It really doesn't get much better than this for fans of truly great, old musicals.

The score alone is sublime, packed with great numbers such as, I Could Have Danced All Night, On the Street Where You Live and Wouldn't It Be Luverly.

Hollywood's 'woman's director', George Cukor (The Women, The Philadelphia Story), had a $17m budget to bring the smash-hit Lerner & Loewe stage musical to life on film.

Julie Andrews, who created the role of Eliza Dolittle on stage, failed to land the role on film. Her stage co-star, Rex Harrison, nearly refused to be in the movie as a result.

Producer Jack Warner said she simply wasn't famous enough and cast Audrey Hepburn instead, whose singing was mimed by veteran singer Marni Nixon.

Andrews was devastated and Warner may have rued the day. Within 12 months, Mary Poppins and The Sound of Music had made Julie Andrews a huge star and an Oscar winner.

Based on George Bernard Shaw's play Pygmalion, Rex Harrison stars as linguist Henry Higgins, who draws Eliza into a social experiment that works almost too well.

He bets an academic friend that, with elocution, any woman may become a lady. Can he teach the Cockney flower girl to pass for a Duchess? And how will it change her?

The power of the story is that it doesn't altogether take the easy route, with misogynist Higgins revealed as romantically fallible and Eliza as strong and dignified.

In support, Stanley Holloway has a fantastic turn as Eliza's dad, Alfred Dolittle, who gets the infamous number Get Me To The Church On Time.

And Jeremy Brett is sweet as Eliza's upper-crust suitor, even if he did mime to On The Street Where You Live.

It's such a classic story that stiffness in the staging and direction really doesn't matter.

Rex Harrison's booming star power and Audrey Hepburn's adorable face propel things along well next to the fantastic score.

But it didn't take Best Actress, which instead went to...Julie Andrews for Mary Poppins.