George Bernard Shaw and Related Topics

Illustration depicting Mrs. Patrick Campbell as Eliza Doolittle

Pygmalion (play)

8 links

A Sketch Magazine illustration of Mrs. Patrick Campbell as Eliza Doolittle from 22 April 1914. Shaw wrote the part of Eliza expressly for Campbell, who played opposite Herbert Beerbohm Tree as Henry Higgins.

After creating the role of Col. Pickering in the London production, Philip Merivale (second from right) played Henry Higgins opposite Mrs. Patrick Campbell (right) when Pygmalion was taken to Broadway (1914)

Lynn Fontanne (Eliza) and Henry Travers (Alfred Doolittle) in the Theatre Guild production of Pygmalion (1926)

First American (serialized) publication, Everybody's Magazine, November 1914

Lynn Fontanne as Eliza Doolittle in the Theatre Guild production of Pygmalion (1926)

Julie Andrews as flower girl Eliza Doolittle meets Rex Harrison as Professor Henry Higgins in the 1956 musical adaptation of Pygmalion, My Fair Lady.

Cinematographer Harry Stradling poses with Audrey Hepburn as Eliza Doolittle on the set of the 1964 movie musical My Fair Lady.

Pygmalion is a play by George Bernard Shaw, named after the Greek mythological figure.

Fabian Society

8 links

British socialist organisation whose purpose is to advance the principles of democratic socialism via gradualist and reformist effort in democracies, rather than by revolutionary overthrow.

Blue plaque at 17 Osnaburgh St, where the Society was founded in 1884

The Fabian Society was named after "Fabius the Delayer" at the suggestion of Frank Podmore, above

Wolf in Sheep's Clothing, the original coat of arms

Immediately upon its inception, the Fabian Society began attracting many prominent contemporary figures drawn to its socialist cause, including George Bernard Shaw, H. G. Wells, Annie Besant, Graham Wallas, Charles Marson, Sydney Olivier, Oliver Lodge, Ramsay MacDonald and Emmeline Pankhurst.

Arms and the Man

6 links

Production photograph of Florence Farr portraying Louka in Arms and the Man, 1894

Actors of the Smith College Club of St. Louis are sketched rehearsing for an all-woman amateur benefit performance of George Bernard Shaw's "Arms and the Man" in December 1908. No men were allowed in the rehearsals or at the performance. The illustration is by Marguerite Martyn of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

The scene in The Chocolate Soldier in which Bumerli (the equivalent of Bluntschli) enters the bedroom of Nadina (the equivalent of Raina), in a 1910 London production

Arms and the Man is a comedy by George Bernard Shaw, whose title comes from the opening words of Virgil's Aeneid, in Latin:

Gertrude Elliott and Johnston Forbes-Robertson in Caesar and Cleopatra, New York, 1906

Caesar and Cleopatra (play)

5 links

Poster for a Federal Theatre Project production

1953 production in Tel Aviv, with Shimon Finkel and Miriam Zohar

Caesar and Cleopatra is a play written in 1898 by George Bernard Shaw that depicts a fictionalized account of the relationship between Julius Caesar and Cleopatra.

Gielgud as Benedick in Much Ado About Nothing, 1959

John Gielgud

17 links

English actor and theatre director whose career spanned eight decades.

Centre: Marion, Kate and Ellen Terry and, far right, Fred Terry at Ellen's Silver Jubilee matinée, Drury Lane, 12 June 1906. Everyone shown was a member of the Terry family.

Noël Coward with Lilian Braithwaite, his, and later Gielgud's, co-star in The Vortex

Mrs Patrick Campbell and Edith Evans, 1920s co-stars with Gielgud

The Old Vic (photographed in 2012), where Gielgud honed his skill as a Shakespearean

Mabel Terry-Lewis, Gielgud's aunt and co-star in The Importance of Being Earnest

Gielgud in a publicity photograph for Secret Agent (1936)

Gielgud and Dolly Haas in Crime and Punishment, Broadway, 1947

Edmond O'Brien (Casca, left) and Gielgud (Cassius) in Julius Caesar (1953)

Much Ado About Nothing: Gielgud as Benedick and Margaret Leighton as Beatrice, 1959

Gielgud (left) as Joseph Surface, and Ralph Richardson as Sir Peter Teazle, The School for Scandal, 1962

He played Sir Sydney Cockerell, director of the Fitzwilliam Museum, in a representation of a friendship between Cockerell, Bernard Shaw and Laurentia McLachlan, a Benedictine nun.

Ralph Richardson

11 links

English actor who, with John Gielgud and Laurence Olivier, was one of the trinity of male actors who dominated the British stage for much of the 20th century.

Peggy Ashcroft in 1936, near the beginning of her long professional association with Richardson

Katharine Cornell, leading lady in Richardson's Broadway debut

Laurence Olivier, Richardson's co-director of the Old Vic, photographed in 1972

Peggy Ashcroft, with whom Richardson frequently co-starred

Richardson in Long Day's Journey into Night (1962)

John Gielgud (left) as Joseph Surface, and Richardson as Sir Peter Teazle, The School for Scandal, 1962

John Gielgud, long-time colleague and friend

Harold Pinter, author of No Man's Land; he later played Hirst, the role created by Richardson.

The grave of Richardson, his wife Meriel Forbes, and their son, Charles, in Highgate Cemetery in north London.

He was in four plays, the last of which, Bernard Shaw's Too True to Be Good, transferred to the New Theatre in London the following month.

Major Barbara

3 links

Louis Calvert as Andrew Undershaft and Harley Granville-Barker as Adolphus Cusins in Major Barbara (1905)

Major Barbara is a three-act English play by George Bernard Shaw, written and premiered in 1905 and first published in 1907.

Pygmalion (1938 film)

3 links

Scott Sunderland, Leslie Howard and Wendy Hiller in Pygmalion

Wendy Hiller and Leslie Howard in Pygmalion

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.

Henrik Ibsen

6 links

Norwegian playwright and theatre director.

Charitas, the ship captained by Henrik's grandfather of the same name when he died at sea outside Grimstad in 1797. The Dannebrog was the common flag of Denmark–Norway.

A silhouette (ca. 1820) of the Altenburg/Paus family in Altenburggården, with Ibsen's mother (far right), maternal grandparents (centre) and other relatives. It is the only existing portrait of either of Ibsen's parents.

The roof and one of the windows of Altenburggården can be seen in the middle of the picture. Altenburggården was Marichen Altenburg's childhood home, and Henrik Ibsen lived there aged 3–8

Venstøp outside Skien, originally the Ibsen family's summer house, where they lived permanently 1836–1843. It was a reasonably large farm with large, representative buildings.

Ibsen (far left) with friends in Rome, ca. 1867

Letter from Ibsen to his English reviewer and translator Edmund Gosse: "30.8.[18]99. Dear Mr. Edmund Gosse! It was to me a hearty joy to receive your letter. So I will finally personally meet you and your wife. I am at home every day in the morning until 1 o'clock. I am happy and surprised at your excellent Norwegian! Your amicably obliged Henrik Ibsen."

Ibsen caricatured by SNAPP for Vanity Fair, 1901

Plaque to Ibsen, Oslo marking his home from 1895-1906

He influenced other playwrights and novelists such as George Bernard Shaw, Oscar Wilde, Arthur Miller, Marguerite Yourcenar, James Joyce, Eugene O'Neill, and Miroslav Krleža.