‘My Fair Lady’ gets a complete restoration

Audrey Hepburn’s 1964 musical classic won eight Oscars.

When Robert A. Harris and James C. Katz first restored “My Fair Lady” more than 20 years ago, the original camera negative of the Alan Jay Lerner-Frederick Loewe musical was already in bad shape.

“The negative had been run about 140 or 150 times,” Harris said. “Every 70-millimeter print is always made from the camera original, so the negatives get run again and again. The more popular a film is, the worse the conditions of the elements are going to be in. That one was horrible.”

The 1964 Audrey Hepburn classic won eight Oscars, including ones for George Cukor’s directing, Rex Harrison’s acting and Cecil Beaton’s exquisite costume design. But the negative of “My Fair Lady” had tears. “Perforations were missing, splices were opening up,” Harris said. “But there was very little fading.”

Harris and Katz’s acclaimed restoration, released in theaters as well as home video, took eight months to complete and used traditional photochemical restoration as well as new digital tools.

But that was two decades ago.

Last year, Harris told Ken Ross, executive vice president and general manager of CBS Home Entertainment, that the original camera negative was now at risk and a new digital restoration was needed.

“When you are a steward of the brand, you have the responsibility to the public, to the fans and the culture to make sure these things are preserved,” Ross said.

Though the negative was stored under proper conditions in a vault in Burbank for the last 20 years, the negative had faded extensively.

The new high-definition 4K restoration of “My Fair Lady” is from an 8K scan of the original negative and other surviving 65-millimeter elements.

Five months were spent getting the color back to its lush, vibrant original. The “My Fair Lady” 50th anniversary edition arrives Tuesday on Bluray and DVD with extras.