My Fair Lady, Beverly Hills Style

At least at the beginning of her stay with Edward at the Regent, Vivian, dressed as she is in her working-girl attire, perpetually chewing gum, attracts all the wrong kind of attention. The other hotel guests subject her to accusatory looks, impolite sneers, and more than a few withering glances. She is saved from this fate soon after, in part because Edward, entrusting her with his credit cards, takes her to fancy boutiques so that she can, in a fashion distinct from but reminiscent of George Bernard Shaw’s Eliza Doolittle of Pygmalion fame (remade by Lerner and Loewe into the musical My Fair Lady), be “cleaned up,” made respectable. All of which makes her, of course, even more desirable to the likes of Philip Stuckey.