<P> My Fair Lady is a 1964 American musical film adapted from the Lerner and Loewe eponymous stage musical based on the 1913 stage play Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw . With a screenplay by Alan Jay Lerner and directed by George Cukor, the film depicts a poor Cockney flower seller named Eliza Doolittle who overhears an arrogant phonetics professor, Henry Higgins, as he casually wagers that he could teach her to speak "proper" English, thereby making her presentable in the high society of Edwardian London . </P> <P> The film stars Audrey Hepburn and Rex Harrison as Eliza Doolittle and Henry Higgins respectively, with Stanley Holloway, Gladys Cooper and Wilfrid Hyde - White in supporting roles . A critical and commercial success, it won eight Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Actor, and Best Director . In 1998, the American Film Institute named it the 91st greatest American film of all time . </P> <P> In Edwardian London, Professor Henry Higgins (Rex Harrison), a scholar of phonetics, believes that the accent and tone of one's voice determines a person's prospects in society . In Covent Garden one evening, he boasts to a new acquaintance, Colonel Hugh Pickering (Wilfrid Hyde - White), himself an expert in phonetics, that he could teach any person to speak in a way that he could pass them off as a duke or duchess at an embassy ball . Higgins selects as an example a young flower seller, Eliza Doolittle (Audrey Hepburn), who has a strong Cockney accent . Eliza's ambition is to work in a flower shop, but her thick accent makes her unsuitable . Having come from India to meet Higgins, Pickering is invited to stay with the professor . The following morning, Eliza shows up at Higgins' home, seeking lessons . Pickering is intrigued and offers to cover all expenses if the experiment should be successful . </P> <P> Eliza's father, Alfred P. Doolittle (Stanley Holloway), a dustman, shows up three days later, ostensibly to protect his daughter's virtue, but in reality simply to extract some money from Higgins, and is bought off with £ 5 . Higgins is impressed by the man's honesty, his natural gift for language, and especially his brazen lack of morals . Higgins recommends Alfred to a wealthy American who is interested in morality . Eliza goes through many forms of speech training, such as speaking with marbles in her mouth, enduring Higgins' harsh approach to teaching and his treatment of her personally . She makes little progress, but just as she, Higgins, and Pickering are about to give up, Eliza finally "gets it"; she instantly begins to speak with an impeccable upper class accent . </P>

What era is my fair lady set in