Audrey's voice restored in My Fair Lady songs

Posted: 4th April, 2010

Mark, an Audrey fan from NYC, has painstakingly restored Audrey's original vocals to Without You, Just You Wait, and I Could Have Danced All Night from the movie My Fair Lady.

You may recall that Audrey's vocals for a number of songs were dubbed by Marnie Nixon in the theatrical release and until now only a couple of songs featuring Audrey's original vocals, Wouldn't it be Loverly and Show Me, have been available to the general public as extras on the DVD release.

For Without You, Mark said on our forum, "I only had a piano/vocal track, so I added an orchestral backing. I also cut together two of Audrey's takes to get her best performance. Then, I made 37 cuts and speed alterations to the video to maintain sync. Finally, the orchestral track needed 18 speed alterations to match Audrey's tempos."

Please check out Mark's YouTube channel for more of his work:
http://www.youtube.com/user/lostvocals6

Without You

Just You Wait

I Could Have Danced All Night

19 Comments

1. AudreyFan said...
I love this!! She's great and her voice should have been used in all the film. There will never be anyone else like her but there will always be people trying to be. She's very much missed! Thanks so much for this. Is there a dvd with her original voice used in all the songs coming out?
2. debbie said...
Audrey was a class act, and her voice should have been used in the movie. It has never been fully explained why it was not. I know her own voice was used in "Breakfast at Tiffany's" when she sang "Moon River." If anyone can explain this I would appreciate it. Thanks
3. John W said...
She was the best. She should have gotten the Academy Award for best actress in My Fair Lady. Julie Andrews won it for Mary Poppins, but politics was involved. Julie was good, but Audrey was great!!!
4. jonny said...
i think audrey has a great voice.."i could have danced all night" was a struggle for her it sounds but "without you" and "just you wait" are ideal songs for her voice style.Would be fantastic if a re-edited version of the film was released.The dubbing of audrey are my only misgivings about the film.It felt so fake with Eliza talking cockney drawl then bursting into an operatic voice.Audiences these days want a true realistic perfomance i believe.
5. Megan said...
I love Audrey Hepburn. She was truly an amazing woman. My Fair Lady is my favourite film of hers and her voice should of been used in the original, it was just as good as the woman whose voice dubbed Audrey's. Audrey is my main inspiration in everything and I'm just feel so lucky that I have something in common with her, even if it is as small as a birthday!
6. The Hard-Lover said...
she's was amazing and beatiful lovely girl I saw her movies and read aout her life . . .

LoVe U Miss Audrey ^_^
7. Do Little said...
Justice est faite ! Thank you so much to Mark !
And so many thanks for this sharing site. "I will cherish my visit here in memory as long as I live."
8. Cindy, Toronto, Canada said...
Audrey Hepburn was a class act - there's never going to be anyone like her.

Thank so much Mark for restoring her voice on these songs. In essence, the producers robbed her of the Best Actress Award for not allowing her to use all of her own voice in the musical numbers she did on this film. They totally missed the point that her own style of singing simply justified Eliza's background on the story of the movie.

She truly was one beautiful woman, a generous human being and real role model for all women around the world. I missed her and the one consolation are the movies she made and books written about her.

Audrey Hepburn defined fashion in the truest meaning of the word - SHE IS THE ICON of the fashion industry.
9. Greg_M Audrey voice said...
Thanks Mark - Audrey sounds wonderful. I hope someday her vocie can be restored as an option on Blu-ray. Audrey sounds fine but some more work would be needed to correct her weak spots (the recording technogolgy is out there to help)
Keep up the good work (by the way I would love to get the piano vocals for "Without You" and "Just You Wait" - I have them for "I Could Have Danced All Night" and "Wouldn't it be Loverly" and Audrey sounds even better on those
10. AlexandrasAve said...
There was one and only Audrey Hepbourn... R.I.P...
11. Joe Giovanni said...
There is only ONE Audrey . She is my all-time FAVORITE actress. No one can replace her
12. AndrewG said...
she deserved another Oscar!
13. JennG84 said...
Well....I own "My Fair Lady", and I just want to say that I agree. Her voice is so genuine sounding. It's not overly "curly-cued", and she has the most beautiful, peaceful faces. I would trust that woman with my life.....
14. BillG said...
Her voice should have been used? Are you kidding? It's excrutiating to listen to, especially I Could Have Danced all Night. A show-stopper reduced to a bad night in a karoake bar. Audrey Hepburn should have been grateful that George Cukor had her dubbed and thus be spared the embarrassment. We can then focus on her wonderful performance rather than the awful notes.
15. Lee said...
Wow!! This was awesome! I like many Audrey fans have only heard the 2 on the DVD extras. I agree her voice isn't that great but it would have made the movie that much more unique! I adore Audrey and I actually appreciate the rawness of her voice :)
16. maria said...
She was plenty of talent, beauty, charm and love. A real miracle of nature.
17. Nancy said...
OMG I am so happy to find this site. I love Audrey's voice and really disliked they dubbed her voiceover with Marnie Nixon. I just love Audrey. Beauty and Grace.
18. Radolfo Florescu said...
Unfortunately one cannot listen (nor see) this in Europe, due to "licence problems". Is there any solution for this seeeeerious problem???
I know two songs with Audrey's original voice from the DVD though, and I must say her voice fits best the role of Eliza Dolittle!!!
19. Mr. Glee said...
In her characteristically disciplined fashion, Hepburn worked hard for months to master the songs, but was informed shortly before shooting that she would be dubbed--or should I say, "augmented" in the polite terminology of the day. She was heartbroken, partly because she would have been paid hundreds of thousands more if her own singing voice had been used. As it was, the disparity between her million dollar salary and Harrison's $200,000 was a sore point for "Sexy Rexy," so she certainly didn't go away empty-handed.

She does fine on "Wouldn't It Be Loverly?" and "Just You Wait." But consider: MFL gave the world some of the most famous show tunes in theatrical history. Jack Warner had invested a then unheard-of sum to buy the rights and personally produce the movie. The original Broadway soundtrack was one of the best-selling albums of all time, so the public had grown accustomed to hearing Julie Andrews' sonorous soprano on Eliza's numbers. The studio felt they couldn't risk a less than stellar vocal performance from Audrey in the film, especially after the unprecedented public and industry outrage directed at Warner for not casting Andrews.

They might have let Audrey do more of the score, but for consistency's sake they couldn't keep switching back and forth between voices. So they had to go with Marni Nixon for the great majority of Eliza's vocals, with Audrey mostly doing only a few introductory phrases. For Audrey to have used her own voice would have been more logically consistent with the character, and it may indeed have cost Hepburn an Oscar nod that she didn't do her own singing.

But, in addition to the demanding singing, there were complex dialogue challenges in a film about a Cockney learning to refine her speech, and her phonetic evolution had to be reflected in Eliza's songs as well. Hepburn's speaking voice was lovely and unique, partly because it was a mishmash of European influences (she was fluent in English, French, Dutch, Italian, and Flemish), but with that voice she wouldn't have fooled Zoltan Karpathy at the ball about her origins for one minute. In reality, if Eliza truly had sounded like Hepburn, Higgins would have failed dismally with her.

But such is the magic of the movies that Hepburn makes us forget all that and BELIEVE in her as she faces her elegant trial in high society. To help her with the gradual transitions in her evolving speech, the film was shot more or less in sequence. Thus, add those dialectical challenges to the vocal challenges magnified by the audience's high expectations, and it would have been probably too much for just about any actress except perhaps Andrews herself, who admitted that even she never quite fully mastered Eliza on stage.

So there were many factors that weighed in against Hepburn doing her own singing. Nevertheless, discovering this clip was a great joy for any fan of Hepburn's and the transcendent film version of MFL. It's especially poignant to hear these tracks in light of the fact that nearly all of the principals who made the film, both in front of and behind the camera, are gone.

Plus the industry, in its wisdom, is now doing a remake, which sounds absolutely hideous. Emma Thompson, the screenwriter, made snarky remarks dismissing the original film and Hepburn. "Nanny McPhee" is sure she can do much better than Lerner and Lowe, who created probably the greatest musical of the Twentieth Century from an immortal George Bernard Shaw play. For one thing, we won't need all those songs, she states.

Right.

It's gonna be ghastly. Have mercy, "Professor Trelawney." Go back to Hogwarts and leave us the grace of Hepburn and Harrison, and a wondrous show that still sparkles after half a century.