Gabriel Pascal (born Gábor Lehel; 4 June 1894 – 6 July 1954) was a Hungarian film producer and director whose best-known films were made in the United Kingdom.
Pascal was the first film producer to successfully bring the plays of
George Bernard Shaw
George Bernard Shaw (26 July 1856 – 2 November 1950), known at his insistence simply as Bernard Shaw, was an Irish playwright, critic, polemicist and political activist. His influence on Western theatre, culture and politics extended from ...
to the screen. His most successful production was ''
Pygmalion'' (1938), for which Pascal received an
Academy Award
The Academy Awards, better known as the Oscars, are awards for artistic and technical merit for the American and international film industry. The awards are regarded by many as the most prestigious, significant awards in the entertainment in ...
nomination as its producer. Later adaptations of Shaw plays included ''
Major Barbara
''Major Barbara'' is a three-act English play by George Bernard Shaw, written and premiered in 1905 and first published in 1907. The story concerns an idealistic young woman, Barbara Undershaft, who is engaged in helping the poor as a Major i ...
'' (1941), ''
Caesar and Cleopatra'' (1945) and ''
Androcles and the Lion
Androcles ( el, Ἀνδροκλῆς, alternatively spelled Androclus in Latin), is the main character of a common folktale about a man befriending a lion.
The tale is included in the Aarne–Thompson classification system as type 156. The ...
'' (1952).
Early life
Pascal was born Gábor Lehel
on 4 June 1894 in
Arad,
Transylvania
Transylvania ( ro, Ardeal or ; hu, Erdély; german: Siebenbürgen) is a historical and cultural region in Central Europe, encompassing central Romania. To the east and south its natural border is the Carpathian Mountains, and to the west the ...
,
Austria-Hungary
Austria-Hungary, often referred to as the Austro-Hungarian Empire,, the Dual Monarchy, or Austria, was a constitutional monarchy and great power in Central Europe between 1867 and 1918. It was formed with the Austro-Hungarian Compromise of ...
(now Romania). His wife wrote in her book on Pascal's relationship with Shaw that her husband's "origin was shrouded in a mystery which, I often suspected, he enjoyed thickening with contradictory remarks. When people tried to probe into his past, he had a tailor-made answer for each inquirer."
He claimed to have been an orphan taken from a burning building as a child and raised first by
Gypsies before being put into an orphanage. He also claimed that the Gypsies taught him to beg, steal, and do acrobatic tricks. It is unclear what parts of his account of his childhood are true as there are no formal records of him before the age of 17 when he was enlisted in military school in Holics, Hungary (now
Holíč, Slovakia), by a mysterious Jesuit priest.
Pascal, who decidedly was unfit for military life, became interested in theatre and studied at the Academy of the
Hofburgtheater in Vienna. Later, his interest expanded into the newly burgeoning cinema, and he made films in Germany and Italy with sporadic success. Becoming a
teetotaler at an early age, he smoked cigars prodigiously, later provoking admonishments from
George Bernard Shaw
George Bernard Shaw (26 July 1856 – 2 November 1950), known at his insistence simply as Bernard Shaw, was an Irish playwright, critic, polemicist and political activist. His influence on Western theatre, culture and politics extended from ...
that he would ruin his voice.
Pascal had one son, Peter, conceived in Germany with his landlady's sister Elsie, during the delirium of a fever. Unable to care even for himself, Pascal fled to the Netherlands. After World War II ended, Pascal returned to Germany to search for his son Peter, but he was listed among the missing
Hitler-Jugend. Elsie had been killed by a bomb.
Early career
As a young man, Pascal found a job tending horses in Hungary. Leading the horses through the forest to a stream each day, Pascal developed the habit of riding naked and bareback through the Hungarian countryside. One day he accidentally rode stark naked through the outdoor set of a silent movie in production and was "discovered". The film's director asked him to repeat the ride for the cameras, and he joined the group. Soon he was making his own movies.
Pascal had another auspicious encounter when he was young while walking along the shore of the Mediterranean Sea. A much older man,
George Bernard Shaw
George Bernard Shaw (26 July 1856 – 2 November 1950), known at his insistence simply as Bernard Shaw, was an Irish playwright, critic, polemicist and political activist. His influence on Western theatre, culture and politics extended from ...
, was swimming naked holding onto a buoy. A conversation ensued, and Shaw dared the young Pascal on the shore to take off his clothes and join him in the water. He was impressed when Pascal immediately did so, and this began their friendship. Shaw enjoyed Pascal's youthful enthusiasm for art and his bravado, and invited him to visit him one day when he was broke. This chance meeting was to play a major role in Pascal's later career.
Pascal began his producing career making
silent movies in Italy for German distribution through
UFA Studios
UFA GmbH, shortened to UFA (), is a film and television production company that unites all production activities of the media conglomerate Bertelsmann in Germany. Its name derives from Universum-Film Aktiengesellschaft (normally abbreviated as ...
in Berlin. His directorial debut was ''Populi Morituri,'' in which he also starred. He later produced comedies in Germany.
Meher Baba and India
In 1934, during a trip to Hollywood, Pascal was contacted by
Princess Norina Matchabelli (wife of the perfume manufacturer) about a film project based on the teachings of
Meher Baba. Pascal became very interested in this project, bringing writers
Hy Kraft and
Karl Vollmöller into helping him work up treatments and even making a trip to India to discuss the project further with Meher Baba. By the time Pascal arrived in India, however, Meher Baba did not seem in any hurry to complete the film, saying it could wait. He invited Pascal to travel with him in India. Most ordinary men would have been discouraged, but Pascal took energetically to the austere life of an eastern ascetic, even shedding his western garb for eastern clothing. He took a liking to Meher Baba and maintained a correspondence with him for the rest of his life. Meher Baba nicknamed Pascal as his "Phoenix" and alternately his "Black Panther."
Pascal remained in close correspondence with his master Meher Baba until the end of his life; he met with him for the last time in 1952 in Scarsdale, New York. Even in this final meeting, they discussed films which Pascal planned to produce for Meher Baba.
Thirty years before
Richard Attenborough's film ''
Gandhi'', Pascal had a written agreement with
Jawaharlal Nehru
Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru (; ; ; 14 November 1889 – 27 May 1964) was an Indian anti-colonial nationalist, secular humanist, social democrat—
*
*
*
* and author who was a central figure in India during the middle of the 20t ...
, the prime minister of India, to produce a movie of
Gandhi's life.
[See Page 219 states that " Nehru had given his consent, which he confirmed later in a letter to Gabriel: 'I feel... that you are the man who can produce something worthwhile. I was greatly interested in what you told me about this subject he Gandhi filmand your whole approach to it."]
Collaborations with Shaw
Pascal took a ship back from India to the United States, penniless but undaunted. He landed in San Francisco where he spent some time deciding what to do next. He decided to approach playwright George Bernard Shaw, whom he had met many years earlier. During that earlier meeting Shaw, who had been impressed with the young Pascal's passion for art and cinema, had told him to pay him a visit when he was entirely penniless. Pascal sought out Shaw, first by going to New York City hidden in the toilet of a railroad train, then convincing a sea captain to give him a lift to England.
Somehow he convinced Shaw to give him the rights to his plays, beginning with ''
Pygmalion'' (1938), which he released as a film. It was an enormous international hit, both critically and financially. Pascal tried to convince Shaw to let ''Pygmalion'' be turned into a musical, but the outraged Shaw explicitly forbade it, having had a bad experience with the operetta ''
The Chocolate Soldier'' (based on Shaw's ''
Arms and the Man''). Pascal was the only person to convince Shaw to adjust his scripts to the new medium of cinema, gaining concessions from Shaw that no one else could. Pascal created the line for ''Pygmalion'' (later used by
Lerner and Loewe in their musical version ''
My Fair Lady
''My Fair Lady'' is a musical theatre, musical based on George Bernard Shaw's 1913 play ''Pygmalion (play), Pygmalion'', with a book and lyrics by Alan Jay Lerner and music by Frederick Loewe. The story concerns Eliza Doolittle, a Cockney flowe ...
'') "
The rain in Spain stays mainly in the plain." Shaw, who publicly was referring to Pascal as a genius, added the line into the script.
[Pascal (1970) ''The Disciple...'', p. 83]
In 1938, Pascal was named as one of the world's more famous men by ''Time'' magazine, along with
Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler (; 20 April 188930 April 1945) was an Austrian-born German politician who was dictator of Nazi Germany, Germany from 1933 until Death of Adolf Hitler, his death in 1945. Adolf Hitler's rise to power, He rose to power as the le ...
and the pope. He followed the film ''Pygmalion'' with ''
Major Barbara
''Major Barbara'' is a three-act English play by George Bernard Shaw, written and premiered in 1905 and first published in 1907. The story concerns an idealistic young woman, Barbara Undershaft, who is engaged in helping the poor as a Major i ...
'' (1941), which he directed as well as produced. ''Major Barbara'' was filmed in London during
aerial bombing by the Nazis. During air raids, the crew and cast had to dodge into bomb shelters. Pascal never stopped the production, and the film was completed on schedule. Pascal became more and more extravagant: ''
Caesar and Cleopatra'' (1945), the next Pascal film of a Shaw play, was the most expensive British movie ever made at that time. It was a major financial and critical flop. Pascal insisted on importing sand from Egypt to achieve the right cinematic colors for the film. In this period, Shaw had become more difficult to work with. After the success of ''Pygmalion'', which was shortened in its transition from stage to screen, the playwright increasingly refused to let his plays be cut.
Shaw heightened his praise of Pascal during this period. He wrote in 1946:
Pascal produced ''
Androcles and the Lion
Androcles ( el, Ἀνδροκλῆς, alternatively spelled Androclus in Latin), is the main character of a common folktale about a man befriending a lion.
The tale is included in the Aarne–Thompson classification system as type 156. The ...
'' (1952), but by this time he was suffering from cancer.
Death
Pascal died of cancer in July 1954.
References
Further reading
* Donald P. Costello. ''The Serpent's Eye, Shaw and the Cinema.'' Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 1965.
* Marjorie Deans. ''Meeting at the SphinxGabriel Pascal's Production of Bernard Shaw's Caesar and Cleopatra.'' London: MacDonald, 1946.
* Bernard Shaw and Gabriel Pascal. ''Bernard Shaw and Gabriel Pascal (Selected Correspondence of Bernard Shaw).'' Bernard F. Dukore (Editor). Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1996. .
External links
*
''March of Time'' Newsreel with Gabriel Pascal
{{DEFAULTSORT:Pascal, Gabriel
1894 births
1954 deaths
People from Arad, Romania
Hungarian film producers
Followers of Meher Baba
Deaths from cancer in New York (state)