1) I like musicals too, but would
Pygmalion be more palatable for those of you who don't? I was curious if there were filmed versions, and I looked it up, and it looks like there was one in 1938 starring Leslie Howard and Wendy Hiller, and one in 1981 starring Twiggy and Robert Powell. And it looks like both are available on youtube.
2) I always hated the ending. The best part of discovering
Pygmalion when I was in high school was learning that the crappy ending was something tacked on so that the musical would have a Hollywood happy ending. (Note, I watched the ends of both the filmed versions on youtube just now, and the 1938 one has the crap ending too. Hollywood. The 1981 one has the good ending. British television.) My favorite part of the play is Shaw's afterword:
The rest of the story need not be shown in action, and indeed, would hardly need telling if our imaginations were not so enfeebled by their lazy dependence on the ready-makes and reach-me-downs of the ragshop in which Romance keeps its stock of "happy endings" to misfit all stories. . . .
Eliza, in telling Higgins she would not marry him if he asked her, was not coquetting: she was announcing a well-considered decision. . . .
This being the state of human affairs, what is Eliza fairly sure to do when she is placed between Freddy and Higgins? Will she look forward to a lifetime of fetching Higgins's slippers or to a lifetime of Freddy fetching hers? There can be no doubt about the answer. Unless Freddy is biologically repulsive to her, and Higgins biologically attractive to a degree that overwhelms all her other instincts, she will, if she marries either of them, marry Freddy.
And that is just what Eliza did.
The whole thing's on
Project Gutenberg if you're interested.
I agree about
Roman Holiday. It did not have a "happy ending to misfit the story." Instead it had the right, and true, and perfect ending.
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