George Bernard Shaw’s classic play has been remade or outright stolen since the dawn of cinema. Every teen makeover movie owes its origins to PYGMALION. Most people are introduced to the story via the musical MY FAIR LADY. Though versions came before and many have come after, Leslie Howard’s version is universally considered the best.

Truly the adaptation is quick, smart and never stagy. If you have lived in Paris Hilton land your whole life and don’t know the story I’ll briefly outline it. Prof. Henry Higgins (Leslie Howard, GONE WITH THE WIND) is a top linguist who takes a bet with Col. George Pickering (Scott Sunderland, 1939’s GOODBYE, MR. CHIPS) that he can pass a cockney “guttersnipe” off as a princess by transforming her speech and manner. His test subject is the flower girl Eliza Doolittle (Wendy Hiller, A MAN FOR ALL SEASONS), who meets him on the street one night and visits his house the next day asking to have speech lessons so that she can get a proper job at a flower shop.

Higgins is an irascible snob and elitist, who bullies poor Eliza. Howard plays him to perfection. He’s even better than Rex Harrison in MY FAIR LADY. Hiller is also wonderful as Eliza, really selling the transformation. She’s more believable as a flower girl than Audrey Hepburn could ever be. I also liked that in this film, Eliza’s transformation isn’t as complete as in MY FAIR LADY. In that film, it works because of Hepburn and the grandness of the musical genre, but here Hiller’s performance and the film’s lack of music create a more grounded and natural feeling. We believe it more. The performers truly become their characters and we don’t doubt them for a second.

The story has been done so many times because its message is still as poignant today as it was in 1912 when the play debuted. Its chief targets are class and social standing. Eliza tells Higgins that she likes Col. Pickering more because he treats her like he’d treat a princess — like a lady. Higgins counters that he treats a flower girl and a princess like a flower girl just the same. This exchange so defines Higgins, who has less manners then Eliza despite all his elite posturing.

After her transformation, Eliza laments that when she was poor she sold flowers, but never herself. Now that she’s a lady, she’s not fit to sell anything else. The statement encapsulates the entire meaning of the story, while saying so much about the double standards of our society that still exist in some form today. For a story, we’ve all seen done a hundred times in various forms, this film is remarkable in that it still makes the tale seem fresh. Howard and Hiller are the key reasons. This version hasn’t been forgotten after more than 60 years because it has never been bested since.