Pygmalion

UK (1938): Drama/Comedy

The classic British comedy of manners, and the first film based on the famous George Bernard Shaw stage play, features Wendy Hiller as the irrepressible Eliza Doolittle, transformed from "guttersnipe" into a gracious British lady by Prof. Henry Higgins (Leslie Howard). After spying Cockney-speaking Eliza peddling flowers outside the opera, the arrogant dialects expert Higgins makes a bet with his friend Col. Pickering (Scott Sunderland) that he can turn Eliza into a refined member of British society simply by teaching her the finer points of the English language. After a few false starts and many famous lessons in phonetics, she emerges a new woman. But problems arise when she falls in love with Higgins, and he with her. Directed by Anthony Asquith and Leslie Howard for MGM. The film would go on to be remade as My Fair Lady (1964) and spawned similar stories from Educating Rita (1983) to Trading Places (also 1983).

Pygmalion was one of a handful of films edited by David Lean, who would shift to the director's chair in the '40s and become a Hollywood legend with films like Lawrence of Arabia (1962), Dr. Zhivago (1965) and A Passage to India (1984).

· Writing (Best Screenplay) 1938: George Bernard Shaw, Ian Dalrymple, Cecil Lewis, W.P. Lipscomb

· Best Picture 1938: Gabriel Pascal, producer (MGM - British)
· Actor 1938: Leslie Howard
· Actress 1938: Wendy Hiller

4 nominations, 1 Award