Oscar Got It Wrong!: Best Adapted Screenplay 1983

The Contenders:

Betrayal
The Dresser
Educating Rita
Reuben, Reuben
Terms of Endearment (winner)

Oscar Got It Wrong!: Best Actor 1983

The Contenders:

Tom Courtenay: The Dresser
Albert Finney: The Dresser
Michael Caine: Educating Rita
Tom Conti: Reuben, Reuben
Robert Duvall: Tender Mercies (winner)

Oscar Got It Wrong!: Best Actress 1983

The Contenders:

Julie Walters: Educating Rita
Meryl Streep: Silkwood
Shirley MacLaine: Terms of Endearment (winner)
Debra Winger: Terms of Endearment
Jane Alexander: Testament

My Fair Pygmalion

Film: Educating Rita
Format: DVD from NetFlix on rockin’ flatscreen.

In the original story of Pygmalion, a sculptor who turns the heads of all the ladies makes a statue that is so perfect that he falls in love with it. When George Bernard Shaw wrote the play of the same name, he had a character “make” a woman from the streets into a lady of society, with love blooming along the way. Toss in music and you’ve got My Fair Lady. Hell, turn the man into a millionaire and the woman into a hooker and you’ve got Pretty Woman. In the case of Educating Rita, we keep the professor, but the woman who is to be turned into something more is a much more willing recipient of her education. In fact, it’s she who starts process.

Susan White (Julie Walters in her big screen debut) is a hairdresser who, based on her accent, is from Liverpool. She’s definitely blue collar and she and those around her have very low expectations of her, life, and the rest of the world. She wants more, though. She dubs herself “Rita” and decides to enroll in courses at Open University in the UK. Open University was doing distance learning before it was cool. The idea is the students would meet with a tutor once a week, do assignments on their own, and eventually test through their courses. Rita’s assigned tutor is Frank Bryant (Michael Caine).