Pygmalion

Summary

1981 Yorkshire Television production for ITV of Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw.

Theatre play

Pygmalion by [George] Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) [more information]

Play synopsis

'Professor of phonetics Henry Higgins makes a bet that he can train a bedraggled Cockney flower girl, Eliza Doolittle, to pass for a duchess at an ambassador’s garden party by teaching her to assume a veneer of gentility, the most important element of which, he believes, is impeccable speech. The play is a sharp lampoon of the rigid British class system of the day and a commentary on women’s independence’ (source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pygmalion_%28play%29, accessed 29 Janaury 2013).

Production history

Shaw wrote Pygmalion in 1912. It premiered in Vienna in 1913, in a German translation. The first American production opened in March 1914 at the German-language Irving Place Theatre, New York, and its delayed London premiere opened in April of the same year (source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pygmalion_%28play%29, accessed 29 Janaury 2013).

Date of transmission

Sunday 27 December 1981

Time

9.30-11.15pm

Series

Celebrity Playhouse

Channel

ITV

Production company

Yorkshire Television (1968-)

Credits

Director

John Glenister

Playwright

[George] Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)

Adapted for Television by

Pat Sandys

Designer

Eileen Diss

Executive Producer

David Cunliffe

Cast

Sarah-Jane Bickerton	Maid
Arthur English	Alfred Doolittle
Marsha Fitzalan	Clara Eynsford-Hill
Ronald Fraser	Col. Pickering
Donald Groves	Third Bystander
Pauline Jameson	Mrs Eynsford-Hill
Maeve Leslie	Second Bystander
Robert Powell	Prof. Higgins
Doug Roe	Fourth Bystander
Gordon Salkilld	First Bystander
Shaun Scott	Freddy Eynsford-Hill
Helen Shingler	Mrs Higgins
Twiggy	Eliza
Mona Washbourne	Mrs Pearce

Additional details

Play tags

class issues / differences

Print sources

Title

TV Times, 17 December 1981 (Magazine)

Linking notes

long article, pp. 24-27; brief article, p. 86; listing, p. 87