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Henry Higgins
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Rex Harrison as Professor Henry Higgins stands on a curved staircase in a grand library filled with books in the film My Fair Lady, directed by George Cukor. Wendy Hiller and Leslie Howard in a scene from the 1938 film Pygmalion, with Howard holding a small object near Hiller's open mouth as she sits on a sofa.
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Rex Harrison in My Fair Lady (1964).
Rex Harrison in My Fair Lady (1964).

Henry Higgins

fictional character
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History

Henry Higgins, fictional character, a professor of phonetics who makes a bet that he can teach Cockney flower girl Eliza Doolittle how to speak proper English, in George Bernard Shaw’s play Pygmalion (performed 1913). The story was filmed in 1938, starring Leslie Howard as Henry Higgins, and was adapted as the stage musical My Fair Lady in 1956 (filmed 1964), with Rex Harrison as the professor (on both stage and screen).

This article was most recently revised and updated by Amy Tikkanen.