Pygmalion 1938

One evening in Covent Garden, as passers-by murmur about language, linguist Henry Higgins [Leslie Howard] is mistaken for a policeman, triggering protests from Eliza Doolittle [Wendy Hiller], a sharp-tongued flower seller. The disruption catches Higgins’s attention, and he talks with Colonel Pickering [Scott Sunderland], a fellow language enthusiast who has come from India to study him. Higgins argues that, with his method, Eliza could speak with the elegance of high society and might even pass as a duchess. This audacious claim sparks a bold bet with Pickering: if Higgins can transform Eliza, he will cover all the expenses of her training and testing against a future of greater opportunity.

The next morning Eliza arrives at Higgins’ house to request elocution lessons. Mrs Pearce [Jean Cadell], the housekeeper, prepares Eliza for the day, giving her a bath while Alfred Doolittle [Wilfrid Lawson], Eliza’s father and a workingman with a sly sense of humor, arrives to demand compensation for the damage done to his daughter’s life. Higgins is amused by Doolittle’s roguish charm and offers him ten pounds, but Doolittle rejects the sum, insisting that, as one of the “undeserving poor,” he only wants enough for a one drunken weekend. The scene sets up a tension between aspiration and practicality that threads through the entire story.

After a rigorous internship, Eliza is invited to an at-home gathering hosted by Mrs Higgins [Marie Lohr], Higgins’ mother. There, though she speaks with a cultivated, upper-class accent, Eliza’s slang-filled chatter and profanity shock the guests. Yet among them is Freddy Eynsford-Hill [David Tree], a young man who becomes fascinated with her. When the guests depart, Mrs Higgins voices her concern that Eliza’s two benefactors treat her more as a project or a toy than as a person with a real life and feelings.

Weeks of coaching follow, culminating in a formal embassy reception. Higgins and Pickering fear Eliza may be exposed by a clever observer, Count Aristid Karpathy [Esme Percy], a Hungarian who has earned fame for tutoring American heiresses in elocution and for his knack of tracing social origins through speech. Eliza’s performance at the embassy is so seamless that Karpathy briefly entertains the notion that she could be a princess, a testament to her transformation under Higgins’s tutelage. The triumph, however, leaves Eliza unsettled and resentful: Higgins and Pickering seem to celebrate their method while overlooking her commitment and the depth of her own needs.

Back at home, the victory feels hollow for Eliza. Higgins tries to persuade her to return to him, but she pushes back, arguing that he merely takes her for granted. She hints at independence, even suggesting she could offer elocution lessons herself to earn a living, if necessary. The rift widens as she asserts her own desires—she would rather marry Freddy, who is charming though financially unstable—forcing Higgins to confront the price of progress and the limits of his mentorship.

That night, Higgins returns home after a long walk and unintentionally plays a recording of Eliza’s first visit. He is confronted with the memory of her raw, unpolished self, and when Eliza appears at his study door, she quotes her earlier self with a sly rebuke, asking for the slippers he has forgotten. The moment crystallizes the unsettled, evolving relationship between teacher and pupil. The story closes with their future together left deliberately open, balancing pride, affection, and the possibility of genuine partnership as Eliza asserts her own evolving identity.

I washed my face and hands before I come, I did

The characters are brought to life by a cast who each contribute a distinct thread to this exploration of language, class, and personal agency. Higgins’s rigorous, almost scientific approach contrasts with Eliza’s emerging self-determination, while Mrs Pearce’s steady presence and Mrs Higgins’s maternal concern offer grounding perspectives. The bystander figures and social settings—the Covent Garden bustle, the gracious drawing rooms, and the embassies—provide a textured backdrop that highlights the social dance at the heart of this story, where words become a key to opportunity, status, and identity.