stars, including Gene Kelly, Cyd Charisse and Van Johnson, directed by Vincente Minnelli, seems lackluster. Minnelli wanted to film the Scottish village on location, but the money-conscious brass said no. The result is an artificial, stagey piece of work.

Look for the new laser edition of this musical. The older one suffers by comparison and many of the first discs suffered from laser rot, a malady no longer a problem.