Pygmalion

"Wanted for radio series: one girl who speaks New Yorkese, has bad diction and careless enunciation . . ."

This want ad, signed "Henry Higgins," ran for two days in three New York City newspapers; it drew more than 100 replies. Seven of the young women who applied displayed a suspicious literacy by insisting that their names were Eliza Doolittle.*

The "Henry Higgins" behind the ad was actually Jack Grogan of Manhattan's enterprising WNEW, who is about to launch an educational program called "How to Speak Better English." As each girl talked to Grogan she received a sort of preliminary test. This week, the 15 worst (including one who said she suffered from "deplorably deficient fluency" and another who complained that "everything I say comes out horizontal") will compete at a final studio audition.

Each contestant will read a short speech containing key words: oyster, oil, saw, idea, Long Island. Presumably, the girl who most consistently approximates erster, erl, sawr, idear and lonGUYland will be the winner.

The girl who passes the finals will receive, over the air, a free course in English from Italian-born Actress Elissa Landi (who is also a novelist). For the past three years Miss Landi has been teaching radio & television students at the College of the City of New York how to tidy up their bad accents.

* In Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion, Phonetician Henry Higgins undertakes to make a lady of Cockney Eliza Doolittle by teaching her to speak properly.

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