MFL fans, help me see the light!

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

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.

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.'

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.

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

plain wrong.

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

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.

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=Yjm ... 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.

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.

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

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.