My Fair Lady
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50 free My Fair Lady trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
My Fair Lady turned a story about vowels into one of the best-loved musicals ever filmed. Audrey Hepburn's Eliza Doolittle arrives at Professor Higgins's door wanting to speak like a lady, and six months of drills, tantrums and one triumphant ball later, neither of them is quite the same. This quiz covers the whole story: the plot and its characters, the songs, the casting rows and dubbing secrets behind the 1964 film, its eight Oscars, and the stage show and original play it grew from. It is pitched for film fans and musical-theatre lovers alike. The opening questions are ones most viewers will know, and the later rounds reward anyone who has watched it more than once.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which ghost singer, also heard in West Side Story, sang most of Audrey Hepburn's My Fair Lady songs?
Marni Nixon
Marni Nixon sang nearly all of Eliza's songs, and Hepburn briefly walked off the set when told she would be dubbed. Nixon's name appeared nowhere in the credits.
Q 02Which stage Eliza lost the film of My Fair Lady because the studio wanted a bigger name?
Julie Andrews
Julie Andrews had never made a film, so the producer cast Audrey Hepburn instead. Andrews had the last laugh, winning an Oscar that season for her screen debut in a rival musical.
Q 03Rex Harrison refused to mime his My Fair Lady songs, so what did the sound crew hide in his necktie?
A wireless microphone
A wireless microphone sat in the knot of his tie, the first time one was used to shoot a feature film. Harrison said he never performed a number the same way twice, so lip-syncing was out.
Q 04The title My Fair Lady echoes the last line of every verse of which English nursery rhyme?
London Bridge Is Falling Down
London Bridge Is Falling Down ends each verse with those three words, and the lyricist preferred them to the working title My Lady Liza. A Gershwin show had briefly used the same name on tryout.
Q 05Which of these Academy Awards did My Fair Lady take home on the night it collected eight Oscars?
Best Picture
Best Picture led a haul that also included the directing and lead actor prizes. Audrey Hepburn, though, was not even nominated for playing Eliza.
Q 06The plot of My Fair Lady reworks a Greek myth in which a Cypriot artist falls in love with what?
A statue he carved
A statue he carved comes to life in the myth, much as the professor's creation turns into a woman with a will of her own. Ovid tells the story in his Metamorphoses.
Q 07After the ball in My Fair Lady, what does a furious Eliza hurl at Higgins before walking out?
His slippers
His slippers fly at him after he and Pickering take all the credit for her triumph. The film's very last line has Higgins asking for them again, without a word of apology.
Q 08At which racecourse does Eliza's polished act slip in My Fair Lady when she yells at a horse?
Ascot
Ascot is where Higgins tries her out among the upper crust, and she holds up until a race gets too exciting. The royal course was founded by Queen Anne in 1711.
Q 09Which My Fair Lady song breaks out the moment Eliza finally pronounces her vowel exercise correctly?
The Rain in Spain
The Rain in Spain turns a pronunciation drill into a giddy celebration for Eliza, Higgins and Pickering. The drill is not in the original play: it first appeared in the 1938 film version.
Q 10Which fellow musical was the only 1964 film to out-earn My Fair Lady at the North American box office?
Mary Poppins
Mary Poppins finished first that year, and the rivalry carried on to the Oscars, where it led the field with 13 nominations to My Fair Lady's 12.
Q 11Which stage play, written with Mrs Patrick Campbell in mind as Eliza, became My Fair Lady?
Pygmalion
Pygmalion opened in London in 1914 and ran for 118 performances. Its author refused to let anyone turn it into a musical, so the songwriters only got their chance after his death.
Q 12Which Irish playwright wrote the play behind My Fair Lady and won an Oscar for its 1938 film script?
George Bernard Shaw
George Bernard Shaw called the screenplay Oscar an insult, yet it made him the first person to hold both an Academy Award and a Nobel Prize.
Q 13In which London market district does Higgins first overhear Eliza's accent in My Fair Lady?
Covent Garden
Q 21At the ball in My Fair Lady, a rival language expert declares Eliza a princess of which nationality?
Hungarian
Hungarian is the verdict of Zoltan Karpathy, a former pupil of Higgins who studies Eliza's speech at close quarters. He shares her supposed nationality, which makes the blunder all the sweeter.
Q 22Which My Fair Lady song does Eliza's smitten admirer sing after meeting her at the races?
On the Street Where You Live
On the Street Where You Live became a pop hit in its own right: Vic Damone's single reached number one in Britain in 1958. In the film the actor on screen is miming to another man's voice.
Q 23In My Fair Lady, which event the next morning sends Eliza's father on a last wild night out?
Covent Garden was London's fruit-and-vegetable market for some three centuries, until the traders moved out to Nine Elms in 1974.
Q 14Which accent does Eliza Doolittle speak when Higgins first hears her in My Fair Lady?
Cockney
Cockney is the speech Higgins sets out to erase, and in the opening scene he pinpoints strangers' home districts from the way they talk.
Q 15In My Fair Lady, where does Eliza dream of working once Higgins has taught her to speak like a lady?
A flower shop
A flower shop is her goal, because no florist would hire a street seller who talks as she does. She turns up at his house the very next morning to ask for lessons.
Q 16In My Fair Lady, Higgins boasts he could pass Eliza off as what at an embassy ball?
A duchess
A duchess is the boast, and Colonel Pickering offers to cover every expense if Higgins can pull it off. At the ball she outdoes the brief: an expert takes her for foreign royalty.
Q 17Which character does Eliza tell Higgins she will marry near the end of My Fair Lady, to his fury?
Freddy Eynsford-Hill
Freddy Eynsford-Hill is the suitor she names, though the film ends with her back at Higgins's door. The playwright insisted in a 1916 postscript that she could never marry her teacher.
Q 18What is Professor Higgins's field of study in My Fair Lady, which lets him place a stranger by ear?
Phonetics
Phonetics, the science of speech sounds, is his obsession, and he argues that an accent decides a person's whole place in society. He is jotting down Eliza's speech before the two have even met.
Q 19Which songwriting duo, also behind Camelot and Gigi, wrote the songs of My Fair Lady?
Lerner and Loewe
Lerner and Loewe succeeded where Rodgers and Hammerstein had given up, judging the play impossible to set to music. The fix was to stage the action the original left between its acts.
Q 20Which My Fair Lady song does Eliza sing when too excited to sleep?
I Could Have Danced All Night
I Could Have Danced All Night follows her first flawless vowels and an impromptu dance with Higgins. The film version later ranked 17th on the American Film Institute's list of great movie songs.
His own wedding
His own wedding is the reason for the spree, and the cue for Get Me to the Church on Time. A surprise inheritance has made him respectable, so he feels obliged to marry at last.
Q 24Which My Fair Lady song has Eliza and her market friends wondering about a life of comfort?
Wouldn't It Be Loverly
Wouldn't It Be Loverly also exists in Audrey Hepburn's own voice: a version rebuilt from outtakes was unveiled when the restored film premiered in 1994.
Q 25What is the trade of Eliza's father Alfred Doolittle, who is bought off by Higgins in My Fair Lady?
Dustman
Dustman is the British word for a refuse collector, and Doolittle happily takes five pounds to leave Eliza with Higgins. Higgins, amused by his cheek, recommends him to a millionaire as a moralist.
Q 26From which country has Colonel Pickering travelled to meet Higgins at the start of My Fair Lady?
India
India is where the colonel studied local dialects, and he has come home purely to look Higgins up. The two hit it off at once, and Pickering moves into Higgins's house as his guest.
Q 27As My Fair Lady opens, what do bystanders suspect Higgins of being when he scribbles notes on Eliza?
A detective
A detective is the crowd's guess, and Eliza loudly protests that she has done nothing wrong. He is in fact taking down the exact sounds of her speech.
Q 28In My Fair Lady, where does Higgins finally track Eliza down the day after she walks out on him?
His mother's house
His mother's house is her refuge, and Mrs Higgins takes Eliza's side, appalled at how her son has behaved. Pickering, meanwhile, had gone as far as calling the police.
Q 29Which director, replaced on Gone with the Wind decades earlier, won an Oscar for My Fair Lady?
George Cukor
George Cukor fought for the script too: he threatened to walk out unless Rex Harrison sang a passage the star had cut on stage, and Harrison gave in.
Q 30Which British actor played Eliza's father in My Fair Lady on Broadway, in London and on film?
Stanley Holloway
Stanley Holloway owned the role so completely that he named his autobiography after one of Doolittle's songs. Before that he was best known for comic monologues and Ealing comedies.