Pygmalion (play) - in Popular Culture

In Popular Culture

Films

• Hoi Polloi (1935), a film adaptation by The Three Stooges.
• Willy Russell's 1980 stage comedy Educating Rita and the subsequent film adaptation are similar in plot to Pygmalion.
• The First Night of Pygmalion (1972), a play depicting the backstage tensions during the first British production.
• Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen (2004), a film starring Lindsay Lohan where she auditions for a modernized musical version of Pygmalion called "Eliza Rocks".

Television

• The Man from U.N.C.L.E.'s third season episode "The Galatea Affair" (1966) is a spoof of My Fair Lady. A crude barroom entertainer (Joan Collins) is taught to behave like a lady. Noel Harrison, son of Rex Harrison, star of the My Fair Lady film, is the guest star.
• In The Beverly Hillbillies episode "Pygmalion and Elly" Sonny resumes his high-class courtship of Elly May by playing Julius Caesar and Pygmalion.
• In The Andy Griffith Show season 4 episode "My Fair Ernest T. Bass", Andy and Barney attempt to turn the mannerless Ernest T. Bass into a presentable gentleman. References to "Pygmalion" abound: Bass' manners are tested at a social gathering, where he is assumed by the hostess to be a man from up north. Several characters comment "if you wrote this into a play nobody'd believe it."
• In the Remington Steele season 2 episode "My Fair Steele", Laura and Steele transform a truck stop waitress into a socialite to flush out a kidnapper. Steele references the 1938 movie Pygmalion and My Fair Lady, and references the way in which Laura has "molded" him into her fictional creation.
• In the Magnum, P.I. episode "Professor Jonathan Higgins" of Season 5, Jonathan Higgins tries to turn his punk rocker cousin into a high society socialite. Higgins even references Pygmalion in the episode.
• The Family Guy episode One If By Clam, Two If By Sea involves a subplot with Stewie trying to refine Eliza Pinchley, his new Cockney-accented neighbor, into a proper young lady. He makes a bet with Brian that he can improve Eliza's vocabulary and get her to speak without her accent before her birthday party. Includes "The Life of the Wife", a parody of the song "The Rain in Spain" (from My Fair Lady).
• The plot of the Star Trek: Voyager episode "Someone to Watch Over Me" is loosely based on Pygmalion.
• Pygmalion is the inspiration for The Simpsons episode entitled "Pygmoelian," in which infamously ugly character Moe, of Moe's Tavern, has a facelift. It was also parodied to a heavier extent in the episode "My Fair Laddy", where the character being changed is uncouth Scotsman Groundskeeper Willie.
• The iCarly episode "iMake Sam Girlier" is loosely based on Pygmalion.
• The Season 7 King of the Hill episode "Pigmalian" describes an unhinged local pig magnate who attempts to transform Luanne into the idealized woman of his company's old advertisements.
• In the The King of Queens episode "Gambling N'Diction" Carrie tries to lose her accent for a job promotion by being taught by Spence. The episode was renamed to "Carrie Doolittle" in Germany.