On Sun, 05 Jun 2005 20:51:06 GMT, "Tom Donaly"
wrote:

George Bernard Shaw was a Fabian socialist.

Hi Tom,

To amplify, George Bernard Shaw and GBS were two different people.

What you offered, following, is true of Shaw.

He believed that the aim
of most people of the society of his day was to become so wealthy as
to become economic parasites who didn't produce and didn't contribute.
He didn't like this, so he preached against it in his works. Since
producing wealthy parasites was what the business side of Hollywood
has always been about,

But how he reacted to:

it's no wonder they emasculated his script.

was as GBS, a one man advertising agency for George Bernard Shaw. In
that respect, GBS and Hollywood were on parallel tracks, even if they
didn't converge. When GBS/Shaw fulminated, it was over other issues.

Basically the Fabian society's ethic was pie-in-the-sky economics that
faded with Victoria. Shaw was infinitely more radical, and still more
current today than ever with his up-front stories of sexual politics.
Absolutely no one goes to a Shavian play to ponder the plight of
masses burning the barricades before the classist society. Likewise,
no one reads G.K. Chesterton and "The Man Who Was Thursday" when they
can catch Father Brown instead. If you had your druthers, would you
watch an edited version of "Man and Superman," or its interior play
"Don Juan in Hell?"

Hollywood rebelled far more vigorously against ALL of Shaw's women
protagonists than giving even the slightest thought about any economic
theory. Your comment about Hollywood emasculating his scripts; in
fact they pumped these scripts up with so much testosterone that "My
Fair Lady" is a travesty of a woman submitting to and being redeemed
by a man. It is this kind of cheesecake that sells, and selling
movies is the ONLY thing Hollywood cares about.

If they thought they could sell communism (Warren Beatty's "Reds")
then we would have been watching the life of Stalin in technicolor and
surround-sound for the past 70 years. Anybody here ever see the movie
"Greed?" This came from the pen of Frank Norris, one of the most
acidic writers against capitalism ever to come down the pike (and a
contemporary of Shaw). Both of these movies were well made, by
acclaimed directors and backed with wheelbarrows full of cash. To put
it bluntly, neither of these examples drew crowds. Hollywood backs a
winner and doesn't give a damn about ANY message as long as it doesn't
interfere with selling popcorn.

73's
Richard Clark, KB7QHC