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SHAW, GEORGE BERNARD. (1856-1950). Nobel Prize-winning Irish playwright and critic; well known for his many plays including The Devil’s Disciple and Pygmalion. DS. (“G. Bernard Shaw”). 4pp. Tall 4to. London, March 20, 1940. A partly printed contract with Hungarian-born, English movie producer Gabriel Pascal (1894-1954) for a motion picture production his one-act play The Shewing-up of Blanco Posnet. Born in Dublin, Shaw made a name for himself in London as a music and theater critic during the 1880s and 1890s, writing for The Pall Mall Gazette, The Saturday Review and other publications. While busy writing fiction and plays, he also authored pamphlets for London’s Fabian Society, members of the British intelligentsia interested in socialism. Likened by some to Shakespeare, Shaw combined satire, comedy and social criticism into more than 50 plays, which include Mrs. Warren’s Profession, Arms and the Man, Man and Superman, St. Joan, and Pygmalion. Shaw set his The Shewing-up of Blanco Posnet in the American West and described it as “really a religious tract in dramatic form” centered on a debate about morality. However, because of dialogue regarding God, it was deemed blasphemous and denied a performance license by the British Examiner of Plays. Shaw bristled at the censorship, which he discussed in the 1909 preface to the play and produced the play in at the Abbey Theatre in Dublin, beyond the jurisdiction of the Lord Chamberlain and where James Joyce and W.B. Yeats praised it. Pascal, who was born in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, deliberately obscured his origins claiming that he was rescued from a burning building as an infant and raised by Gypsies. Pascal studied filmmaking in Vienna and appeared in and produced films in Germany and Italy. His long and fruitful partnership with Shaw is said to have begun when Pascal, walking along the shore of the Mediterranean, struck up a conversation with Shaw who was skinny-dipping and dared Pascal to join him, which the younger man did, impressing the playwright and marking the beginning of their friendship. “Shaw, who was amused by Pascal and called him a ‘genius,’ wrote, ‘Gabriel Pascal is one of those extraordinary men who turn up occasionally – say once in a century. When Gabriel appeared from the blue I just looked at him and handed him Pygmalion to experiment with,’” (“How Shaw Gave ‘Pygmalion’ to a Broke Director,” The New York Times). Despite his displeasure with prior screen adaptations, the notoriously difficult Shaw allowed Pascal to produce Pygmalion stipulating that he be involved in the production. The result, released in 1938, was an enormous hit. Shaw was so pleased that he agreed to Pascal producing Major Barbara in 1941, Caesar and Cleopatra in 1945 and Androcles and the Lion in 1952. Unfortunately, Pascal died before he could produce The Devil’s Disciple, which was eventually released in 1959, and starred Burt Lancaster, Kirk Douglas and Laurence Olivier. The terms of our contract are filled in by hand and by type including two extra paragraphs at the end. Witnessed by Blanch Patch, Shaw’s secretary from 1920-1950. Folded and in very fine condition.