The Hymn to Him

As the gender storms rain down on Capital Hill and feminist rage spreads across the land, another Higgins has escaped the attention of our vigilant media: the phonetics professor in My Fair Lady (MFL) and that song. For some people, MFL is still jolly good fun: an Edwardian comedy of manners kept alive in the last half century by a few memorable songs, thanks to the 1964 American musical drama film, itself an adaptation from Lerner and Loewe’s 1956 Broadway and London stage musical.

Wouldn’t it be loverly if everyone felt that way about it? They certainly did in the 1960s. The 1964 film, with Audrey Hepburn as Eliza Doolittle and Rex Harrison as Henry Higgins, was a critical and commercial success. The second-highest grossing film that year, it won eight Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Actor and Best Director. The American Film Institute in 1998 named it the 91st greatest American film. It was ranked eighth in the AFI’s 2006 Greatest Movie Musicals list.

MFL’s…