Keira Knightley: A Loverly Eliza But Can She Sing?

Posted by Robin Ruinsky (robin@filmschoolrejects.com) on June 6, 2008

Keira Knightley certainly looks the part of My Fair Lady’s Eliza Doolittle, a half starved, chocolates deprived, cockney flower girl living in London circa 1912. She’s got the cheekbones for it, but does she have the vocal chops?

Not that it mattered last time around when Audrey Hepburn took on the role of Eliza Doolittle in the Lerner and Lowe classic musical adaptation of the Bernard Shaw play Pygmalion.

A little background. Bernard Shaw’s play, Pygmalion, a retelling of the Ovid tale, Pygmalion and Galatea, made its debut in Vienna in 1913. The London debut was in 1914 at Her Majesty’s Theater starring 50 year old, Mrs. Patrick Campbell as the flower girl Eliza Doolittle, whose star power was apparently able to overcome being 31 years too old to play the role.

Lerner and Lowe adapted the play into a musical which opened on Broadway in 1956 starring Julie Andrews and Rex Harrison. The musical adaptation of the story about a cockney flower girl who phonetics professor Higgins bets he can pass off as a princess, was a smashing success.

This was followed by the 1964 film “My Fair Lady” directed by George Cukor with Audrey Hepburn edging out Andrews for the role of Eliza, even though Hepburn couldn’t sing the score and was dubbed by Marnie Nixon. Nixon, known as The Voice of Hollywood, was a bit of a dubbing savant of the day, singing for Deborah Kerr in “The King and I”, Natalie Wood in “West Side Story”.

This all brings us back to the news that Keira Knightley, last seen in Atonement, is to take on the role of Eliza Doolittle in a new film version of “My Fair Lady”. Knightley can surely act the part and has the right look. Is it possible she’s been secretly hiding a Julie Andrews level singing voice?

The days of dubbing aren’t quite over. Minnie Driver’s singing was dubbed when she played the diva Carlotta in the film version of The Phantom of the Opera. But that was a secondary role and a comic one at that, so they managed to get away with it.

I don’t think you can get away with a dubbed Eliza Doolittle again.

The producers of the film are Cameron Mackintosh, yes, the man who unleashed CATS on the world and Duncan Kenworthy, Love Actually. Their intention is to shoot the film on location and flesh out the characters to give them more emotional depth, presenting the story in a more realistic manner than the original which was filmed on sound stages.

CBS films will co produce and SONY will distribute.

Now we must all wait to hear if Knightly is taking intense vocal training or if Marnie Nixon is coming out of retirement.

Read more articles by Robin Ruinsky