THIS WEEKS (Dr Mardy) PUZZLER (fairly easy): On November 2, 1950, this man died at age 94 in his home in Ayot St. Lawrence, Hertfordshire, England (his death resulted from injuries sustained after falling from a ladder while pruning trees on his property). Yes, that is correct, he was pruning trees while on a ladder. And yes, he was 94 at the time. On the evening his death was announced, theaters around the world were darkened in his honor. Born in Dublin in 1856, he was raised in an atmosphere of genteel poverty and exposed to the world of the arts by his mother. At 20, he moved to London, determined to become a writer. His first attempts at writing were unsuccessful, and he never fared well as a novelist. But he ultimately became one of historys most famous writers, awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1925. His most famous play was based on a Greek myth about a sculptor whose love for one of his creations brought the sculpture to life. The play, first staged in 1913, centers around a bet made by Henry Higgins, a professor of phonetics. His contention was that he could train an illiterate cockney girl to speak English so properly she could pass for a duchess at an Ambassadors garden party. The play was first brought to the screen in 1938 (an effort that landed our Mystery Author an Oscar for Best Screenplay). That 1938 film served as the inspiration for Alan Lerner and Frederick Loewe’s 1956 Broadway musical My Fair Lady (with Rex Harrison as Higgins and Julie Andrews as Eliza Doolittle). The play was a spectacular success, winning a ton of awards and running for over six years. When the play was adapted into a film version in 1964 (this time with Audrey Hepburn as Eliza), it was also a huge hit, nominated for a dozen Academy Awards, and winning eight, including Best Picture, Best Actor, and Best Director. This weeks Mystery Author penned hundreds of memorable observations, often putting them into the mouths of characters in his plays. One of my all-time favorites was offered by a character in the play Candida (1898): We have no more right to consume happiness without producing it than to consume wealth without producing it. Who is the author? What was the title of his 1913 play?
Posted on: Sun, 02 Nov 2014 14:01:02 +0000
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