[Barberous]

MFL fans, help me see the light!

[Vanessa20]

My theatre professor would say that it's just because the '50s audience wanted a happy ending.

[Salome]

your theatre professor doesnt know shit. does he realized the "slippers" ending is in the film version of Pygmalion from 1935? screenplay by Shaw himself?


Liza returns to Higgins because now she can be freinds with him on an equal basis. they have gone through so much together..both have learned from the other..both are not the marrying or romantic sort. They will be 3 confirmed old bachelors living together, fighting together and one upping each other for a life time.

[Vanessa20]

I don't think my professor really knows anything about MFL or Pygmalion. She only devoted about two sentences to them, and here they are: "In the play, when Higgins says 'Fetch me my slippers' Eliza says 'Get your own damned slippers.' In the musical, she says 'Here are your slippers, darling.'

[Salome]

in Pygmalion Higgins never asks Liza to fetch his slippers. in the pygmalion thep lay ends after liza leaves Mrs. Higgins home..

Mrs. H says to her son.."you know Henry I'd be worried about her if she werent so fond of Col. Pickerinbg'
to which henry responds..
Pickering? nonsense..she's going to marry Freddy!" and colapses into the chair is shards of laughter as the curtain falls.

[Megziid]

and at no point does Eliza say anything like "here are your slippers, darling"

plain wrong.

[Barberous]

The professor was probably paraphrasing/exaggerating to make a point about a (possible) difference in the 'message' of the two shows *shrug*

But Higgins is such a jerk! If they've gone through a lot together, mostly that consisted of him putting her through a lot, didn't it? He doesn't deserve to have her come back

[Salome]

Higgins is far from a jerk. if you tihnk that you dont understand the show,the relationhips,the changes in them or the point of the piece.

[Barberous]

That may be true. If any MFL admirers would like to help me understand, I'll be Eliza to your Higgins But if you're not interested in discussing it, s'cool.

BTW, I'm not so sure about Shaw's view of the ending of the film version of 'Pygmalion' (which I haven't seen). I don't know much about it, but I found this quote from him, in response to a question:

Q: In a note to the stage version of 'Pygmalion', you deplored what you called 'ready-made, happy endings to misfit all stories'. Yet you allowed such a ready-made happy ending to be substituted in the film version of 'Pygmalion'. Why?

A: I did not. I cannot conceive a less happy ending to the story of 'Pygmalion' than a love affair between the middle-aged, middle-class professor, a confirmed old bachelor with a mother-fixation, and a flower girl of 18. Nothing of the kind was emphasised in my scenario, where I emphasised the escape of Eliza from the tyranny of Higgins by a quite natural love affair with Freddy.
But I cannot at my age undertake studio work: and about 20 directors seem to have turned up there and spent their time trying to sidetrack me and Mr Gabriel Pascal, who does really know chalk from cheese. They devised a scene to give a lovelorn complexion at the end to Mr Leslie Howard: but it is too inconclusive to be worth making a fuss about."

(http://books.google.com.au/books?id=YjmZYNgasBAC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_summary_r&cad=0#PPA93,M1)

I don't know if it was the 'going back' part that irritated him, or just the 'lovelorn' part. Anyway, guess I *am* making a fuss about the ending... oh well.

[Salome]

If he said that then Shaw himself missedt he point of Pascal's film. Higins and Liza are not,were not and never will be in love with each other.

[music is my life!!!]

i think she kinda wants to embrace the first time she feels in power over Higgins, and then equal to him, as he non-verbally apologises

not sure, but that's kinda how i'd do it

[teapot]

Aside from her incredible arrogance, Salome's ending for Pygmalion is from an inferior version. The original is quite different.
Mrs. Higgins returns, dressed for the wedding. Eliza instantly becomes cool and elegant.
MRS. HIGGINS. The carriage is waiting, Eliza. Are you ready?
LIZA. Quite. Is the Professor coming?
MRS. HIGGINS. Certainly not. He cant behave himself in church. He makes remarks out loud all the time on the clergyman's pronunciation.
LIZA. Then I shall not see you again, Professor. Good bye. [She goes to the door].
MRS. HIGGINS [coming to Higgins] Good-bye, dear.
HIGGINS. Good-bye, mother. [He is about to kiss her, when he recollects something]. Oh, by the way, Eliza, order a ham and a Stilton cheese, will you? And buy me a pair of reindeer gloves, number eights, and a tie to match that new suit of mine, at Eale & Binman's. You can choose the color. [His cheerful, careless, vigorous voice shows that he is incorrigible]. 2
LIZA [disdainfully] Buy them yourself. [She sweeps out].
MRS. HIGGINS. I'm afraid youve spoiled that girl, Henry. But never mind, dear: I'll buy you the tie and gloves.
HIGGINS [sunnily] Oh, dont bother. She'll buy em all right enough. Good-bye.

They kiss. Mrs. Higgins runs out. Higgins, left alone, rattles his cash in his pocket; chuckles; and disports himself in a highly self-satisfied manner.
Then, Shaw attached a sequel to the manuscript, that talked of "What Happened After" and explained Eliza's subsequent marriage to Freddy and attachment to the Higgins household. Shaw sums up Eliza's connection to Higgins in the last paragraph: "She knows that Higgins does not need her, just as her father did not need her. The very scrupulousness with which he told her that day that he had become used to having her there, and dependent on her for all sorts of little services, and that he should miss her if she went away (it would never have occurred to Freddy or the Colonel to say anything of the sort) deepens her inner certainty that she is "no more to him than them slippers", yet she has a sense, too, that his indifference is deeper than the infatuation of commoner souls. She is immensely interested in him. She has even secret mischievous moments in which she wishes she could get him alone, on a desert island, away from all ties and with nobody else in the world to consider, and just drag him off his pedestal and see him making love like any common man. We all have private imaginations of that sort. But when it comes to business, to the life that she really leads as distinguished from the life of dreams and fancies, she likes Freddy and she likes the Colonel; and she does not like Higgins and Mr. Doolittle. Galatea never does quite like Pygmalion: his relation to her is too godlike to be altogether agreeable. " Constable & Co. edition, 1916.
Of course, you can always just accept Salome's peculiar and delusional rantings about what Shaw did or did not understand about Pascal's intent in his film of Pygmalion. A more intelligent person would read Bernard Shaw and Gabriel Pascal (Selected Correspondence of Bernard Shaw) published by the University of Toronto Press, and form a valid opinion.

[Salome]

I was quoting the acting edition. the version you quote..Sir herbert tree rejected.

oh..and btw..i am far from delusional. wtf do you know.Iv'e read Shaw's "sqequel" as well. cShaw however brilliant was as inconsistant as Brecht.

[annasette]

I just put "Hear, hear!", without noticing intermediary post.

I was actually affirming the last post by teapot, not Salome.

I mever thought it made sense that Eliza would go back to Higgins at all. And the Salome concept that she would condemn herself to living with Higgins and Pickering as three squabbling bachelors is just awful!

[Salome]

[annasette]

I hope you haven't genuinely studied Shaw, Salome, because all you have demonstrated is a very limited understanding of human nature.

And I would suggest you go and read the sequel again yourself. Because as much as you obviously want to interpret that as saying Eliza and Freddy were miserable together, that isn't actually what it says at all. It might not have been a fairy tale ending of happy ever after in ease and prosperity, but hardships having to be faced and overcome together in a "normal" life does not equate to "misery".

[Salome]

you are quite funny.

[teapot]

Salome is nothing if not inconsistent in her arguments. After insisting that there is no romance between Higgins and Eliza (which IS valid, although not for the reasons she mumbles), she now informs that she is relying on the "acting version" of the play, with her lofty comment on Beerbohm Tree rejecting the published version. Of course, she ignores the fact that the so-called "acting version" (of which there are several) that Beerbohm Tree used promoted the idea of a romance between Eliza and Henry, which was what so angered Shaw that he wrote the afterpiece. In fact, Beerbohm Tree felt that there was a real romance between Higgins and Doolittle, and insisted on playing it like that, to the point of throwing a bouquet of flowers to Eliza as she is leaving. But when did Salome EVER support her opinion with logic? Nevertheless, it is no surprise that our Little Theatre diva is of the school that refuses to play the characters as written by the author, preferring her own "interpretation". And as a Shavian scholar, her claim to fame is self-supported.

[Salome]

hmm...you no longer sound like a newbie.

[mod edit to remove insult]

[teapot]

Sorry, Salome, you are way off base. What I AM is a person in this profession, who, in nearing my retirement, found this board when looking for information on places young people go to be encouraged in theater. I was actually looking for workshops and conservatories across the country where I could volunteer, but was struck by how many teens and college aged people on this board were so enthused by musicals, so I stayed to watch.

[teapot]

Salome, you've given me an idea. If Valerie Delacorte is feeling up to it next time I'm on the East Coast, I'll see if I can ask her whether Pascal thought Shaw missed the point. I'm sure she'll be amused.

[ConverseSneaker]

After the ball, when Eliza goes back to the street where she orginally lived, she realizes that she can't go back to the way she used to live now that she had been a true lady. But she also can't marry Freddy and become a lady because he sees her as something she's not and never will totally be.

[Barberous]

That's an interesting point about Freddy. Both Pygmalion and My Fair Lady have Freddy being a bit dismissive of Eliza in the first scene when she's just a flower girl, he says sorry then rushes off without paying for the flowers he knocked out of her basket. And a little later Higgins throws her some money. Higgins' self-proclaimed strength, whether we agree or not, is that at least he's consistent - consistently a wanker to everyone, regardless of class. And I can see how Eliza would be worried about how she and Freddy would get on in the long run. But on the other hands, she *knows* that Higgins would be hell to get on with in the long run! And I'm not sure if 'calculated resignation' is the feeling we're meant to attribute to Eliza in the final scene of MFL. (I'm not implying that it has to be 'love', either, although that's because of the effectiveness of the previous scenes rather than the clarity of the ending.)
Cynical thought - maybe Eliza just stuck with Higgins because she knew it would fulfil her 'I want' song better. Except for the last verse.