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Home , Anatole de Grunwald, Anthony Asquith, A Cottage on Dartmoor, Cottage to Let, Everley Gregg, Freedom Radio

September 6, 2011 (XXIII:2) and , (1938, 96 min)

Directed by Anthony Asquith and Leslie Howard Written by (play, scenario & dialogue), W.P. Lipscomb, Cecil Lewis, (uncredited), (uncredited), Kay Walsh (uncredited) Produced by Gabriel Pascal Original Music by Arthur Honegger Cinematography by Harry Stradling Edited by Art Direction by John Bryan Costume Design by Ladislaw Czettel (as Professor L. Czettel), Schiaparelli (uncredited), Worth (uncredited) Music composed by William Axt Music conducted by Louis Levy

Leslie Howard...Professor Henry Higgins ...Eliza Doolittle Wilfrid Lawson...Alfred Doolittle Marie Lohr...Mrs. Higgins Scott Sunderland...Colonel George Pickering GEORGE BERNARD SHAW [from Wikipedia](26 July 1856 – 2 Jean Cadell...Mrs. Pearce November 1950) was an Irish playwright and a co-founder of the David Tree...Freddy Eynsford-Hill School of Economics. Although his first profitable writing ...Mrs. Eynsford-Hill was music and literary criticism, in which capacity he wrote many Leueen MacGrath...Clara Eynsford Hill highly articulate pieces of journalism, his main talent was for Esme Percy...Count Aristid Karpathy drama, and he wrote more than 60 plays. Nearly all his writings address prevailing social problems, but have a vein of comedy Academy Award – 1939 – Best Screenplay which makes their stark themes more palatable. Shaw examined George Bernard Shaw, W.P. Lipscomb, Cecil Lewis, Ian Dalrymple education, marriage, religion, government, health care, and class privilege. ANTHONY ASQUITH (November 9, 1902, London, , UK – He was most angered by what he perceived as the February 20, 1968, Marylebone, London, England, UK) directed 43 exploitation of the working class. An ardent socialist, Shaw wrote films, some of which were 1964 The Yellow Rolls-Royce, 1963 An many brochures and speeches for the Fabian Society. He became an Evening with the Royal Ballet, 1963 The V.I.P.s, 1962 Guns of accomplished orator in the furtherance of its causes, which included Darkness, 1961 Two Living, One Dead, 1960 , gaining equal rights for men and women, alleviating abuses of the 1959 Libel, 1958 The Doctor's Dilemma, 1954 , 1952 working class, rescinding private ownership of productive land, and The Importance of Being Earnest, 1951 The Browning Version, promoting healthy lifestyles. For a short time he was active in local 1948 , 1945 Man of Evil, 1943 , politics, serving on the London County Council. 1942 Uncensored, 1941 Bombsight Stolen, 1941 A Voice in the In 1898, Shaw married Charlotte Payne-Townshend, a fellow Night, 1940 , 1938 Pygmalion, 1935 I Stand Fabian, whom he survived. They settled in Ayot St. Lawrence in a Condemned, 1934 Unfinished Symphony, 1932 Dance Pretty Lady, house now called Shaw's Corner. Shaw died there, aged 94, from 1932 The Lucky Number, 1931 The Battle of Gallipoli, 1929 Escape chronic problems exacerbated by injuries he incurred by falling from Dartmoor, 1929 , 1929 Underground, from a ladder. and 1928 Shooting Stars. He is the only person to have been awarded both a Nobel Prize for Literature (1925) and an Oscar (1938), for his contributions to literature and for his work on the film Pygmalion Asquith and Howard—PYGMALION—2

(adaptation of his play of the same name), respectively. Shaw Lawrence of Arabia (1962) and The Bridge on the River Kwai wanted to refuse his Nobel Prize outright because he had no desire (1957). He was an editor on 29 films, among them 1984 A Passage for public honors, but accepted it at his wife's behest: she to India, 1942 (uncredited), 1942 One of Our considered it a tribute to Ireland. He did reject the monetary award, Aircraft Is Missing, 1941 49th Parallel, 1941 Major Barbara, 1940 requesting it be used to finance translation of Swedish books to Spies of the Air, 1940 Spy for a Day, 1940 French Without Tears, English. 1938 Pygmalion, 1937 The Last Adventurers, 1936 With Pleasure, Madame, 1936 As You Like It, 1935 Brewster's Millions LESLIE HOWARD (April 3, 1893, Forest Hill, London, England, UK (uncredited), 1935 Turn of the Tide (uncredited), 1934 Tiger Bay, – June 1, 1943, Bay of Biscay) directed 4 films—1943 The Gentle 1934 Java Head, 1934 The Secret of the Loch, 1933 Matinee Idol, Sex, 1942 Spitfire, 1941 'Pimpernel' Smith, and 1938 Pygmalion— 1933 The Ghost Camera, 1931 These Charming People, and 1930 and acted in 34, some of which were 1943 The Gentle Sex, 1943 The Night Porter. He directed all or part of 19 films: 1984 A War in the Mediterranean, 1942 In Which We Serve, 1942 Spitfire, Passage to India, 1979 “Lost and Found: The Story of Cook's 1941 49th Parallel, 1941 'Pimpernel' Smith, 1939 Gone with the Anchor,” 1970/I Ryan's Daughter, 1965 Doctor Zhivago, 1965 The Wind, 1939 Intermezzo: A Love Story, 1938 Pygmalion, 1937 It's Greatest Story Ever Told (some scenes - uncredited), 1962 Love I'm After, 1936 , 1936 The Petrified Forest, Lawrence of Arabia, 1957 The Bridge on the River Kwai, 1955 1934 The Scarlet Pimpernel, 1934 British Agent, 1934 The Lady Is Summertime, 1954 Hobson's Choice, 1952 Breaking the Sound Willing, 1934 Of Human Bondage, 1933 Berkeley Square, 1933 Barrier, 1950 Madeleine, 1949 One Woman's Story, 1948 Oliver Secrets, 1932 Reserved for Ladies, 1931 Devotion, 1931 Never the Twist, 1946 Great Expectations, 1945 , 1945 Blithe Twain Shall Meet, 1930 Outward Bound, 1919 The Lackey and the Spirit, 1944 This Happy Breed, 1942 In Which We Serve, and 1941 Lady, and 1917 The Happy Warrior. Major Barbara (uncredited).

HARRY STRADLING (September 1, 1901, Newark, New Jersey– WENDY HILLER (August 15, 1912, Bramhall, Cheshire, England, February 14, 1970, Hollywood, California) won best UK – May 14, 2003, Beaconsfield, Buckinghamshire, England, cinematography Oscars for The Picture of Dorian Gray (1945) and UK) won a best supporting actress Oscar for (1964). He has 139 cinematographer credits, some of (1958). Some of her other 53 film and TV roles were in 1993 The which are for 1970 The Owl and the Pussycat, 1970 On a Clear Countess Alice, 1991 “The Best of Friends,” 1989 “Ending Up,” Day You Can See Forever, 1969 Hello, Dolly!, 1968 Funny Girl, 1988 “A Taste for Death” (6 episodes), 1987 “The Death of a 1966 Walk Don't Run, 1965 How to Murder Your Wife, 1964 My Heart,” 1987 The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne, 1986 Fair Lady, 1964 Mary, Mary, 1962 Gypsy, 1962 Five Finger “Masterpiece Theatre: Lord Mountbatten - The Last Viceroy,” 1985 Exercise, 1961 A Majority of One, 1961 Parrish, 1960 The Dark at “Great Performances,” 1983 “Attracta,” 1982 “Hallmark Hall of the Top of the Stairs, 1960 Who Was That Lady?, 1959 A Summer Fame,” 1981 Miss Morison's , 1980 The Elephant Man, 1978 Place, 1959 The Young Philadelphians, 1958 Auntie Mame, 1958 The Cat and the Canary, 1976 Voyage of the Damned, 1974 Murder Marjorie Morningstar, 1957 The Pajama Game, 1957 A Face in the on the Orient Express, 1972 “Clochemerle” (8 episodes), 1966- Crowd, 1956 The Eddy Duchin Story, 1955/I Guys and Dolls, 1954 1968 “BBC ,” 1968 “From Chekhov with Love,” Johnny Guitar, 1953 A Lion Is in the Streets, 1952 Androcles and 1966 A Man for All Seasons, 1965 “Profiles in Courage,” 1963 Toys the Lion, 1952 Hans Christian Andersen, 1952 My Son John, 1951 in the Attic, 1960 Sons and Lovers, 1957 Something of Value, 1951 A Streetcar Named Desire, 1951 Valentino, 1950 The Schumann Outcast of the Islands, 1945 'I Know Where I'm Going!', 1941 Story, 1949 In the Good Old Summertime, 1949 The Barkleys of Major Barbara, 1939 The Fame of Grace Darling, 1938 Broadway, 1948 Words and Music, 1948 Easter Parade, 1948 The Pygmalion, and 1937 Lancashire Luck. Pirate, 1946 Till the Clouds Roll By, 1946 Easy to Wed, 1945 The Picture of Dorian Gray, 1944 Bathing Beauty, 1944 Song of Russia, WILFRID LAWSON (January 14, 1900, Bradford, Yorkshire, 1943 The Human Comedy, 1942 White Cargo, 1942 Maisie Gets England, UK – October 10, 1966, in London, England, UK) has 65 Her Man, 1942 Mr. and Mrs. North, 1942 Nazi Agent, 1941 The acting credits, among them 1967 The Viking Queen, 1966 The Corsican Brothers, 1941 Suspicion, 1941 The Devil and Miss Wrong Box, 1966 “Secret Agent,” 1963 Tom Jones, 1962 Go to Jones, 1940 They Knew What They Wanted, 1940 My Son, My Son!, Blazes, 1962 Postman's Knock, 1961 Nothing Barred, 1961 The 1939 Intermezzo: A Love Story, 1939 Jamaica Inn, 1939 Clouds Naked Edge, 1960 “ITV Play of the Week,” 1959 Room at the Top, Over Europe, 1938 The Citadel, 1938 Pygmalion, 1938 South 1953-1958 “BBC Sunday-Night Theatre,” 1958 Tread Softly Riding, 1937 , 1937 Dark Journey, 1936 The Stranger, 1957 Miracle in Soho, 1956 War and Peace, 1955 An Bread Peddler, 1936 Compartiment de dames seules, 1936 Wer Alligator Named Daisy, 1955 The Prisoner, 1954 Make Me an zuletzt küßt..., 1935 Arènes joyeuses, 1935 Carnival in Flanders, Offer, 1945 Man of Evil, 1943 Thursday's Child, 1942 The Great 1934 Jeanne, 1934 La dame aux camellias, 1934 Le grand jeu, Mr. Handel, 1941 Tower of Terror, 1941 Jeannie, 1941 Danny Boy, 1934 We Are Not Children, 1933 The Ironmaster, 1933 Esperáme, 1941 Men of , 1940 The Long Voyage Home, 1939 1932 Passionnément, 1932 Studenter i Paris, 1932 He Is Charming, Allegheny Uprising, 1939 Stolen Life, 1938 The Phantom Strikes, 1931 Le réquisitoire, 1930 Un hombre de suerte, 1929 Lucky in 1938 Pygmalion, 1938 Yellow Sands, 1938 The Terror, 1936 White Love, 1929 Mother's Boy, 1927 The Nest, 1927 Burnt Fingers, 1925 Hunter, 1933 Strike It Rich, and 1931 East Lynne on the Western The Substitute Wife, 1922 How Women Love, 1922/I His Wife's Front. Husband, 1922 Fair Lady, 1921 Jim the Penman, 1921 The Great Adventure, and 1920 The Devil's Garden. MARIE LOHR (July 28, 1890, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia – January 21, 1975, London, England, UK) appeared in 45 films DAVID LEAN (March 25, 1908, Croydon, Surrey, England, UK – and TV series, among them 1968 Great Catherine, 1966-1967 “ITV April 16, 1991, London, England, UK) won best director Oscars for Play of the Week,” 1964 The Plane Makers,” 1960 “Somerset Asquith and Howard—PYGMALION—3

Maugham Hour,” 1959 Man in a Cocked Hat, 1957 Small Hotel, rather than his codirector, and the film was greeted as a triumphant 1957 Abandon Ship, 1956 A Town Like Alice, 1955 Out of the vindication of British Instructional’s enlightened policy. Clouds, 1953 Always a Bride, 1952 Little Big Shot, 1948 The Asquith’s first solo assignment followed the same year—a Winslow Boy, 1948 Anna Karenina, 1947 The Ghosts of Berkeley thriller centering on the London Underground, again scripted by the Square, 1945 Notorious Gentleman, 1945 Kiss the Bride Goodbye, directors, and starring and Elissa Landi. Like its 1942 Went the Day Well?, 1941 Major Barbara, 1938 Pygmalion, predecessor, it made sparing use of titles, relying on the images to 1938 South Riding, 1936 Dreams Come True, 1936 Mozart, 1936 make its point. Critics had seen the influence of Eisenstein in some Reasonable Doubt, 1936 It's You I Want, 1935 Foreign Affaires, of the shots in Shooting Stars, but German Expressionism seemed 1935 Cock o' the North, 1935 Regal Cavalcade, 1935 Fighting to be the model for the chiaroscuro lighting and “weird effects” in Stock, 1935 Oh, Daddy!, 1934 Lady in Danger, 1932 Aren't We Underground, which had a more mixed reception. One All?, 1918 Victory and Peace, and 1916 The Real Thing at Last. contemporary reviewer wrote that “Asquith is well soaked in German technique. What he has to learn is how to use it.” All the Scott Sunderland (September 19, 1883, Rock Ferry, Cheshire, same, a more recent critic thought that the film’s “best parts have a England, UK – 1956) appeared in only one other film: 1939 likable bravura, especially the tautly shot and edited chases through Goodbye, Mr. Chips.. the Underground and the climactic fight in the power station.” The Runaway Princess (1929), also known as Princess From World Film Directors, Vol I. Edited Priscilla’s Fortnight, was the result of an by John Wakeman. H.W. Wilson Co., NY arrangement between H. Bruce Woolfe and a 1987. Entry by Roy Sherwood. German production company—a “charmingly quirky” romantic comedy that gave Asquith ASQUITH, The Hon. ANTHONY scope to indulge his fondness for location British director and scenarist, son of Herbert shooting when the princess (Mady Asquith, first Earl of Oxford and Asquith, and Christians), escaping from an arranged Prime Minister of Britain (1908-1915), and marriage, runs away to London. Asquith’s his second wife, Margot Tennant. Anthony growing reputation was confirmed by A Asquith, nicknamed “Puffin,” was born in Cottage on Dartmoor (1930), adapted by the London and educated at Winchester and director from a story by Herbert Price. It is a Balliol College, Oxford University, where in study in jealousy , about an escaped convict 1925 he became one of the founding who seeks out the woman he has lost. The members of the Film Society. Graduating the last, best, and most successful of Asquith’s same year, he studied filmmaking in silent films, in fact Hollywood for six months before joining includes one dialogue sequence—a clip from British Instructional Films under H. Bruce a wittily parodied American talkie that the Woolfe, who had been impressed by a script heroine and her future husband go to see on submitted by Asquith (and by representations their first date. This is only one example of of the formidable Lady Oxford, his mother). the film’s inventiveness: it also makes Asquith served his apprenticeship at British Instructional masterly use of crosscutting, experiments effectively with the on Sinclair Hill’s Ancient British epic Boadicea (1926), working as subjective camera, and at one point cuts straight to a flashback property master, assistant make-up man, assistant editor, and without the use of explanatory titles. general dogsbody. In a long blonde wig and flowing robes, he also Asquith’s first sound film was Tell England (1931), which stood in for the star, Phyllis Neilson-Terry, in the more hazardous he adapted from Ernest Raymond’s novel and codirected with chariot scenes. Asquith put what he learned from this experience Geoffrey Barkas. Filmed largely on location in Malta and Britain, it into a script called Shooting Stars and submitted it to H. Bruce is an indictment of the pointless Dardanelles campaign of World Woolfe. British Instructional, then venturing into studio-made War I, contrasting the idyllic upper-class home life of its two young features after some years of successful documentary production, heroes with the insane slaughter of the Battle of Gallipoli. Asquith had adopted a policy of recruiting bright young graduates and does not always escape the class-consciousness and sentimentality letting them try out their ideas under the restraining influence of of the novel, but the film was universally praised for its imagination older hands. Woolfe like Asquith’s script and set him to work on it, and power, and called “one of the two or three outstanding British with the veteran A. V. Bramble—who was credited as director—in talkies made so far.” Paul Rotha thought its battle scenes the equal fact serving as codirector and supervisor. of those in Pudovkin’s End of St. Petersburg and Milestone’s All Shooting Stars (1928) has Annette Benson as a movie star Quiet on the Western Front. who sets out to murder her husband (Brian Aherne) when he That Asquith should switch from the horrors of war to a discovers that she is having an affair; her plan literally misfires, ballet film called Dance Pretty Lady is not as surprising as it seems, killing her lover instead. This melodramatic story is set against a since his intense interest in the integration of movement and music subtly satirical account of the film industry and studio life that has is evident in all his sound films. Dance Pretty Lady (1932), based retained its “elegance and charm.” The “elaborate and varied” on Compton Mackenzie’s novel Carnival, tells the “rather insipid” lighting effects, the dramatic use of crane-shots and of “rapid and story of an Edwardian ballet dancer (Ann Casson) who loves but impressionistic cutting” were (as Rachael Low wrote) “calculated to almost loses a rich young artist (Carl Harbord). A gaslit London is electrify the plodding British film industry, accustomed as it is to attractively evoked by Ian Campbell-Gray, Asquith’s usual art find glitter only in the work of the prodigious young Hitchcock.” director at this time, and the ballet sequences were unsurpassed for These experimental touches were generally attributed to Asquith many years. In this film, wrote John Grierson, “movement is laced Asquith and Howard—PYGMALION—4 together with the feeling for movement which only half a dozen flirtatious sex-object (Ellen Drew). “The shadow of World War II directors in the world could match.” looms over them,” wrote John Gillett in his notes for a 1981 At this time, Asquith and Hitchcock were generally Asquith retrospective, “and adds a touch of poignancy to the regarded as the two best directors in Britain, and they were laughter. , as the only adult among them, is a endlessly compared. Grierson suggested that Hitchcock had the wonderfully funny example of naval rectitude, and Asquith’s fluent experience of life and the gusto that Asquith lacked, while Asquith and witty direction makes all the right point about the curious had knowledge and taste—“he knows more in his head and less in behavior of the pre-war Englishman abroad.” his solar plexus….He has no feeling for people except as they can The war had begun by the time Asquith made his next be observed from the outside. He is born and bred a spectator, film, and (1940) was his first response to it—a capable of drawing people only as puppets. That is to the good; dramatic and well-characterized story about a Viennese doctor puppeteering is as great a trade as any, if you take it seriously for () who broadcasts warnings about the Nazi threat on a the satire, fantasy and poetry that is in it.” C.A. Lejeune decided hidden radio. The same year, Asquith confirmed his reputation as that “Asquith lags behind Hitchcock in craftsmanship, comes very an affectionate satirist of the British way of life—a kind of René close to him in picture sense and passes him in fervency and Clair—with , adapted from Esther McCracken’s play conviction of thought. If he fails, as I sometimes fear he will fail, to by and Anatole de Grunwald (who had also get beyond the lyricism of his recent films, it will be because of a collaborated on the script of French Without Tears). A slight tale strong individualist strain [in]his work, a cultured uncommunal about a young couple (Derek Farr and ) whose ideology that has little contact with the urgencies of the age and too romance is almost ruined by their parents’ elaborate plans for their fine a fibre for the method of the machine.” wedding, it seemed to Bosley Crowther a “completely unpretentious In fact, with the absorption of British Instructional by and charming film, the component parts of which are as delicately British International Pictures and the departure of his friend and balanced as the mechanism if a watch.” mentor Bruce Woolfe, Asquith entered upon an unsettled and Asquith made four short semi-documentary films for the relatively barren phase of his career, making only three films in six Ministry of Information during the war, beginning with Channel years. The Luck Number (1933). The first of Asquith’s movies not Incident (1940), an unconvincing drama about a woman (Peggy scripted by himself, is a comedy about a footballer and a French Ashcroft) searching for her husband after the evacuation of lottery ticket, produced by Michael Balcon for Gainsborough Dunkirk. Rush Hour (1941) was more successful—a comedy short Pictures. The story is weak, but Basil Wright found “a firmness of about workers trying to cope with the British transport system that touch about the main sequences” that Asquith’s earlier films had effectively illustrated the desirability of staggered working hours. In lacked, and an “extremely witty” use of music to comment on the between came (1941), a workmanlike but uninspired action. thriller about an inventor (Leslie Banks) working on a new Unfinished Symphony (1934), the English version of an bombsight on a Scottish estate that has been infiltrated by a Nazi Austrian picture about Schubert was followed by a similar bilingual agent. That paragon of British patriotism, , is shrewdly venture, the Anglicization of a French spy thriller, Moscow Nights cast as the Nazi, and there is a memorable performance from the (1935), with Harry Baur as a war profiteer and as youthful George Cole as the Cockney evacuee who unmasks him. an embittered soldier. Asquith was inactive for two years after that, Another routine war drama, Uncensored (1942), was until in 1937 he began preparatory work as coauthor and codirector followed by We Dive at Dawn (1943), a tense story in the (with Leslie Howard) on George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion. The documentary style about a British assigned to pursue and producer Gabriel Pascal had persuaded Shaw to give him the rights sink a German battleship. …There was a generally warm reception to all his plays, but it was not until May 1938 that Pascal had found also for The Demi-Paradise (1943) scripted and produced by the necessary backing and production could begin. Anatole de Grunwald. Laurence Olivier stars as a young Soviet Asquith had David Lean as editor, Laurence Irving as marine engineer who, visiting England just before the war, is production designer, and Arthur Honegger as composer, as well as a chilled by the reserve and apparent chauvinism of the British, but splendid cast headed by Leslie Howard as Professor Higgins. The learns to love them when he sees them girded for war on a second virtually unknown Wendy Hiller became an overnight star with her visit in 1941. The movie established Olivier “in the top flight of portrayal of Eliza Doolittle, and there’s a marvelous performance British film actors,” but now seems smug and patronizing. There is from Wilfrid Lawson as Eliza’s father. “The most important thing more charm and tact in Welcome to Britain (1943), an hour-long about Pygmalion,” wrote Basil Wright, “is that it represents a introduction to British people and institutions made as a guide for triumph for Anthony Asquith, whose sincere cinematic sensitivity GIs stationed in England, with Burgess Meredith as codirector and has been all too neglected by producers in recent years….He brings interpreter, and guest appearances by Beatrice Lillie and Bob Hope, to the film that warm sense of the humanities, and that feeling for among others. … After two years in which the director worked on composition which never descends to the artistic, which still make various aborted projects, he returned to the screen with The Woman his early silent films…a vivid and abiding memory. To this he adds in Question (1950), a modest thriller from an original script by John an almost incredible ingenuity of movement and editing which turns Cresswell. As Paul Dehn put it, “it shows Jean Kent (a garotted what might so easily have been a photographed stage play into corpse) as she variously appeared, in life, to five material witnesses something essentially filmic.” and, in death, to two police officers. Fair acting and good direction A popular as well as a critical success, Pygmalion redeem the mediocre script which fall a shade gracelessly between reestablished Asquith among the leading British directors. He had the twin stools of psychology and detection.” another hit with his next film—another adaptation of a stage play, Another Rattigan adaptation followed in 1951, The Terence Rattigan’s French without Tears. Ray Milland stars in this Browning Version, with a magisterial performance by Michael likable farce about young English gentlemen at a cram school in the Redgrave as the crushed and dried-up classics teacher brought alive south of France, all lolloping like hypnotized rabbits around a by a small gift from one of his pupils. Asquith’s last major success Asquith and Howard—PYGMALION—5 was The Importance of Being Earnest, “an elegant and sparkling” Leslie Howard. Actor, director, producer, b. Leslie Stainer April 24, version of ’s play scripted by himself. Edith Evans’ 1893, London , to Hungarian Immigrants, d. 1943. Ed. Dulwich reading of the role of Lady Bracknell is said to have left the rest of College. Suffering from shell shock during WW I action on the the cast “fighting for their lives,” even though they included players Western front, he was encouraged to take up acting as therapy. He of the caliber of , Joan Greenwood, Dorothy made his professional debut in London. But it was in the United Tutin, and . This was, surprisingly, Asquith’s States, first on the stage, then in films, that he became established as first film in color. a star. Blond, blue-eyed , and extremely charming, he represented His own favorite among his later pictures was Orders to the perfect Englishman to American audiences, a combination of Kill (1958), scripted by Paul Dehn, romantic poet and incisive intellectual. and centering on a young ex-pilot During the 30s he costarred with some (Paul Massie) sent to France to kill an of Hollywood’s most glamorous enemy agent who turns out to be an leading ladies in a succession of apparently harmless old man. One popular films, occasionally also critic wrote that “Asquith evades appearing in British films. At the none of the implications (the actual outbreak of WW II he returned to killing is hideously difficult) and uses England, where he began directing and all his cinematic skills to convey the producing films in addition to his killer’s agony of conscience.” acting. In 1943, while he was flying The majority of Asquith’s back to London from a other postwar movies were to Lisbon, his plane was shot down by adaptations of plays, including two Nazi raiders, who erroneously had by George Bernard Shaw, The suspected that Winston Churchill was Doctor’s Dilemma (1959) and The among its passengers. Millionairess (1960). The latter, called a “fairly radical version” employing “a whole battery of technical tricks to drive the romp David Ehrenstein on Pygmalion (Criterion notes) along at a lively pace,” has as the formidable “I wish to boast,” Bernard Shaw wrote, “that Pygmalion has been Epifania, who meets her match in a gently idealistic Indian doctor an extremely successful play, both on stage and screen, all over (). Asquith also made two more films from Rattigan Europe and North America as well as at home. It is so intensely and scripts, The VIPs (1963) and The Yellow Rolls Royce (1964), said to deliberately didactic, and its subject is esteemed so dry, that I possess “a faded elegance which recalled the appeal of best films delight in throwing it at the heads of the wiseacres who repeat the but which was out of key with audiences of the sixties.” The latter parrot cry that art should never be didactic. It goes to prove my was the last picture he made before his death in 1968. contention that great art can never be anything else.” As John Gillett has said, the “lively experimental sense” The playwright had a point. His story of a cockney that distinguished Asquith’s earliest films soon evaporated and he “guttersnipe” rescued from a life of Covent Garden flower- moved into “safer, more conventional territory” from which he mongering by a professor of phonetics who teaches her “proper” “viewed the various strata of English society with a kind of English—so perfectly as to have her mistaken for a member of the bemused affection which eschewed both malice and real analysis. European nobility—has a clear lesson to teach all who care to In fact, he belonged to the long tradition of ‘liberal’ artists which is listen. Class distinctions are completely artificial in nature, and the part of Britain’s cultural legacy.” And Asquith’s obituarist in the only thing separating a dustman from a duchess is an easily learned, London Times suggested that perhaps he “always remained a appropriately accented use of the language. straightforward and old-fashioned romantic, with a romanticism But convincing as the great playwright’s argument may be, which underlay his essentially kindly and good-natured comedy and it hasn’t stopped audiences from overlooking it nonetheless. came unashamedly to the surface in his dramas. His control over his Pygmalion is subtitled “a romance” and it is this aspect of its story medium was complete, to such an extent that his unusual skill and that has—for better or worse—most enchanted audiences. It was in stylistic polish were…too often called in to produce workmanlike fact Pygmalion’s romantic underpinnings that made its world- versions of stage plays which allowed him little freedom for famous musicalization My Fair Lady possible. personal creations.” There’s a saying that goes: A definition of an intellectual is “Puffin” Asquith was a shy and self-effacing man who someone who can listen to Rossini’s “William Tell Overture” avoided publicity of any kind. He was devoted to music and the without thinking of “The Lone Ranger.” Were that notion expanded theatre arts, especially ballet, and his later work included to include anyone who can experience Shaw’s Pygmalion without documentaries about the Glyndebourne Opera and the Royal Ballet. humming the melodies of “I Could Have Danced All Night” or After his death, the Society of Film and Television Arts established “I’ve Grown Accustomed to Her Face,” millions would fail the test. an annual Anthony Asquith Memorial Award for the year’s best But it’s a tribute to this 1938 non-musical adaptation of Shaw’s play film score. His other passion was for the well-being of his fellow- that we aren’t likely to think of its musical version too much. This workers in the film industry. He was first president of the film’s great cast, headed by Leslie Howard as Professor Henry Association of Cinematograph, Television, and Allied Technicians, Higgins, and Wendy Hiller (in her film debut) as Eliza Doolittle, and gave much of his time to trade union work and related political make Shaw’s great lines ring with crackling wit and sparkling and social activities. intellectual clarity. Howard, who co-directed this production with Anthony From The Film Encyclopedia. Ephraim Katz. Perigee, Putnam, Asquith, found in Pygmalion one of the finest roles of his career. NY, 1979 “Leslie Howard” He captures every nuance of this witty, infuriating man whose Asquith and Howard—PYGMALION—6 indifference to social “niceties” and hatred of cultural hypocrisies Two main issues are addressed here through the account of mark him as a rebel to his own class. As he takes charge of Eliza’s how Shaw’s Pygmalion and My Fair Lady are linked: first, the education, he shows a clear sense of pride and a lack of process by which the will of authors to protect their work is sentimentality towards the “less fortunate.” But there’s an arrogance contradicted by others, and, second, the pragmatics of the screen to this attitude that Eliza sees through, even as she benefits from his adaptation, aspects which are in fact closely linked. As is well teaching skill. Higgins’s failure to take her humanity into account is known, once the rights over a literary text have been secured by a his sole failing. It also provides the linchpin of romance between producer or a studio, the author of the original source relinquishes teacher and pupil that has sparked audience affection for Pygmalion his or her hold on the fate of the literary text on the screen. Money against the grain of Shaw’s intent. is expected to soothe any anxieties regarding authorship and most Shaw, who saw film as the ideal medium for the piece, authors are happy enough to cash the cheque and let others work on claims he never intended a romantic hookup for Higgins and Eliza. the actual screenplay. In contrast, whenever the author is directly He even wrote a prose addendum to the script in which Eliza involved in the writing of the adaptation, caring more for married and set up a flower shop, her antagonism toward Higgins faithfulness to the literary original than for financial reward, continuing unabated. But he never wrote this epilogue as dialogue, difficulties are certain to arise. In any case, once s/he is dead, as and productions of Pygmalion, this film included, have always seen Pygmalion’s case suggests, adapters feel licensed to work with fit to end things on an upbeat note with a tantalizing hint of a fewer restrains on the original source. budding love affair between master and pupil. But perhaps in the In the transition from Shaw’s Pygmalion to Cukor’s My last analysis it’s just as well that things turned out as they did. After Fair Lady, Gabriel Pascal’s persistence went well beyond G. B. all, romance has its didactic side as well. Shaw’s resistance, if only because Pascal survived Shaw. Of course, nobody—save possibly Shaw—would regret the existence of a film such as My Fair Lady, but the question is that Pascal’s persistence leads inevitably to a paradoxical celebration of the betrayal of the original author’s will. Screen adaptations in general should perhaps be best approached as the only artistic space that allows for a creative breakdown of the otherwise sacred notion of literary authorship. Nobody can deny Shaw the authorship of the play Pygmalion, but nobody can deny, either, the fact that if Pascal had respected his will, Broadway and Hollywood would have missed the chance to offer the world My Fair Lady. Pygmalion Curiously enough, the first film adapting Pygmalion was a German production directed by Erich Engel in 1935; the second was Dutch (1937, directed by Ludwig Berger). The persistent Gabriel Pascal—an Hungarian émigré attached to the circle of his fellow countryman, the influential producer — convinced an initially resistant Shaw to let him film Pygmalion, which would be his third British film, practically twenty-five years after its opening in a British theatre. Shaw, who was quite dissatisfied with the British screen versions of his plays How he Lied to her Husband (1931) and Arms and the Man (1932) in which Sara Martin: Resistance and Persistence: Pygmalion and My he had been closely involved, apparently allowed Pascal to make Fair Lady, Two Film Versions of G. B. Shaw’s Pygmalion this first English film version of Pygmalion because the sly , a musical based on G. B. Shaw’s Hungarian assured Shaw that his text would be respected and he anti-militaristic play Arms and the Man which was made without would retain full control of the film’s ending, a point that deeply the author’s permission, “annoyed Shaw tremendously.”1 The concerned the dramatist. Shaw even accepted Pascal’s offer to realisation that others could do as they pleased with his own plays write himself the screenplay, “having loathed the sentimental was the reason why Shaw absolutely refused to have one of his German and Dutch film adaptations.”3 The credits for this most popular plays, Pygmalion (1914), ever turned into a musical, screenplay went finally, however, to a team of four writers whether for the stage or the screen. As he argued, for him the play including Shaw himself: Cecil Lewis—author of the screenplays for was good enough “with its own verbal music.”2 He agreed, though, How he Lied to her Husband and Arms and the Man—W. P. to the making of, among other films based on his plays, Pygmalion Lipscomb and Ian Dalrymple; the two latter seem to have been (1938), the remarkable adaptation produced by Gabriel Pascal and employed to revise the final version of the script, a quite habitual directed by Anthony Asquith. Today few people are aware of the practice, without actually collaborating with Shaw. Whatever were existence of Asquith’s adaptation and, ironically, Shaw’s play is their exact contributions, the four of them were awarded an Oscar mostly known as the source of one of the most popular stage for best screenplay adapted from other materials. Shaw rejected musicals of Broadway’s golden 1950s—My Fair Lady—and its his, feeling that the award was an insult to the author of the original sumptuous screen adaptation of 1964 by . Shaw, who play.4 died in 1950, did not live to witness this metamorphosis but if he Pygmalion was made at the British but had, he would have been doubtless mortified by the fact that his distributed by Hollywood’s MGM. “Everywhere the film was trusted producer, Gabriel Pascal, was the man who planted the shown,” R. J. Minney notes in his biography of director Anthony seeds from which the stage musical and Cukor’s film would grow. Asquith, “its reception was rapturous and the box office takings Asquith and Howard—PYGMALION—7 were enormous.”5 Apart from the Oscar awarded to the screen something which makes him far more sympathetic than Rex writers, Pygmalion received Oscar nominations for Best Picture and Harrison’s Professor in Cukor’s film but also less formidable. for its leading actors, Leslie Howard (as Professor Higgins) and Shaw resented the tenderness Howard added to the role, finding his Wendy Hiller (as Eliza). Howard, himself associate-director with characterisation excessively romantic. As shooting was in progress, Asquith, would next play the role of Scarlett’s beloved Ashley in a desperate Shaw wrote to Pascal: “It’s amazing how hopelessly Gone with the Wind (1939). Hiller, who gained instant fame in this wrong Leslie is. However, the public will like him, and probably her third film, would next play the major role in another Shavian want him to marry Eliza, which is just what I don’t want.”11 Fearing adaptation, Major Barbara (1941), produced, written and directed Shaw’s reaction, Pascal did not tell him that the chosen ending by Pascal. —later to play Higgins in My Fair Lady— pointed in that direction. Two days before the release a puzzled played there the male leading role. Pascal would produce and direct Shaw saw in a press pass how, soon after leaving Mrs. Higgins’s yet another British adaptation of a play by Shaw, Caesar and house with Freddy, Eliza returned home to Higgins.12 Far from Cleopatra (1946), scripted by the dramatist himself. In Hollywood, welcoming her with loving arms, she is received by his tart “Where where he moved after the spectacular flop of this Shavian epic, the devil are my slippers?” Not quite a romantic ending, but clearly which practically cost him his career, Pascal still made another film a long way away from Shaw’s intended open end. based on a play by Shaw: Androcles and the Lion (1952), his last Pygmalion, the film, should be read, therefore, as a critical film and homage to the then recently deceased playwright. version of Shaw’s play. Despite Shaw’s close involvement, the Shaw threw himself with relish into the task of writing for film is an interpretation, rather than a faithful copy, and this is due the film Pygmalion. Pascal and Asquith even persuaded him to to Pascal’s, Asquith’s and Howard’s interventions, not to mention write additional scenes, including the embassy reception scene those of the other three writers. The film does follow to a great which, despite being central to the story, did not feature in the extent Shaw’s play, with little variations on Shaw’s original original play.6 Shaw’s screen version of the play—not exactly the dialogue, but, inevitably, it is just one of many possible versions of film screenplay, but his own hybrid stage and screen text—was the play, never the play, as Shaw surely would have wished. published by Constable in 1941 and was followed the same year by Perhaps the aspect that is more questionable in this a new edition of the play, the first edited in a separate volume.7 This otherwise fine reading, is the displacement of the time location of edition of Pygmalion, which is the basis of the popular Penguin Eliza’s metamorphosis from the original 1910s to the 1930s when edition (1988, supervised by Dan H. Laurence), actually includes all the film was made. The costumes by Professor (sic) L. Czettel the new sequences Shaw wrote for the film script. These are: for clearly indicate the time lapse, yet the script ignores the Act I, Eliza’s taking a taxi to her shabby lodgings and her implications that the chronological displacement should have had in daydreaming in the place itself; for Act II, Mrs. Pearce’s bathing a Eliza’s story. Pre-World War I working-class women like her had a screaming Eliza for the benefit of her new teacher, and one of far more limited horizon than their 1930s counterparts, who had Higgins’s lessons; for Act III, the embassy reception, and for Act massively entered the work force replacing the men fighting in the IV Eliza’s flight from Higgins to spend a chaste night with Freddy, trenches, had abandoned traditional occupations such as domestic a strangely frustrated elopement. service for the higher wages of factory work, and had also gained Shaw’s ‘Note for Technicians,’ reproduced by the Penguin the vote. In the 1930s—a decade of manifest political agitation— edition, warns that “a complete representation of the play as printed Eliza’s social naiveté would and should have been replaced by a for the first time in this edition is technically possible only on the better defined outlook on the issue of women’s employment. Yet, cinema screen or on stages furnished with exceptionally elaborate the film eschews the matter of how to employ the new Eliza by machinery,” though this is not necessarily true.8 He recommends, implicitly marrying her off to Higgins, as suggested by the slippers simply, to suppress the extra scenes in less elaborate stage scene. productions, seemingly disregarding a non-realistic staging of the The film manifests, in any case, a deeper understanding of play. In any case, it is important to note that the play offered to Eliza’s outward transformation than the play. The scene in her readers today is not, therefore, the play as Shaw originally wrote it, dingy lodgings shows her looking at her face in the mirror, gazing nor as it was printed in 1916, but a fusion of stage play and screen dreamily away as if wishing to see something better than her play.9 Since the 1941 edition only incorporates Shaw’s new scenes, poorly-looking self. This scene is mirrored, if the pun is allowed, and not those of his collaborators, it is safe to deduce that his work by the bath scene at Higgins’s in which Eliza is terrorised by the for the film helped him discover new angles on his play that he large mirror threatening to reflect her so-far unknown naked body. thought worth keeping in further editions and, of course, future When Eliza takes the first lesson, after this symbolic cleansing of stage productions. her working-class impurities, she has also started wearing make-up, Despite Pascal’s promises, Shaw had actually little control a clear sign of her taking on a new identity. The second sequence over the film’s plot and cast. He seems not to have objected to the showing her training, right before the embassy ball, has her learning leading lady but he profoundly disliked Leslie Howard’s from both Higgins and her other benefactor Colonel Pickering how performance as Higgins—Shaw’s choice was Charles Laughton— to use her body for polite intercourse. She is taught to curtsey and on the grounds that the suave Howard “could never have bent Eliza dance and during the breaks she avidly teaches herself etiquette to his will”, somewhat forgetting that Higgins does not exactly tame from a book. But the clearest image of how Higgins’s teaching Eliza in the play.10 Hiller plays the role of Eliza admirably and is affects her body as much as her mind is the shot of Eliza surrounded quite credible in her transition from flower girl to lady, unlike the by, in her teacher’s words, the parasites—dressmakers, hairdressers, always aristocratic Audrey Hepburn of My Fair Lady. Throughout beauticians—who prepare her for triumph at the ball following the the film, Hiller looks, however, too intelligent not to see the directions of a highly amused Higgins. consequences of her accepting Higgins’s foolish experiment, and, Shaw’s ‘neglecting’ to write the ball scene for the play— clearly, far more mature than him. Howard’s charming Higgins how else can Eliza’s triumph be made fully visible?—may be an stresses the character’s boyishness and his incorrigible manners, indication of his own realisation that Higgins’s teaching is just one Asquith and Howard—PYGMALION—8 ingredient in Eliza/Cinderella’s success. Hiller’s majestic play because it is the ultimate expression of the inalienable appearance at the embassy, her greatly improved looks, and the fact individuality of each.”13 Happy, thus, does not mean sugary, for that her words are hardly heard at all, suggest that her extraordinary love needn’t soften the strong personalities of Higgins and Eliza. new physical appearance, which both discovers her natural beauty The film’s happy ending announces the beginning of yet another and covers it with a mantle of artifice, is at the core of her battle in the war of the sexes rather than the end of the war, though metamorphosis, not just phonetics. Yet, language must still play an the faces of Howard’s immature Higgins and Hiller’s serene Eliza important role. In the modified play Eliza thinks that she has lost also announce that she will eventually impose peace on her terms. the bet because a lady tells her that she speaks like Queen Victoria, My Fair Lady but the point in either play or film is that Higgins partly loses the A play with music is, technically, a melodrama. It might bet he entered with Col. Pickering—a partial failure the full well be that what concerned Shaw so much as regards the possible meaning of which he never even considers. As it happens, Higgins adaptation of Pygmalion as a stage musical was the imposing bets he can teach Eliza to pass herself off as an English duchess in shadow of the popular 19th century melodrama, from which six months but ironically he only succeeds in convincing the upper Hollywood musicals actually descend, via the music-hall and other classes gathered at the embassy that Eliza is a foreign aristocrat. popular forms of theatre. Shaw emerged as a critic and playwright Higgins’s star pupil, the Hungarian Karpathy, declares that in the 1890s defending the idea that naturalism and Ibsen’s work Eliza must be a Hungarian princess of royal blood, since only should be the paths to follow in the construction of a new serious foreigners speak such perfect English. The joke is intended to stress literary theatre. This would move far beyond the restrictive models Karpathy’s gullibility but may also point at Pascal, since he shared offered by the popular melodrama and the late 19th century society Karpathy’s nationality, and the scene, it must be remembered, was play, and would address a selected, educated audience, which written for the film. Karpathy’s conclusion heavily undermines would be the foundation for a complete upheaval of British Shaw’s own message against the social discrimination that English theatrical life. working-class people suffer on linguistic grounds. His remark Shaw, however, did not fulfil his own Ibsenian ideal. In indirectly questions Higgins’s ability as a teacher of phonetics, for, fact, his ‘problem plays,’ as he called them, are far more indebted to far from succeeding in raising Eliza socially, Higgins turns her into the more naturalistic, socially-oriented aspects of the kings of an outsider in her own country. The remark also deconstructs melodrama, Dion Boucicault—an Irish fellow countryman—and Shaw’s social message, since he wilfully allows Higgins to give Tom Taylor than to Ibsen. Shaw presented himself as an avant- Eliza a kind of tuition that is completely useless for her goals, garde playwright in perpetual war with the censor because of the namely, employment as a shop assistant in a respectable flower social issues he dealt with, but he had a popular—or populist—vein shop. that Ibsen and the other main naturalists lacked and that he had Shaw himself could not come up with a solid ending for clearly learned from the 19th century popular English stage. As it the play which could make the best of Eliza’s newly acquired social happens, from the 1920s onwards Shaw’s plays tended to be as graces. He abhorred the happy ending most performers and popular in terms of attracting large audiences as the far more audiences favoured—the suggestion that Eliza and Higgins would conformist West End society plays of other contemporary authors. eventually marry—but could not find a suitable alternative ending. And as popular plays, they may have become associated in the mind In the ‘Epilogue’ that he added in the 1916 edition of Pygmalion, of Gabriel Pascal with other popular genres both on the stage and which is a sort of report on Eliza’s imagined future rather than a on the screen. It must be remembered that Pygmalion, the film, was new scene, he supposed that Eliza finally marries her penniless but distributed by MGM, a studio that would make a series of pretty suitor Freddy (as his preferred ending supposed) and that successful musicals in the 1940s and 1950s. The 1930s, when together they run a flower and vegetable shop financed by Pygmalion was made, were also the heyday of Warner Studio’s Pickering, as they enjoy Higgins’s long-lasting friendship. Shaw’s early musicals, and this was the same company that would adapters disregarded this rather implausible ending and chose for eventually film My Fair Lady. Pascal probably thought that the film the obvious romantic option, also favoured by the very title Pygmalion would double the benefits it had already brought in by of the play. This, as is well known, refers to the myth of the Greek being recycled as a stage and screen musical, a genre to which its king who fell in love with a statue he had himself made and who romantic story was close enough. It might be argued that the story was granted by Aphrodite his wish that the statue became his flesh of Pygmalion, the play, and its film adaptations is, thus, the story of and blood wife. how Shaw failed to escape the shadow of popular theatre and of In the film, the final scene with Higgins’s peremptorily how the melodrama (and I mean here the play with songs and not demanding his slippers as Eliza smiles clearly shows that the lachrymose film genre) eventually conquered the film screen Pygmalion has once more succeeded in turning his work of art into through the genre of the musical. the perfect wife, though in this case she’ll be an upper middle-class Helped by the rather lax attitude of Shaw’s heirs regarding rather than a royal consort. Whether their marriage will turn out to his artistic will, Pascal set in motion his long-cherished dream of be a failure or a success is mere speculation, but it is hard to see transforming Pygmalion into a stage and screen musical. Failure what else she could do— unless, that is, she opened her own school and success in Pascal’s career had become inextricably linked to to teach working-class women like her to catch a wealthy husband. Shaw’s plays and he may have thought that a new Pygmalion would From a contemporary, feminist point of view, this is as lead him to a second, more lasting success in Hollywood. Shortly disappointing as Shaw’s solution (why would Freddy be necessary after Shaw’s death and already at work on the Hollywood in Eliza’s life?), since only marriage gives Eliza access to a higher production of Androcles and the Lion, Pascal met , social status. Still, given the evident attraction between Higgins who was working then on the film adaptation of his popular and Eliza—an attraction Shaw stubbornly denied—the happy Broadway musical Brigadoon. He took the chance to ask Lerner to ending makes complete sense. As Nicholas Greene observes, “the take up Shaw’s Pygmalion but Lerner declined and suggested final unresolved conflict between the two is the right ending for the instead that Pascal approach Richard Rodgers and Oscar Asquith and Howard—PYGMALION—9

Hammerstein.14 He duly contacted them, but the team soon reason why Hepburn’s choice was problematic was her singing abandoned the project adducing that Shaw’s play could not be voice, or rather, her lack of one. She took singing lessons and, as transformed at all into a stage musical. The tenacious Pascal can be seen in the documentary accompanying the DVD version of insisted again and finally convinced Lerner and his collaborator, My Fair Lady, she managed to sing reasonably well, though, composer Fredrick Loewe, to accept the challenge. They, however, clearly, not up to the standard the film required. Warner decided to also gave up on the adaptation after six months, pleading that have her voice dubbed by Marnie Nixon, who had been the singing Shaw’s comedy was too intellectual for a musical. Pascal died in voice of in The King and I (1956) and Nathalie Wood 1954 without seeing his efforts come to term, but the seed of My in West Side Story (1961) and Gypsy (1962).22 This decision was Fair Lady had been already planted. devastating to Hepburn, who seems to have missed the Oscar Right after Pascal’s death, Lerner and Loewe decided to nomination on this account.23 try again, either out of a sense of guilt at having failed Pascal, or What comes as a surprise when watching Asquith and feeling a renewed interest in the challenge posed by Shaw’s text. Howard’s Pygmalion and Cukor’s My Fair Lady is how similar Lerner, a cultured American, and Loewe, a no less cultured they are. Entire sections of dialogue are identical, the basic lines of Berliner, created together a charming Broadway musical that was production design remain the same from one film to the other. The also “an exceptionally literate show.”15 The show opened in New explanation for this is twofold. On the one hand, Lerner and Loewe York, at the Mark Tellinger Theatre, in 1956 to raving reviews. used Shaw’s screenplay—the text published in 1941—as the basis Exceptionally for a Broadway production of that time, the cast for their Broadway musical. “We,” George Cukor recalls, “used included three leading British actors: Rex Harrison as Higgins, even more of Shaw’s screenplay than the stage version did.”24 On newcomer Julie Andrews as Eliza (this was her second Broadway the other hand, the Shaw estate insisted on the musical adhering as play) and as Alfred Doolittle.16 The show had a much as possible to the original play, which is curious enough run of six and a half years—2,717 performances—closing in 1962. considering they had no objection at all to the production of the In his autobiography Rex Harrison reminisces how the cast felt that stage musical itself, something that Shaw would have profoundly they were “taking part in something out of the ordinary, and that it disliked. Since the text could not be excessively tampered with, the might be the only time in our lives that we would be connected with songs act as a running commentary on the events as Shaw anything quite like it.”17 envisioned them. Cukor, a man who had a low opinion of musicals, Among those to attend the glorious opening night was agreed to direct this one precisely because for him My Fair Lady studio mogul Jack Warner.18 Fascinated by the show, he persuaded was “a play with music” and not a typical musical.25 Lerner to adapt it for the screen, leaving aside stage director Moss The conditions imposed by the Shaw estate as regards the Hart, whose work, despite being the basis of much seen in the film, integrity of his work and the difficult relationship between MGM was not finally credited. Warner bought the rights from CBS, and designer Cecil Beaton made the high budget of $17million for which had—exceptionally for this type of show—financed the My Fair Lady and Cukor’s direction shine less than expected.26 Still Broadway production and marketed the popular records. Warner today, this musical looks imposing on the screen, but it is hard not paid $5 million, an amazing investment at the time, especially as the to notice its “impersonal, oddly perfunctory quality, as if Cukor, rights would reverts to CBS in seven years’ time. Even though stuck with Lerner’s rigidly adherent adaptation and all the initially Warner wanted Vincente Minelli to direct the film, he production difficulties, simply shrugged it off.”27 Nonetheless, My finally hired George Cukor. Minelli was discarded for asking a Fair Lady reaped eight Oscars for Best Picture, Best Director, Best percentage of the film’s box office, whereas Jerome Robbins, Actor (Rex Harrison), Best Art Direction (Cecil Beaton, Gene choreographer of West Side Story and Warner’s second choice, just Allen, George James Hopkins), Best Costume Design (Cecil rejected the offer.19 Warner’s ‘intelligent choice,’ as the not too Beaton), Best Cinematography, Best Sound and Best Music (André modest Cukor assured him, led the director to win his first Oscar. Previn). Lerner was nominated for Best Writing based on other According to Patrick McGilligan, “it was Warner who Materials and so were Stanley Holloway (Doolittle) and Gladys engineered the casting,” including the controversial decision to cast Cooper (Mrs. Higgins) as Best Supporting Actors. Audrey Hepburn instead of Julie Andrews as Eliza.20 This move, While the shadows of Marnie Nixon and Julie Andrews justified on the grounds that Andrews hadn’t made any films yet, hover over Audrey Hepburn’s brilliant performance, nothing—not while Hepburn had indisputable box-office value, caused Lerner to even Leslie Howard—obscures Harrison’s: he is Higgins. Far from withdraw from the project. Paradoxically, it helped rather than sank Howard’s tender professor, Harrison’s Higgins is an insufferable Andrews’s career: while Hepburn’s excellent performance as Eliza bully constantly provoking Eliza. Cukor greatly appreciated was slighted by the Academy, Andrews won the same year an Harrison’s work, but the actor was concerned by a difficulty that Oscar as Best Actress for her role in Disney’s Mary Poppins. With Hepburn needn’t face: Harrison couldn’t help structuring his fine English irony, in her acceptance speech Andrews thanked Jack performance in front of the cameras on patterns from his theatrical Warner for having made her triumph possible. As regards the male performance of Higgins. “I was always conscious of this,” he writes lead actor, Warner wanted Cary Grant for the role of Higgins, in his autobiography, “and fought it continuously.”28 He succeeded, whereas Peter O’Toole was the choice favoured by Lerner and though he may have been helped in this by the theatrical feel of the Cukor. The role went finally to Rex Harrison when Grant, film. This often seems too stage bound, too subservient to the ridiculing Warner’s choice, sent him a letter claiming he would not Broadway show, possibly because Cukor felt the heavy weight of even see the film unless Harrison was cast.21 its success on his shoulders. The imprint of Harrison’s theatrical Despite the stage expertise he brought to the role of acting on the film is most evident in his singing. His particular Higgins, Harrison was hired for only $200,000, whereas Audrey style of delivering the songs through speech rather than actual Hepburn was paid $1million. This is, in itself, a curious reversal of singing meant that he could not act to a prerecorded version of the the roles in the play, since the female star commanded a far higher song, as was usually done, for he did not follow a fixed tune. salary than the male star, something unusual then and now. The Asquith and Howard—PYGMALION—10

Instead, Harrison sang live on camera, using a microphone maintained, My Fair Lady turns out to be a richer version of Shaw’s concealed under his tie, as if he were performing on the stage. own Pygmalion, a compound of the text and a highly intelligent For all its charm, My Fair Lady is a relic of a bygone age. extended commentary. It could have easily become a lost relic if a campaign run by the In fact, despite lacking the lavish dance scenes of most unfailing Martin Scorsese hadn’t saved the film’s delicate 70mm musicals, My Fair Lady can be said to be typical of its genre. This SuperPanavision negative from total destruction. A print restored is especially so as regards the use of the songs, for, as Martin Sutton thanks to expensive infographics was re-released by 20th Century explains, the aim of the numbers in a musical is to relieve the Fox in 1994 to celebrate the film’s 30th anniversary. The tension between the realistic plots and the “romantic/rogue fascinating documentary made to publicise this artistic restoration imagination” at battle with the restraining social order which the has an unsettling effect. Clearly, My Fair Lady seems worth plot reflects.30 As he further explains, “the musical finally turns its preserving for posterity, if only to document the rich connections wayward dreamers into conformists,” so that “women, for example, between Broadway and Hollywood. Yet, especially in contrast with are forced to accept male heterosexual society’s definition of the more naturalistic British Pygmalion, My Fair Lady appears to be themselves.”31 This applies to Lerner’s lyrics, in which, essentially a sample of an old-fashioned style of American filmmaking based what is commented on is what Shaw excludes from his text, on stressing the artificial atmosphere of the studio set. Cukor’s film namely, romance. The conventions of the musical thus make the eschews all attempts at being realistic, thus indirectly emphasising covert battle between reality, personified by Higgins’s adamant Shaw’s sense of what he called romance, that is to say, an stance towards his pupil, and Eliza’s imagination more explicit in exceedingly improbable story. My Fair Lady than in the original play. This does not mean, This artificiality is especially noticeable in the famous however, that the musical allows for a less ambiguous ending than Ascot sequence. With its stunning costumes and controlled used of Shaw’s play, since, paraphrasing Sutton’s comment, both aim colour—black, white and grey dominate—Beaton’s production basically at subordinating Eliza to Higgins’s view of herself. design for the scene underlines the idea Hence, the importance of the that Eliza and Higgins’s world is not the apparently trivial matter of the slippers. real England of the 1910s. The Ascot By the end of My Fair Lady the conflict scene couldn’t be realistic, Cukor agreed. between Higgins and Eliza is practically “Nor could the picture as a whole,” he at the same stage as in Pygmalion, the added. “It had to take place in a kind of film. Harrison’s Higgins is so stubbornly dream world. You couldn’t show the real set against marrying Eliza that audiences Covent Garden, or the real Wimpole know he will no doubt marry her. There Street—you had to get the essence of is no tension in that sense, since the things rather than the actuality.”29 Nothing narratives codes of the Broadway and prevented the cameras from filming real Hollywood musical point invariably London; but what Cukor possibly hints at towards the conventional happy end. is that, beyond the close allegiance to the Apart from the fact that Eliza never stage show, which so strongly conditions seriously considers going away with the film, the relationship between Higgins and Eliza could only be Freddy in My Fair Lady, the main difference with Pygmalion the retold in the 1960s from this dream world perspective. If the gap film, is the impression that in Asquith’s version Higgins and Eliza between the 1910s of the original play and the 1930s of Asquith’s may come to an eventual understanding sooner than in Cukor’s Pygmalion is perceptible, the gap between the 1910s and the film. Harrison’s mordant Higgins and Hepburn’s impetuous Eliza revolutionary 1960s is a chasm. My Fair Lady was not alone in this make peace between them less certain. When he demands Eliza to strange dislocation. Other sentimental musicals like The Sound of fetch his slippers the spectator smiles, anticipating a formidable Music (1965) might also seem now unlikely products of the battle that will last for years, maybe their whole life together. This supposedly countercultural 1960s, especially if compared to more effect is stressed by the songs, which display a wide range of modern films like West Side Story (1961). feelings otherwise kept under control by Shaw’s characters, as has Shaw would be probably appalled to learn that the verbal been noted. Eliza goes from the anger of “Just you Wait Henry music of his play was not, after all, enough. Running to 170 Higgins,” which includes a daydream in which she has a tyrannical minutes, My Fair Lady is 75 minutes longer than Pygmalion. Much Higgins executed, to “I Could have Danced all Night,” when she of that extra time—if not all—is taken by up by Lerner and celebrates her newly discovered passion for Higgins. Shaw’s Eliza Loewe’s eighteen memorable songs. In fact, a spectator seeing cannot reach these extremes. And in any case, Hiller’s Eliza just Asquith’s Pygmalion after seeing My Fair Lady cannot help needn’t, for her Pygmalion is far less excessive than Harrison’s. noticing how conspicuous the absence of the songs is in the former. An overlooked aspect that problematises the relationship One is tempted to stop the VCR and burst out singing to make up between Higgins and Eliza in My Fair Lady is the physical for that absence, certainly the highest tribute that can be paid to appearance of Rex Harrison and Audrey Hepburn. In comparison Lerner and Loewe’s work. Their successful contribution is based to Leslie Howard’s youthful Professor, Harrison’s looks stress his on their realisation that Shaw could not comment on his characters’ status as a confirmed bachelor; Hepburn—twenty years younger— intimate feelings. Only monologues and asides to the audience looks in fact young enough to be his daughter, which is not the case could do this but would feel completely out of place in Pygmalion, at all in the 1938 Pygmalion.32 Although there are plenty of real-life the play. Wisely using the poetic licence that the conventions of the couples with even bigger age differences, for Shaw the gap between musical granted them, Lerner and Loewe felt free to comment the Professor (a man in his forties) and Eliza (a twenty-year-old through the songs on the characters’ emotions in a way that Shaw girl) is, simply, too wide: hence Freddy. “Unless Freddy is could not. And since the essential aspects of Shaw’s texts are biologically repulsive to her,” he writes in the Epilogue, “and Asquith and Howard—PYGMALION—11

Higgins biologically attractive to a degree that overwhelms all her authoritarian Higgins—seems far more real than the artificial Eliza other instincts, [Eliza] will, if she marries either of them, marry of this charmingly artificial musical film. Freddy.”33 Shaw’s coy use of the word “biologically” instead of In a sense, Eliza had to undergo yet another transformation “sexually” does not essentially alter the meaning of his sentence. to leave romance behind. The film based on Willy Russell’s stage Shaw believed that the Life Force controls the evolution of the play Educating Rita (1980, film 1983)—a text clearly inspired by human race, which thrives thanks to appropriate breeding brought Shaw’s Pygmalion—significantly alters the terms of the Freddy- about by natural forces, that is to say, by sexual or “biological” Eliza-Higgins triangle. Rita—Eliza’s successor—is a dissatisfied attraction. Higgins’s higher intellect may make him “more suitable woman in her mid twenties, a hairdresser by profession, married to breeding material than Freddy”, but Shaw seems to favour a quite an uncaring young man who wants her only to fulfil his sexual pragmatic view of sexual attraction by which women select their needs and become the mother of his children. Rita seeks a solution mates following sheer biological rules aimed at improving the to her dissatisfaction in education, meeting her Pygmalion when she ‘race’.34 The young, handsome Freddy should be, according to enrols in the Open University. Her tutor there, Frank, is a dejected, Shaw’s logic, the natural eugenic choice for a twenty year old girl alcoholic version of Higgins, too much in need of Rita’s help for who, moved by the Life Force, would look for a physically rather her own good. She succeeds with his help in extricating herself than an intellectually fit mate. from her working-class empty life to embark on a quite idealised Shaw’s somewhat bizarre philosophy of reproduction life as a Literature student while Frank’s career and private life clashes with Hollywood casting policies in My Fair Lady with an collapse under the pressure of his self-pity. As Shaw wanted, intriguing result. The romantic ending of the film has in fact an romance is avoided and Rita sends Frank off to a new life in anti-romantic sting hidden in its tail. In Pygmalion, the film, the Australia in a gesture intended to show how close they have been sexual competition for Eliza’s favours between Leslie Howard as and how far they drift apart, once she becomes her own woman. Higgins and David Tree as Freddy is won hands down by Howard’s Rita, more truly Shavian than Pascal’s or Cukor’s Elizas, shows in smooth Higgins. Tree, an attractive man who plays Freddy as a this way she would never fetch Higgins’s slippers. fatuous young man too fond of sniggering, has little to do with My Gabriel Pascal’s film Pygmalion, Alan Jay Lerner’s stage Fair Lady’s , a more mature, much less foolish Freddy. musical My Fair Lady and George Cukor’s film version are, as I When Brett/Freddy sings “The Street where You Live” as he waits have shown here, not just mere copies of G. B. Shaw’s play for a glimpse of his beloved Eliza he appears to be the Pygmalion but texts engaged in an active dialogue with Shaw’s quintessential romantic lover, far above the play’s original Freddy, original play, especially as regards Eliza’s fate. The main bulk of a silly boy devoted to writing bad poetry. When Hepburn/Eliza the dialogue deals, in any case, with the tension between author and sings “Show me” to him, openly asking for love, it is evident that adapter for the control over the screen adaptation, a tension which is Hepburn and Brett make an attractive couple. Since Freddy’s unavoidable in the cases in which the original author understands, glaring defects are smoothed out by Brett’s dandy looks and as Shaw did, that the adaptation must respect its literary source a romantic performance, Harrison’s fatherly bachelor appears to be a point which is, clearly, debatable. Shaw’s authorial resistance far less likely choice for young Eliza than in the play or in Pascal’s simply slowed down an unstoppable process that Pascal’s film. The happy ending of My Fair Lady acquires thus strange persistence had set in motion when he first thought of filming overtones. Why, indeed, would Hepburn/Eliza feel an Pygmalion, and that gathered momentum once Shaw died. Lerner’s overwhelming ‘biological’ attraction for Harrison/Higgins, and Cukor’s works combined the fidelity to Shaw’s text imposed by preferring him over Brett/Freddy? his legal heirs with the breach of trust opened by Pascal’s idea of When Eliza sings “I could have Danced all Night,” after turning Pygmalion into a musical despite Shaw’s dislike of the discovering her passion for Higgins, contemporary spectators must genre. The success of My Fair Lady simply proves that the concept suspend their disbelief to accept that she does love dull, old of literary authorship has been deeply questioned in the 20th century Higgins.35 Unless, that is, we assume that she was so terribly by the pragmatics—the business practices—of filmmaking and that starved for affection as a child that she seeks it now in Higgins seen authorial resistance will never prevail over the adapter’s as an idealised father figure—or that the play Pygmalion, despite its persistence. This persistence, to conclude, must not be seen as problematic ending, is nothing more than the sexual fantasy of a betrayal but just as another source of artistic creativity. Perhaps the middle-aged man. Classic Hollywood films, of course, tended to literary author’s deepest anxieties should not be aroused, after all, please male cinema goers by offering them fantasies in which by the fear that the adaptation will betray its literary source, but by middle-aged men seduced young women. Such films include other the fear that the film might be artistically superior to its source. popular stage and screen musicals such as Gigi (1958)—actually a Had Shaw seen My Fair Lady this might have been his main worry. variation on the Pygmalion theme also scripted by Lerner—or Notes Funny Face (1957), also starring Audrey Hepburn. Whatever 1 Rex Harrison, Rex, an Autobiography (London: audiences may have felt in the 1960s, in our ironic, post post- Macmillan, 1974), 162. 2 Michael Holroyd, Bernard Shaw. Volume modern 21st century, in which films are fantasies addressed to 2: 1898-1918 The Pursuit of Power (Harmondsworth: Penguin, younger audiences, Eliza’s meek return to Higgins at the end of My 1989), 333. 3 Ibid., 332. 4 Conrado Xalabarder, Enciclopedia de los Fair Lady manifests how unlikely the romance between these two Óscars (Barcelona: Ediciones B, 1996), 1049. 5 R. J. Minney, persons is. Even though this is precisely what Shaw wanted the Puffin Asquith: The Biography of the Honourable Anthony Asquith audiences to feel, the impression that Higgins and Eliza are Aristocrat, Aesthete, Prime Minister’s Son and Brilliant Film mismatched is, ironically, a side-effect of the accidents of casting Maker (London: Leslie Frewin, 1973), 93. 6 Nor did Higgins’s and of film history rather than a carefully considered choice. lessons. A phonetics advisor employed on set is credited with the Suddenly, the Eliza of Shaw’s preferred ending—the girl who famous drill “the rain in Spain stays mainly in the plain,” while chooses to marry and support useless Freddy rather than serve Asquith himself came up with the sentence about the scarcity of hurricanes in Hereford. 7 For a more recent edition of the screenplay Asquith and Howard—PYGMALION—12 see Bernard F. Dukore, ed, Collected Screenplays of Bernard Shaw. played the role of Freddy, was also dubbed, in his case by tenor Bill Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1980. 8 Bernard Shaw, “Note Shirley, who, similarly, was uncredited. 23 McGilligan, 287. 24 for Technicians,” Pygmalion: A Romance in Five Acts ed. Dan H. Lambert, 244. 25 McGilligan, 279. 26 British designer and Laurence (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1988), 11. 9 The fusion, photographer Cecil Beaton had designed the costumes for the New however, keeps its secrets. Higgins’s Hungarian pupil is called York and London productions of the show and made new designs Aristid Karpathy in the film Pygmalion—he is Zoltan Karpathy in for Cukor’s film. His splendid work is one of the main attractions My Fair Lady but Nepommuck in the 1941 version of the play. The of My Fair Lady, but it seems quite clear now that he attributed to divergence between versions is small but, after himself the production design actually carried out seeing Pygmalion and My Fair Lady and reading the by George Allen, which caused constant tensions play it is hard to tell each version apart. 10 Minney, on the set (see Lambert, 241). 27 McGilligan, 292. 28 97; original emphasis. 11 Ibid. 12 Holroyd, 133. 13 Harrison, 209. 29 Lambert, 242. 30 Martin Sutton, Nicholas Greene, Bernard Shaw: A Crtical View ‘Patterns of Meaning in the Musical’ in Genre: The (London: Macmillan, 1984), 112. 14 See Robert Musical ed. Rick Altman (London: BFI, 1981), Matthew-Walker, Broadway to Hollywood: The 191. 31 Ibid., 195. 32 Rex Harrison (56) and Audrey Enthralling Story behind the Great Hollywood Films Hepburn (35) were too old for the roles. Leslie of the Great Broadway Musicals (London: Howard (41) and Wendy Hiller (26) were closer, Sanctuary Publishing Ltd., 1996), 133. 15 Matthew- though Hiller was still 6 years too old. Curiously Walker, 133. 16 My main source in this section is enough, Hepburn looks younger than Hiller. In any Matthew-Walker (1996). See also Keith Garebian, case, Mrs. Patrick Campbell first played the role of The Making of My Fair Lady (Toronto: ECW, Eliza, which Shaw had written specifically for her, 1994). 17 Harrison, 173. 18 See Patrick McGilligan, aged 47. 33 Bernard Shaw, Pygmalion: A Romance George Cukor: A Double Life (London and Boston: in Five Acts ed. Dan H. Laurence (Harmondsworth: Faber & Faber, 1991), 280. 19 See Gavin Lambert, Penguin, 1988), 138. 34 Arthur Ganz, George On Cukor (New York: Capricorn Book, 1973), 240. Bernard Shaw (London: Macmillan, 1983), 180. 35 20 McGilligan, 281. 21 Harrison and Holloway played the show in On the three occasions I have taught the play my students, mostly London, too. The play opened at the Drury Lane theatre in 1958, undergraduate girls of Eliza’s age, have steadily refused to believe and ran for 2,281 performances, just under six years. Warner her declaration of love for Higgins in My Fair Lady, preferring wanted James Cagney, who was by then retired, to play the role of Freddy. When reading the play, their opinions about the ending Alfred Doolittle. It is hard to imagine what could make him were sharply divided, though. Only a few dared voice the opinion preferable to Stanley Holloway; in the end, the role went to that Eliza should remain single and happily independent at the end Holloway because Cagney rejected it (see McGilligan, 285). 22 of the play against the majority’s preference for romance with either Nixon is still an active singer. She has recently played the role of Higgins or Freddy. Grandmother Fa in Disney’s Mulan (1998). Jeremy Brett, who

COMING UP IN THE FALL 2011 BUFFALO FILM SEMINARS XXIII: September 13 Beauty and the Beast/La Belle et La Bête, Jean Cocteau (1946) September 20 The Red Shoes, Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger (1948) September 27 Diary of a Country Priest/Journal d’un curé de campagne, Robert Bresson (1951) October 4 Black Orpheus/Orfeu Negro, Marcel Camus (1959) October 11 Bonnie and Clyde, Arthur Penn (1967) October 18 Marketa Lazarová, František Vláčil (1967) October 25 The Last Wave, Peter Weir (1977) November 1 True Confessions, Ulu Grosbard (1981) November 8 Chunking Express/Chung Hing sam lam, Wong Kar-Wei (1994) November 15 Richard III, Richard Loncraine (1995) November 22 Frida, Julie Taymor (2002) November 29 Revanche, Götz Spielmann (2008) December 6 My Fair Lady, George Cukor (1964)

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