Pygmalion (1913) is a play by George Bernard Shaw based on Ovid's tale of Pygmalion. It tells the story of Henry Higgins, a professor of phonetics (based on phonetician Henry Sweet), who makes a bet with his friend Colonel Pickering that he can turn a Cockney flower girl, Eliza Doolittle, into a refined society lady merely by teaching her how to speak with an upper class accent and training her in etiquette.

In the process, Higgins and Doolittle grow close, but she ultimately rejects his domineering ways and declares she will marry Freddy Eynsford-Hill, a poor and young gentleman.

Shaw wrote the lead role of Eliza Doolittle for Mrs Patrick Campbell (though at 49 she was considered by some to be too old for the part). Due to delays in mounting a London production and Campbell's injury in a car accident, the first English presentation did not take place until some time after Pygmalion premiered at the Hofburg Theater in Vienna on October 16, 1913, in a German translation by Shaw. The first production in English finally opened at His Majesty's Theatre, London on April 11, 1914 and starred Mrs Patrick Campbell as Eliza and Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree as Henry Higgins; it was directed by Shaw himself. (From wikipedia.org)

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The play led to a series of adaptations:

    * Pygmalion (1938), a film adaptation by Shaw
    * My Fair Lady (1956), the famous Broadway musical by Lerner and Loewe, based on the 1938 film
    * My Fair Lady (1964), a film version of the musical starring Audrey Hepburn and Rex Harrison
    * Pretty Woman (1990), a modern film take on Pygmalion starring Julia Roberts and Richard Gere.
    * She's All That (1999), a modern film take on Pygmalion

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