Audrey Hepburn month is continuing around here, and I plan on posting more of my thoughts on her biography and career in the next few days. But I wanted to share some clips that I found on YouTube which combined a rehearsal track for the show (with Audrey Hepburn's real singing voice) with the final filmed scenes. (In fact, this YouTube account has a lot of great videos that restore the original singing voice of actresses with film clips that were dubbed-over.)
"Just You Wait" (with the middle section using Hepburn's real voice, although she did have her own voice used in the final film for the first and last section):
"I Could Have Danced All Night"
"Without You"
I just finished reading David Spoto's biography Enchantment: The Life of Audrey Hepburn, and he complained that the dubbing of Marni Nixon's voice for My Fair Lady really spoiled the whole image of Eliza Doolittle as a poor flower girl. I never really questioned Eliza Doolittle's singing voice (as a character) before, probably because I grew up listening to the My Fair Lady soundtrack and, as a child, just accepted what was presented to me. But Nixon's classically-trained voice does seem inappropriate, now that I think about it, not only for only the role of Eliza Doolittle but also for Audrey Hepburn's own petite frame.
That being said, Audrey Hepburn's voice is definitely not up to par for the sheer spectacle of My Fair Lady as a film. Her voice is a little delicate, raspy, and I have to admit that I especially cringed when listening to the sustained notes in "Without You" that she should have delivered with more energy and subpulse.
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