Pygmalion 2000

     Henry Higgins is a snobbish and intellectual professor of languages.  He makes a bet with his friend Colonel George Pickering that he can take a London flower seller from the gutter and pass hr off as a society lady.  Her name is Eliza Doolittle and she is a human being with ideas of her own!!
     Pygmalion was a mythological character who dabbled in sculpture.  He made a statue of his ideal woman, Galatea.  It was so beautiful that he prayed to the gods to give it life.  His wish was granted.  Shaw gives a modern interpretation of this theme in his famous play.  The film raises all sorts of questions about nature versus nurture, class and morality, misogyny and what it is to be a woman, notions of the self, nature and aspects of love.  No one knows what is in their future??  A gutter snipe one day and a wealthy woman the next day or vice versa!!  I'm not sure why but it must be due to the fact that I've seen this movie before because I just could not get interested enough??  3* (This movie was OK) 

89 min, Comedy directed by Anthony Asquith and Leslie Howard, written by George Bernard Shaw, W.P Lipscomb and Cecil Lewis with Leslie Howard, Wendy Hiller, Wilfrid Lawson, Marie Lohr, Scott Sunderland, Jean Cadell, David Tree, Everyday Gregg, Leueen MacGrath, Esme Percy, Violet Vanburgh, Irene Browne, Kate Cutler, O.B. Clarence, Ivor Barnard.

Note:  Imdb 7.8 out of 10 with 7,418 views, 94% with 17 critics 86% audience with 3,405 ratings, Letterboxd 3.7* out of 5*, Amazon 3.9* out of 5* with 40 reviews, the book has 4.3* out of 5* with 261 reviews on Amazon, Silver Petticoat 5 bustles.

Special Note:  Filmed in Pinewood Studios, Ever Heath, Buckinghamshire, England, UK.  Eliza accidentally swallows a marble during an elocution lesson and this scene doesn’t appear in the original play.  Wendy Hiller told Leslie Howard that she had swallowed one?  He replied, “Never mind there are plenty more.”  It caused all the crew to laugh and it was added to this movie and also My Fair Lady, the musical version of Pygmalion.  George Bernard Shaw died in 1950 and his Oscar was found to be used a a door stop.  It was so tarnished that the curator assumed it had not value?  Shaw was the first person to win both the Academy Award and the Nobel Prize.  The next person to win both was Bob Dylan, he won an Oscar and the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2016.  Originally, Charles Laughton was selected to play Professor Henry Higgins.  Wilfrid Lawson was only thirty-eight in the role of Eliza’s father.