A Loverly Theory

Olive Maude Turner, who died unmarried in 1992, may have been the last living descendant of the real-life "Eliza Doolittle."

Suffolk-based writer Ann Gander is researching the possibility that the playwright George Bernard Shaw based characters in his play Pygmalion - which later became the musical My Fair Lady - on real people.

According to her theory, the fictional relationship between Professor Henry Higgins and his protégé Eliza Doolittle was drawn from the real life pairing of Sir Frederic Leighton and Ada Pullan.

Just as Professor Higgins trains Eliza to behave like a lady, the real life Sir Frederic - who was a famous painter - also paid for the low-born Ada to be tutored. [Link]

In return, Ada agreed to pose nude for the artist—a plot twist that appears only in the NC-17 version of My Fair Lady.

Grand Wizard Descendant Kurses Klan Konnection

From The (Memphis, Tenn.) Commercial Appeal:

Forrest descendant has a different take

By Wendi C. Thomas

August 14, 2005

In the clamorous debate over what to do with the three city parks that honor the Confederacy, there's a man whose story hasn't been told.

His name is Douglas Turner Ward, and he is a descendant of Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest.

He's also a black man, a founder of the Negro Ensemble Company in New York, an established playwright who was inducted into the Theater Hall of Fame.

Ward, 75, is not one to suffer fools gladly, especially ones who turn a blind eye to Forrest's sins as a slave trader and a grand wizard of the country's first terrorist organization, the Ku Klux Klan.

[snip]

[Read the whole story]

Ward suggests that they "Put [Forrest's] grave where it belongs, back in the woods . . . or wherever he came from." They'd have to dig an awfully deep hole to put him where he truly belongs.