In ancient Greek mythology, Pygmalion fell in love with one of his sculptures, which then came to life.
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| In 1505 Du Pré Antoine Vérard made a woodcut of Pygmalion and his sculpture. |
Ovid retold the myth in 5 AD in his collection of books Metamorphoses or "Books of Transformations".
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| Metamorphōseōn libri reprint of 1556. |
The general idea of transformation of that myth was a popular subject for Victorian era English playwrights. W. S. Gilbert wrote a successful play based on the story called Pygmalion and Galatea (1871).
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| Gilbert's play opened at the Haymarket Theatre in London on 9 December 1871. It ran for a very successful 184 performances. |
George Bernard Shaw (1856 – 1950) also wrote his version of Pygmalion, an operetta - which formed the basis of the famous musical and film My Fair Lady.
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| Shaw's Pygmalion was published in 1910. |
My Fair Lady, the film, depicts arrogant phonetics professor Henry Higgins as he wagers that he can transform a flower girl Eliza Doolittle and turn her Cockney accent into a proper English one, thereby making her presentable in high society of Edwardian London.
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| The original Broadway poster 1956. |
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| The Warner Bros film was released in 1964 with a $17 million budget. |
A 2014 comedy series, Selfie, is a modern adaptation of this play, will debut in ABC's fall line up. It features Karen Gillan as Eliza Dooley, a recently dumped and viral sensation socialite that after being humiliated across the web, wishes to turn her life around, with the help of her arrogant co-worker and marketing specialist, Henry.
