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Disambiguation
The Roman poet Ovid in the tenth book of his Metamorphoses tells a story of a sculptor who falls in love with his own sculpture. Pygmalion, son of Belus, was a lonely sculptor who made a woman out of ivoryIvory is a hard, white, opaque substance that is the bulk of the teeth and tusks of animals such as the elephant, hippopotamus, walrus, mammoth, etc. Prior to the introduction of plastics, it was used for billiard balls, piano keys, buttons and ornamental. He prayed to Venus, the goddess of beauty and love, who took pity on the lovesick artist, and brought the sculpture to life. PaphosPaphos (usually written 'Pafos' locally, in Turkish Baf is a coastal town in the south-west of Cyprus. Paphos is the mythical birthplace of Aphrodite, the Greek goddess of love, sex and beauty. In Greco-Roman times it was the island's capital, and it is f was the product of the union between Pygmalion and the ivory statue.
Later authors give the name of the statue as GalateaThere are a number of persons, celestial bodies, ships and geographical locations called Galatea Mythological figures #A nymph in Greek mythology, see Galatea (mythology) # the name of the maiden who was originally a statue carved by Pygmalion, created in or Elise ( Goethe), based on a confusion with Dido (Elissa).
George Bernard Shaw used the myth as the basic idea for his play, also called Pygmalion. This tells the story of Professor Henry Higgins, a snobbish linguist, who makes a wager that he can turn a CockneyA Cockney in the loosest sense of the word, is a working-class inhabitant of the East End of London. According to one old tradition, the definition is limited to those born within earshot (generally taken to be three miles) of the Bow bells, i. the bells flower girl, Eliza Doolittle, into the toast of London society merely by teaching her how to speak with a high class accent. In the process, he becomes fond of her and attempts to direct her future, but she rejects his domineering ways and marries a young aristocrat.
The original stage play shocked audiences by Eliza's use of a swear word. Humour is drawn from Eliza's ability to speak nicely, but without an understanding of those topics of conversation acceptable in polite society. Hence, when asked whether she is walking home, she replies, "Not bloody likely!" The actress, Mrs Patrick Campbell, for whom the role was written by her friend Shaw, was thought to be risking her career by uttering the line.
In 1938, a non-musical film version of the stage play was released, starring Leslie Howard as Professor Henry Higgins, Wendy Hiller as Eliza Doolittle, Wilfrid Lawson as her father, Alfred Doolittle, Scott Sunderland as Colonel George Pickering and David Tree as Freddy Eynsford-Hill. It was adapted to film by Shaw, W.P. Lipscomb , Cecil Lewis , Ian Dalrymple and Anatole de Grunwald from the Shaw play, and directed by Anthony Asquith and Leslie Howard. The movie was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture.
The play was the basis for the musical play and film My Fair Lady.
One major difference between the play, musical and film is the various endings, which show a clear progression. In the play, Eliza leaves to marry the aristocrat. (Shaw, annoyed by the tendency of audiences, actors, and even directors to seek 'romantic' reinterpretations of his ending, later wrote an essay for inclusion with subsequent editions of the play in which he explained precisely why it was impossible for the story to end with Higgins and Eliza getting together.) In the musical, this is left unresolved, and the final scene is of a lonely Higgins. In the film version of the musical, the final scene closes with both of them apparently about to reconcile.
A contemporary version of the Pygmalion motif can be found in Willy Russell's play Educating Rita (1980).
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