This Irish playwright set an impossible Oscar record that lasted 77 years

In the history of OscarIrish playwright George Bernard Shaw set an impressive record that lasted more than seven decades. The Academy Awards, also known as the Oscars, are recognized as the most prestigious award that can be won in the film industry. Since its creation, almost a century ago, many winners have set different records in Oscar historyincluding John Ford, who set a driving record that has stood for 72 years, and La La Terrawhich broke the 86-year-old Oscar record in 2017.

Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw is often considered one of the greatest playwrights in history. Throughout your life, he wrote over 60 plays that focused on history, education, and class privilegewith some of his best work, including Guns and Man (1894), Caesar and Cleopatra (1898), and Saint Joan (1923). In 1938, he set an impressive Oscar record that was not achieved again for 77 years.

George Bernard Shaw won an Oscar and a Nobel Prize

He won the Oscar for best adapted screenplay in 1938 for Pygmalion

In 1925, Shaw received the Nobel Prize for Literature, with the Nobel Prize Committee recognizing him”for his work marked by idealism and humanity, with his stimulating satire often imbued with a singular poetic beauty“. Shaw accepted the prize, but donated the prize money to fund translations (via National Gallery of Ireland).

Shaw’s most recognized work is his 1912 play Pygmalionwhich tells the story of a flower seller, Eliza Doolittle, who receives elocution lessons from professor Henry Higgins; the play was adapted into a film in 1938, starring Leslie Howard and Wendy Hiller. The film adaptation of Pygmalion was highly praised, receiving four Oscar nominations, and Shaw won the award for Best Adapted Screenplay (via Oscar).

Shaw was controversially upset by the recognition and, according to The weekstated “It’s perfect nonsense! Offering me a prize like this is an insult, as if they had never heard of me before – and it is very likely that they never have.” Despite his statements, his Oscar was later placed in the Shaw’s Corner Museum in England. George Bernard Shaw became the only person to win both an Oscar and a Nobel Prize until 2016, when singer Bob Dylan, who won the Oscar for Best Original Song in 2001, he received the Nobel Prize for Literature.

Pygmalion was later adapted into My Fair Lady

My Fair Lady won 8 Academy Awards in 1965

Pygmalion proved to be George Bernard Shaw’s most popular work, as it was adapted into a hit Broadway musical in 1956 called My Beautiful Lady, which starred young Julie Andrews as Eliza Doolittle. The musical remains faithful to Shaw’s original play and contains popular songs including “I Could Have Danced All Night” and “Get Me To The Church On Time”. The musical won 6 Tony Awards in 1957, including Best Musical. A film adaptation of My Beautiful Lady was released in 1964, starring Rex Harrison and Audrey Hepburn as Henry Higgins and Eliza Doolittle, respectively.

The film adaptation of My Beautiful Lady was released to critical acclaim, receiving praise for its faithfulness to the play, and has since been considered one of Broadway’s best film adaptations. My Beautiful Lady it received an impressive 12 Oscar nominations in 1965 and won eight, including Best Picture. My Beautiful Lady proved popular both as a musical and as a film, but would not have been possible if not for the success of George Bernard Shaw’s film Pygmalion game, which allowed him to make history in the Oscar in the 1930s.

Sources: Nobel Prize, National Gallery of Ireland, Oscar, The week