My Fair Lady is a musical with a book and lyrics by Alan Jay Lerner and music by Frederick Loewe. The story, based on the 1938 film adaptation of George Bernard Shaw's 1913 play Pygmalion, concerns Eliza Doolittle, a Cockney flower girl who takes speech lessons from professor Henry Higgins, a phonetician, so that she may pass as a lady. Despite his cynical nature and difficulty understanding women, Higgins grows attached to her.
Deborah Jane Trimmer CBE, known professionally as Deborah Kerr, was a British actress. She was nominated six times for the Academy Award for Best Actress, becoming the first person from Scotland to be nominated for any acting Oscar. Kerr was known for her roles as elegant, ladylike but also sexually repressed women that deeply yearn for sexual freedom.
The Lady Eve is a 1941 American screwball comedy film written and directed by Preston Sturges and starring Barbara Stanwyck and Henry Fonda. The film is based on a story by Monckton Hoffe about a mismatched couple who meet on board an ocean liner. In 1994, The Lady Eve, which is included on many all-time "Top 100" lists, was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".
Dame Wendy Margaret Hiller, was an English film and stage actress who enjoyed a varied acting career that spanned nearly 60 years. Writer Joel Hirschorn, in his 1984 compilation Rating the Movie Stars, described her as "a no-nonsense actress who literally took command of the screen whenever she appeared on film". Despite many notable film performances, Hiller chose to remain primarily a stage actress.
George Emlyn Williams, CBE was a Welsh writer, dramatist and actor.
Major Barbara is a three-act English play by George Bernard Shaw, written and premiered in 1905 and first published in 1907. The story concerns an idealistic young woman, Barbara Undershaft, who is engaged in helping the poor as a Major in the Salvation Army in London. For many years, Barbara and her siblings have been estranged from their father, Andrew Undershaft, who now reappears as a rich and successful munitions maker. The father gives money to the Salvation Army, which offends Barbara because she considers it "tainted" wealth. The father argues that poverty is a worse problem than munitions and claims that he is doing more to help society by giving his workers jobs and a steady income than she is doing by giving people free meals in a soup kitchen.
Pygmalion is a play by Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw, named after the Greek mythological figure. It premiered at the Hofburg Theatre in Vienna on 16 October 1913 and was first presented on stage in German. Its English-language premiere took place at His Majesty's Theatre in London's West End in April 1914 and starred Herbert Beerbohm Tree as phonetics professor Henry Higgins and Mrs Patrick Campbell as Cockney flower-girl Eliza Doolittle.
A Yank in the R.A.F. is a 1941 American war drama film directed by Henry King and starring Tyrone Power, Betty Grable and John Sutton. Released three months before the attack on Pearl Harbor plunged the United States into World War II, it is considered a typical early-World War II production. Originally titled The Eagle Squadron, it is based on a story by "Melville Crossman", the pen name for 20th Century Fox studio chief Darryl F. Zanuck. It follows an American pilot who joins the Royal Air Force (RAF), during a period when the United States was still neutral.
Unfaithfully Yours is a 1948 American screwball black comedy film written and directed by Preston Sturges, and starring Rex Harrison, Linda Darnell, Rudy Vallée and Barbara Lawrence. The film is about a jealous symphony conductor who imagines three different ways to deal with the supposed infidelity of his beautiful wife—murder, forbearance, and a suicidal game of Russian roulette—during a concert of three inspiring pieces of classical music. At home, his attempts to bring any of his fantasies to life swiftly devolve into farce, underscored with humorous adaptations of the relevant music. Although the film, which was the first of two Sturges made for Twentieth Century-Fox, received mostly positive reviews, it was not successful at the box office.
Gabriel Pascal was a Hungarian film producer and director whose best-known films were made in the United Kingdom.
My Fair Lady is a 1964 American musical comedy-drama film adapted from the 1956 Lerner and Loewe stage musical based on George Bernard Shaw's 1913 stage play Pygmalion. With a screenplay by Alan Jay Lerner and directed by George Cukor, the film depicts a poor Cockney flower-seller named Eliza Doolittle who overhears a phonetics professor, Henry Higgins, as he casually wagers that he could teach her to speak English so well she could pass for a duchess in Edwardian London or better yet, from Eliza's viewpoint, secure employment in a flower shop.
Pygmalion is a 1938 British film based on the 1913 George Bernard Shaw play of the same name, and adapted by him for the screen. It stars Leslie Howard as Professor Henry Higgins and Wendy Hiller as Eliza Doolittle.
Please Don't Eat the Daisies is a 1960 Metrocolor comedy film in CinemaScope starring Doris Day and David Niven, made by Euterpe Inc., and distributed by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. The movie was directed by Charles Walters and produced by Joe Pasternak, with Martin Melcher as associate producer.
I Live in Grosvenor Square is a British comedy-drama romance war film directed and produced by Herbert Wilcox. It was the first of Wilcox's "London films" collaboration with his wife, actress Anna Neagle. Her co-stars were Dean Jagger and Rex Harrison. The plot is set in a context of US-British wartime co-operation, and displays icons of popular music with the purpose of harmonising relationships on both sides of the Atlantic. An edited version was distributed in the United States, with two additional scenes filmed in Hollywood, under the title A Yank in London.
The Strange Affair of Uncle Harry, also known as Uncle Harry and The Zero Murder Case, is a 1945 American film noir directed by Robert Siodmak and starring George Sanders, Geraldine Fitzgerald and Ella Raines. It is based on the stage play Uncle Harry by Thomas Job, which was first performed in 1938.
The Long Dark Hall is a 1951 British mystery, suspense, courtroom-drama, crime film directed by Reginald Beck and Anthony Bushell and starring Rex Harrison, Lilli Palmer and Raymond Huntley. It was based on the 1947 novel A Case to Answer by Edgar Lustgarten. It was made at Walton Studios.
Eliza Doolittle is a fictional character and the protagonist in George Bernard Shaw's play Pygmalion (1913) and its 1956 musical adaptation, My Fair Lady.
Walter Hudd was a British actor and director.
This is a summary of 1941 in music in the United Kingdom.
David Staller is an American theatre director and actor. He is the founding artistic director of the Off-Broadway theatre company, Gingold Theatrical Group.
