Gabriel Pascal

Gabriel Pascal (born Gábor Lehel; 4 June 1894 – 6 July 1954) was a Hungarian film producer and director whose best-known films were made in the United Kingdom.

Pascal was the first film producer to successfully bring the plays of George Bernard Shaw to the screen. His most successful production was Pygmalion (1938), for which Pascal received an Academy Award nomination as its producer. Later adaptations of Shaw plays included Major Barbara (1941), Caesar and Cleopatra (1945) and Androcles and the Lion (1952).

Pascal was born Gábor Lehel on 4 June 1894 in Arad, Transylvania, Kingdom of Hungary, Austro-Hungarian Empire (now Romania). His wife wrote in her book on Pascal's relationship with Shaw that her husband's "origin was shrouded in a mystery which, I often suspected, he enjoyed thickening with contradictory remarks. When people tried to probe into his past, he had a tailor-made answer for each inquirer."

He claimed to have been an orphan taken from a burning building as a child and raised first by Gypsies before being put into an orphanage. He also claimed that the Gypsies taught him to beg, steal, and do acrobatic tricks. It is unclear what parts of his account of his childhood are true as there are no formal records of him before the age of 17 when he was enlisted in military school in Holics, Hungary (now Holíč, Slovakia), by a mysterious Jesuit priest.

Pascal, who decidedly was unfit for military life, became interested in theatre and studied at the Academy of the Hofburgtheater in Vienna. Later, his interest expanded into the newly burgeoning cinema, and he made films in Germany and Italy with sporadic success. Becoming a teetotaler at an early age, he smoked cigars prodigiously, later provoking admonishments from George Bernard Shaw that he would ruin his voice.

Pascal had one son, Peter, conceived in Germany with his landlady's sister Elsie, during the delirium of a fever. Unable to care even for himself, Pascal fled to the Netherlands. After World War II ended, Pascal returned to Germany to search for his son Peter, but he was listed among the missing Hitler-Jugend. Elsie had been killed by a bomb.

As a young man, Pascal found a job tending horses in Hungary. Leading the horses through the forest to a stream each day, Pascal developed the habit of riding naked and bareback through the Hungarian countryside. One day he accidentally rode stark naked through the outdoor set of a silent movie in production and was "discovered". The film's director asked him to repeat the ride for the cameras, and he joined the group. Soon he was making his own movies.

Pascal had another auspicious encounter when he was young while walking along the shore of the Mediterranean Sea. A much older man, George Bernard Shaw, was swimming naked holding onto a buoy. A conversation ensued, and Shaw dared the young Pascal on the shore to take off his clothes and join him in the water. He was impressed when Pascal immediately did so, and this began their friendship. Shaw enjoyed Pascal's youthful enthusiasm for art and his bravado, and invited him to visit him one day when he was broke. This chance meeting was to play a major role in Pascal's later career.