My Fair Match-Up Trivia Quiz

Answer: Eliza Doolittle

Eliza Doolittle made a living selling flowers outside the opera at Covent Garden, until Professor Henry Higgins took her under his wing. He was determined that he could pass her off as a lady within a few months, despite her broad Cockney accent and common ways. It was after they made a breakthrough in her pronunciation and danced together around the room in celebration that a smitten Eliza sang of dancing all night (and begging for more).

Audrey Hepburn played Eliza, while Marni Nixon provided her singing voice, at least in part.

Answer: Alfred P. Doolittle

Alfred P. Doolittle (Stanley Holloway) was Eliza's father, and very content to do very little work and sponge money from family and friends. He managed to get some
from Professor Higgins, but the latter then set some things in motion that had the result of making Doolittle respectable! Once that happened his lady friend insisted upon being respectable too, and so he was out on the town before getting married in the morning!

I had the great pleasure of seeing Stanley Holloway perform at the Canadian National Exhibition grandstand show in Toronto a few years after this film came out. He arrived on a double decker bus!

Answer: Henry Higgins

Professor Henry Higgins was an expert in the English language and could identify where a person was born, brought up and worked simply by listening to them speak. He bet his friend Colonel Pickering that he could teach Eliza to speak like a lady, and present her at an upcoming ball as such. The experiment was a success, but when Eliza left after feeling she had been shabbily treated, Higgins pretended not to care. However, upon reflection he realised that he would miss her, because he had "grown accustomed to her face" and to her presence in his household.

Rex Harrison, who performed his own songs, won the Best Actor Oscar for his performance as Henry Higgins.

Answer: Hugh Pickering

Colonel Hugh Pickering, an expert in the languages and dialects of India, had traveled to London from India specifically to meet Professor Higgins and compare notes regarding their specialties. Higgins invited him to stay with him, and together they embarked on the mission to present Eliza to upper class society. Pickering was always kind to Eliza, in contrast to Higgins' rough mannerisms. When Eliza pointed out that the colonel treated a flower girl like a lady, Higgins retorted that he himself treated a lady like a flower girl, so Eliza should expect nothing more.

Wilfrid Hyde-White portrayed the colonel, whose first name we learned near the end of the film when he was on the phone to a friend, seeking help to find Eliza, who had bolted.

Answer: Mrs Higgins

Although she didn't actually invite them, Mrs Higgins was quite gracious in entertaining her son, Henry, the colonel and a beautifully turned out Eliza at the opening day of the races at Ascot. All was going relatively well, until Freddy Eynsford-Hill gave Eliza the slip for the bet he had laid on a horse named Dover, and she became a bit over-enthusiastic in urging Dover to run faster.

Gladys Cooper, whose film career had begun before the First World War, played Mrs Higgins.

Answer: Mrs Eynsford-Hill

When Mrs Eynsford-Hill and her son Freddy emerged from the opera at the very beginning of the movie it was raining, and she sent the young man to find a cab, so she wouldn't catch pneumonia. In his rush he bumped into a flower girl (Eliza) and ruined some of her flowers. His mother, a bit of a snob, refused to pay for the trampled flowers. Neither of them recognized Eliza as that flower girl when they met again at Ascot some time later.

Isobel Elsom, who played Mrs Eynsford-Hill, had a long career on stage, movies and television, beginning in the 1910s.

Answer: Freddy Eynsford-Hill

Freddy, in fact, was besotted with Eliza, if not from the moment they first met in the rain, then surely from their formal introduction at Ascot. He was charmed by her command of "small talk" and continued to be so, even after the Dover incident. He would loiter "on the street where [Eliza] lived" and sing of hoping she might "suddenly appear". When she eventually did she was irate, and sang angrily about how men were all words and no action in the song "Show Me". Though she threatened Higgins that she would marry Freddy, Eliza would change her mind. (Note: in Shaw's "Pygmalion", Eliza DID marry Freddy at the end.)

Jeremy Brett, who went on to portray Sherlock Holmes in a number of television films and series, played lovestruck Freddy. Bill Shirley provided his singing voice.

Answer: Zoltan Karpathy

Zoltan Karpathy was a former student of Professor Higgins, and had set himself up as an expert in languages, though somewhat fraudulently. A Hungarian himself, of course he claimed the mysterious and beautiful young woman, who accompanied Higgins and Pickering to the ball, as one of his own countrywomen. His reasoning was that her English was too good for her to be a native Englishwoman. Higgins and Pickering later celebrated their triumph (though not Eliza's) in fooling Karpathy so thoroughly.

Theodore Bikel was deliciously oily as Karpathy. Born in Vienna, in real life Bikel actually was a master of multiple languages, and a respected actor on both stage and screen.

Answer: Mrs Pearce

Poor Mrs Pearce had to put up with a lot as Higgins's housekeeper, including being given the task of making sure Eliza, who had just arrived, took her first bath - and of disposing of the clothes in which the flower girl had arrived. Beyond that was the constant shouting of the professor, the weird noises emanating from the recording studio and various demands upon her time and patience. That she remained a loyal servant is a tribute to her fortitude.

Character actor Mona Washbourne had a career that stretched from the mid-1930s through the mid-1980s, often playing similar roles to Mrs Pearce.

Answer: Queen of Transylvania

After making a grand entrance to the ball with her son, the Prince of Transylvania, this royal personage sent for Eliza, who was presented to her. The Queen then indicated that her son wished the pleasure of dancing with the beautiful young woman about whom the whole room was abuzz.

This role is the only one credited to Baroness Rothschild (1902-1965), a German aristocrat also known as Bina Rothschild. It is said she was chosen for the role due to her "impeccable deportment", despite not being a trained actress.