Daytime Cinema: My Fair Lady

An Afternoon with Eliza Doolittle

Witney's Corn Exchange runs its Daytime Cinema strand for exactly this kind of film — a genuine classic, shown in an afternoon slot instead of squeezed into a Friday night, with none of the queuing or car park scrum of a multiplex.

This showing is George Cukor's 1964 My Fair Lady, adapted from the Lerner and Loewe stage musical, which was itself built on George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion. Audrey Hepburn plays Eliza Doolittle, the Covent Garden flower seller remade into society on a wager, opposite Rex Harrison's Henry Higgins, a role he originated on Broadway before bringing it to film. Stanley Holloway reprises his stage part too, as Eliza's unrepentant dustman father Alfred. The film won eight Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Actor for Harrison, and numbers like "Wouldn't It Be Loverly" and "The Rain in Spain" have long since outgrown it.

Two and three-quarter hours of Cecil Beaton costumes and Ascot-scene excess on the big screen, in the middle of the afternoon.

Tuesday 22 September 2026 · The Corn Exchange, Market Square, Witney, OX28 6AB · Starts 1:30pm