Posted Jan 19, 09:19 PM in Film by Scott Conley

Since moving to New York three years ago, I have quickly learned where the gays-love-musicals stereotype came from. Nonetheless, I cling fondly to a scattering of movie-musicals as terrific pieces of entertainment, and hereby boldly risk a pup-tent adventure in order to extoll the virtues of one of my favorites. So without further ado, I humbly present: the five best reasons (in no particular order) to love the movie-musical My Fair Lady.

5. The song, On the Street Where You Live
Here’s a song that starts off, first of all, in vocal reach of most guys who can’t get that high. Second of all, since everybody knows it, it’s a great target for pretty much my favorite social game, Pervert That Song:

Man, I could riff a dozen verses on that one and never tire of it!

4. Colonel Pickering pantomiming a bull.
Smack in the bridge of his exultant victory song, You Did It, the old codger loses it and starts running around with his index fingers on his forehead, ‘charging’ Higgins and generally giving chase to the others in the room. I believe that it was upon seeing this for the first time that I started giving real credence to all those old Ernie-and-Bert rumors.

3. Awesome marital advice
Here’s the basic deal: Higgins is a selfish supernerd (leave it alone) and he royally tromps all over Eliza’s feelings so she dumps him. Then, inexplicably, spontaneously, and through no effort on Higgins’ part (unless you count ‘crying to momma’), she COMES BACK and- right out of the gate- (presumably) GETS HIS SLIPPERS!* Okay, first of all, the three of you out there that just cried ‘Spoiler!’ can stow it. Second of all, it really is an absolutely stunning ending, particularly if you didn’t grow up in say, the fifties.

Needless to say, my attempts to harvest this brilliant bit of relationship management technique have gone largely unsuccessful.

2. Higgins is Stewie
All the Family Guy junkies know this, but Seth MacFarlane actually uses the Professor Higgins character as the basis for Stewie Griffin. I just love this, particularly projecting backwards- that is, watching My Fair Lady while considering Higgins might at any point break out into a ‘Sexy Party’

1. Infinite English accents
While only able to convince one unsuspecting person that I was actually English, I continue unabashed to borrow heavily from this film’s vast array of ridiculous accents in order to fill an otherwise ordinary American-accented existence. Higgins’ highbrow, Eliza’s over-the-top Cockney, and Higgins’ mom’s über-social are all great, but my personal favorite is Eliza’s dad- I could walk around talking like old man Doolittle for a week, if I didn’t honestly think my coworkers would garrote me.

Of course, ‘wif a widdlebit o’ luck, you can see the blood’ounds don’t find out!’
—- *To my dear friend Clark: ‘Gets his slippers’ isn’t actually a euphemism. In 1964, linguistics professors regularly wore slippers at night. You know, around the house. With ‘Colonel Pickering’

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