My Fair Lady (1964)

Eliza Doolittle: [singing] Lot's of chocolates for me to eat! / Lot's of coal makin' lots of heat / Warm face, warm hands, warm feet / Oh, wouldn't it be lovely?

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Professor Henry Higgins: I've grown accustomed to her face.

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Eliza Doolittle: I ain't done nothin' wrong by speaking to the gentleman. I've a right to sell flowers if I keep off the kerb. I'm a respectable girl: so help me, I never spoke to him 'cept so far as to buy a flower off me.

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Despite intensive vocal training during pre-production, and constant practicing until her final re-recording during the post-production, most of Audrey Hepburn's own singing was omitted from the finished product. The only significant song in which Audrey's own vocals were largely retained is "Just You Wait", where her voice can be heard in two thirds of the number. Audrey also rendered the brief "Just You Wait" reprise all on her own, nailing the dramatic, emotional intensity of the song in a way that Marni Nixon would never have been able to. Audrey Hepburn also did the opening to some of the songs on her own, including the lines 'Bed, bed, I couldn't go to bed!' and 'Sleep, sleep, I couldn't sleep tonight!' in the introductory verse of "I Could Have Danced All Night".
Musical theater writers Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II had attempted to adapt George Bernard Shaw's "Pygmalion" as a musical long before Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe, but had abandoned the project as unadaptable. Rodgers and Hammerstein felt that Shaw's style of writing intellectual dialog and the emotionless character of Henry Higgins did not lend themselves to a musical. Lerner and Lowe overcame these problems by leaving Shaw's dialogue largely intact, and working under the notion that Higgins must be played by a great actor, not a great singer. Thus, they wrote the role especially for Rex Harrison, and adopted the idea that Higgins should not sing outright, but talk on pitch, less an expression of emotions than ideas.
Most of Audrey Hepburn's singing was dubbed by Marni Nixon, despite Hepburn's lengthy vocal preparation for the role. A dubber was required because Eliza Doolittle's songs were not transposed down to accommodate Audrey Hepburn's "low-mezzo voice" (as Marni Nixon referred to it), the way Guenevere's songs were transposed down to accommodate Vanessa Redgrave's limited vocal range in 'Camelot (1967)'. Audrey Hepburn sang most of "Just You Wait", as well as the reprise to the song, herself, showcasing her ability to sing perfectly at ease when the songs were set in a reasonable tessitura. Audrey also sang one or two lines, elsewhere in the score, such as 'Sleep, sleep, I couldn't sleep tonight!' in "I Could Have Danced All Night". Thus, the claim that Marni Nixon dubbed all of Audrey Hepburn's singing (as asserted by such people as syndicated columnist Hedda Hopper), is false.
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