A Tale of Two Prints: The British and American Film Versions of Shaw's Oscar-Winning Screenplay

Abstract

abstract:When Bernard Shaw adapted his 1912 play Pygmalion for the British film version in 1938, his screenplay was not always faithfully represented in the resulting adaptation. What has gone largely unremarked, however, is that there were two quite different prints of the 1938 film: one for British cinema audiences and a truncated and censored version for the American market. While Shaw saw, and publicly approved of, the British print, in all likelihood he was unaware that the widely seen American print, which ironically earned him an Academy Award for his screenplay, was a much inferior version of the film. This essay examines the changes foisted on Shaw's screenplay during the process of its translation to film and then compares the British print with its American counterpart, underlining the considerable differences between the two versions.