When picture work had to be done he says, Hollywood called for the electrician, the photographer; not for the author. As usual, Mr. Shaw is exaggerating. Hasn't he heard of Mr. Goldwyn, who called not for one author, but for twelve, when he was trying to find a script to fit the title "The Cowboy and the Lady"? Hasn't he heard of the fabulous producer who instructed his aide to put Dickens under contract?
Could it be argued, finally, that there is no producer in Hollywood who would not have agreed to give Mr. Shaw his head in exchange for the screen rights to his plays and his services as doctor of his own scripts? We wonder.
With all his exaggeration, he may be perilously close to the truth, Frankly, we rather doubt that any Hollywood company would have retained the title "Pygmalion." Metro might have called it "Accent on Love." Twentieth Century-Fox, which would have adapted it for Tyrone Power and Annabella, might have preferred "Oh, Professor!'
Selznick International, with an ear to Eliza Doolittle's favourite express sion, unquestionably would have billed it as "Garn With the Wind." Obviously, there would have been some rewriting. Professor Higgins and Eliza would fall in love; Colonel Pickering would be made into a comic part for Edward Everett Horton; Alan Hale would have been the Dustman; Eliza's regeneration would have been com. plete, with all traces of vulgarity eradicated.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.