Pygmalion (1938) on Netflix
NR19381h 36mComedyDramaRomance
Henry Higgins, a phonetics professor, wagers with Colonel Pickering that he can train Eliza Doolittle, a Covent Garden flower seller, to pass as a duchess. She arrives at his house for lessons.
- Netflix4.3/5
- IMDb7.7/1010,611 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes94%
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Plot summary
Henry Higgins, a scholar of speech, is noting how passers-by talk in Covent Garden when he is taken for a policeman, and flower seller Eliza Doolittle joins the protests. Higgins meets Colonel Pickering, a scholar of languages and dialects arrived from India to see him. Higgins says his methods could teach Eliza to speak well and let her pass as a duchess. She comes to his house the next morning for elocution lessons, and Pickering offers to cover the costs. The housekeeper, Mrs Pearce, takes Eliza up to bathe, and her father, the dustman Alfred Doolittle, arrives to demand payment.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Pygmalion (1938)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Pygmalion kept the play's line "Not bloody likely!", making Wendy Hiller possibly the first person to utter that swear word in a British film; adverts for the film read "Miss Pygmalion? Not ****** likely!".
- Shaw was reluctant to let anyone film Pygmalion after poor earlier adaptations of his work, but producer Gabriel Pascal persuaded him, on condition that Shaw personally supervise the adaptation; Pascal went on to film Major Barbara, Caesar and Cleopatra and Androcles and the Lion.
- Pygmalion fell into the US public domain in 1966 when its rights holder Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer failed to renew the copyright, but in the 1979 case Russell v. Price Shaw's estate regained control of its American distribution and performances through rights in the play.
- Shaw chose Wendy Hiller to play Eliza Doolittle after her stage work in Pygmalion and Saint Joan, though the film's credits claimed to be introducing her although she had already appeared in 1937's Lancashire Luck; his choice for Higgins was Charles Laughton.
- A long ballroom sequence was added, introducing Count Aristid Karpathy, a character written wholly by Shaw who is only mentioned, unnamed and unseen, in the original play; renamed Professor Zoltan Karpathy, he also appears in the musical My Fair Lady.
- The Oscar-winning screenplay of Pygmalion was adapted into the 1956 stage musical My Fair Lady, which in turn became the 1964 film of the same name.
