Pygmalion+Facts

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Taken from [|ShawFestival.com]
 * First production done in Vienna and Berlin in October 1913. The London premiere the next April featured the charismatic Mrs Patrick Campbell as Eliza, who was a single mother and reputedly had a fling with G.B.S.
 * Fights between the stars plagued rehearsals, and Beerbom Tree, the actor-manager playing Higgins, would often show up late, leave rehearsals to chat with friends in his office or simply refuse to work with Mrs Campbell.
 * When Eliza blurted out “not bloody likely” on opening night, it caused a national scandal in Great Britain. Church groups and scholars tried to have the line censored and the show shut down. It never happened and the show went on to become Shaw’s most popular play, running for months in the West End and touring the United States and Europe.
 * A flower-girl named Eliza was invited to attend the first production. She sat in the front row and thought that the language of the play was too rude for a real flower-girl.
 * In the final moment of the play’s first production, Beerbohm Tree as Higgins ended the play by throwing Eliza a bunch of flowers as she stood in the doorway to say good-bye. Shaw himself hated the gesture. It was not in the script and he felt it falsely suggested a future romance between Eliza and Higgins.
 * It has often been said, but not proven, that GBS sent Sir Winston Churchill two tickets for opening night with a note: “Here are two tickets, so you can bring a friend - if you have one.” Churchill replied, “Thanks for the tickets, but I can’t make it for opening night. I’ll come the second night - if you have one.”
 * Mrs Patrick Campbell refused the offer to play Mrs. Higgins in the 1938 film with Leslie Howard. She had loved the play and had toured it around the world, but by this time however, she had no interest in leaving Paris (or her beloved dog) to go to London . The film went on to win two Oscars including one for Best Screenplay, which Shaw himself had written under the supervision of the producers. Shaw fought the happy ending made by the film’s producers, but they went ahead anyway.
 * My Fair Lady, the musical adaptation of the play, which premiered on Broadway in 1956, went on to make more money for the Shaw estate than all of the profits from his many other plays put together.
 * In his landmark biography Bernard Shaw, Michael Holroyd describes the play as “an ingeniously constructed work of art, integrating Faustian legend with Cinderella fairy tale, a comedy of manners with a parable of socialism.” But Shaw still worried about the play’s tremendous popularity: “There must be something radically wrong with the play if it pleases everyone,” he protested, “but at the moment I cannot find what it is.”