GEORGE BERNARD SHAW

Wairarapa Times-Age, 28 September 1939, Page 4

GEORGE BERNARD SHAW

AND THE MAN ,WHO DISCOVERED HIM.

The man who virtually discovered George Bernard Shaw visited him in London, on the set of “Pygmalion,” the first Shaw play to be made into a fea-ture-length film. He is Professor Siegfried Trebitseh, son of a wealthy textile merchant.

Thirty-seven years ago he went to London on a holiday and, by accident, saw a play by a then unknown Irish playwright, performed by an amateur theatrical company. Afterward he met the author and he asked for the right to translate his play into German. It was Shaw's sensational success on the Continent, through Professor Trebitsch’s translations, that brought him recognition in London. The Austrian Emperor, Francis Joseph, asked for the rights to perform all Shaw’s plays first at his own Imperial Theatre in Vienna. Shaw, however, refused this honour, saying that

while recognising the autocratic powers of the Emperor of Austria, he reserved for himself the right to do with his own works whatever he liked. ■ Professor Trebitseh, who has himself made a fortune out of the royalties of the Shaw plays in Germany, fled to Czechoslovakia on the eve of Hitler’s entry into Vienna.