The Disciple and his Devil

Valerie Pascal. First edition (stated). Dust Jacket: Very Good. An unclipped jacket designed by Ellen Elfenbein. Author photo on rear jacket by Cecil Beaton. Hardcover: Very Good+ NY: McGraw-Hill, 1970. Beautiful purple cloth with gold emblem on cover and lettering on spine. No writing or markings in the book, 356 pp. Black and white photographic plates. Some toning to dust-jacket, generally a very good copy.

This book is Valerie Pascal's biography of her husband-a candid memoir of a man whose career spanned continents, who knew and worked with virtually every important film and theater personality of his day, who savored brilliant triumphs yet fought with stubborn courage the misfortunes that circumstances and his own willful nature brought upon him. It is also a fascinating portrait - highlighted by numerous lively quotations from the unpublished Shaw-Pascal correspondence.

"The man is a genius; that is all I have to say about him." So wrote George Bernard Shaw of Gabriel Pascal, the mercurial Hungarian who first successfully brought his plays to the screen - producing the unforgettable film versions of Pygmalion, Major Barbara, and Caesar and Cleopatra - and whose idea it was to transform Pygmalion into the legendary musical, My Fair Lady. Genius Pascal undoubtedly was. Shaw called him the Diaghileff of films, and in his conception of the possibilities of the movie medium he was far ahead of his time.