"Body Care and Grooming"

(the li’l girl is zipping around in front of her mirror)
Tom: Why can’t a woman be more like a man?

This is one of Rex Harrison’s starting lines of "Hymn to Him”, from My Fair Lady. A starting line is one of those spoken lines that introduces a song—like in “Leader of the Pack”, you hear a girl ask “Gee, Suzy, what’s wrong?” and Suzy says something like, “Well, let me tell ya’ all about it” and then proceeds to sing about how her boyfriend died (“Look out look out look out—Vrooom—Leader of the pack!”—watch The Brain That Wouldn’t Die to understand). Um, anyway—you may or may not notice that Rex Harrison never really sings his lines; he more or less talks them, or growls them. This was the preferred method of singing by non-musical actors who found themselves in Broadway shows. Richard Burton did the same thing when he starred in Camelot as King Arthur. Now, in most movie musicals, the singing is done fairly well on the set, but the actor will go back to the studio, sing the song again to provide a better sound recording, and the studio version will be dubbed into the film. But, because Rex Harrison talked his lines very quickly, it was impossible to get the sound in sync with his lips. So the studio designed one of the first mikes used in musicals—it was nearly invisible, and clipped onto his suit, I believe. So there you have it.


(As the li’l boy is taking a shower, Mike and the ‘bots make violin noises.)

The famous shower scene from Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho. Yep.