Failures can be fertile ground for opportunity!
Have you ever taken the time to appreciate your failures? I want share a story from over fifty years ago, when Julie Andrews failed to land the leading role in My Fair Lady…
Julie Andrews Passed Over for Starring Role!
Jack Warner was no dummy when it came to success in movies, and the broadway sensation My Fair Lady was the perfect choice for an on-screen adaptation, which is why he paid an unprecedented $5 million for the movie rights, in today’s dollars that’s the equivalent of over $40 million!
Julie Andrews was the natural choice for the role after all she brought the character Eliza Doolittle to life on Broadway for three years and her voice on the original cast soundtrack was insanely popular spending a total of 480 weeks on Top 200 albums!
What About, Breakfast At Tiffany’s?
Even with all that in Julie Andrews favor, Jack Warner needed to protect his huge investment, and his bet was that Audrey Hepburn would be a bigger box office draw since the world already knew her from Breakfast at Tiffany’s.
You can’t fault his logic because indeed, Jack Warner created a wildly successful movie in My Fair Lady by anyones standards, it was hugely profitable making the studio about $12 million in profit (in 1964 dollars), beyond that it also won nearly every major award!
My Fair Lady won the Oscar and Golden Globe for everything from Best Picture, Best Actor, Best Director, Best Original Score and more… yet one award was missing from it’s list of achievements was BEST ACTRESS.
