page_title: The Taming of the Shrew on screen
section_title: Television
hierarchical_section_title: The Taming of the Shrew on screen / Television
caption_attribution_description: Photo of Lilli Palmer and Maurice Evans in the Hallmark Hall of Fame presentation of Taming of the Shrew.
context_page_description: There have been numerous on screen adaptations of Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew. The best known cinematic adaptations are Sam Taylor's 1929 The Taming of the Shrew and Franco Zeffirelli's 1967 The Taming of the Shrew, both of which starred the most famous celebrity couples of their era; Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks in 1929 and Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton in 1967. On television, perhaps the most significant adaptation is the 1980 BBC Television Shakespeare version, directed by Jonathan Miller and starring John Cleese and Sarah Badel.
  The play has also been reworked numerous times for both cinema and television. Some of the better known adaptations include Kiss Me Kate, a 1953 filmic adaptation of Cole Porter's 1948 musical based on the play, McLintock!, Il Bisbetico Domato, 10 Things I Hate About You, Deliver Us from Eva and Isi Life Mein...!.
context_section_description: The earliest screening of the play is often inaccurately reported to have been broadcast on BBC Television Service in 1939, directed by Dallas Bower and starring Margaretta Scott and Austin Trevor. However, this was an adaptation of Garrick's Catharine and Petruchio, not Shakespeare's Shrew.
  The first television performance of the Shakespearean text was in the United States in 1950, broadcast live on CBS as part of the Westinghouse Studio One series. A heavily edited sixty-minute modern-dress performance, written by Worthington Miner and directed by Paul Nickell, it starred Lisa Kirk and Charlton Heston. Katherina's opening speech in 4.3, beginning with "the more my wrong, the more his spite appears" was delivered in the form of a voice-over, an unusual technique at the time. The production is also notable insofar as when she hugs Petruchio after her climactic speech, she winks at the camera. Diana E. Henderson writes "this version relentlessly reiterates conventional post-war ideas of gender difference [...] the production as a whole serves to legitimatise the domestication of women." In 1952, BBC Television Service screened a live adaptation as part of their Sunday Night Theatre series, directed by Desmond Davis and starring Margaret Johnston and Stanley Baker. In 1956, NBC's Hallmark Hall of Fame screened the first colour television adaptation, directed by George Schaefer, and starring Lilli Palmer and Maurice Evans (who also produced). The initial script was written by Michael Hogan, who included the Induction, and kept Sly on stage for the entire show, which culminated with him beating his own wife, much to the delight of the actors who have just performed for him. This script, however, was heavily rewritten by Hall of Fame producer William Nichols, who removed the frame. The production instead opens with Grumio (Jerome Kilty) addressing the camera directly,  inviting the audience to view the "antic players." A commedia dell'arte-style production, Katherina and Petruchio first meet in a boxing ring, with their initial encounter, literally, turning into a boxing match.
  In 1982, CBC broadcast Peter Dews' production from the Stratford Shakespeare Festival in Ontario. Directed for television by Norman Campbell, it starred Sharry Flett and Len Cariou, with Desmond Ellis as Sly. This is the first known television version to include the Sly framework. Elizabeth Schafer describes the effect of using the Induction in a TV production as "Brechtian without ever being too solemn." Also in 1982, the play inaugurated the Channel 4 series Shakespeare Lives! Conceived by director Michael Bogdanov as a direct reply to the BBC Television Shakespeare, which he loathed, the series examined six plays using National Theatre actors and a live audience, with whom Bogdanov and the actors would speak, often re-acting scenes using different suggestions from audience members. The Taming of the Shrew episode was the basis of a two-part Roundhouse Theatre workshop starring Suzanne Bertish and Daniel Massey, which addressed whether or not the play demeans women, or depicts how they are demeaned in society.
  In 1986, the television series Moonlighting produced an episode entitled "Atomic Shakespeare", written by Ron Osborn and Jeff Reno (with a writing credit for William 'Budd' Shakespeare), and directed by Will Mackenzie. The episode recasts the show's main characters in a self-referential comedic parody of The Taming of the Shrew. The episode opens with a boy who is annoyed that he has to read The Shrew for his homework, rather than watching his favourite programme, Moonlighting itself. He goes to his room and begins reading, and the episode then takes place in his mind as he imagines the members of the cast of Moonlighting in an adaptation of the play itself, with Cybill Shepherd as Katherina and Bruce Willis as Petruchio.
  In 1994, BBC aired an adaptation as part of Shakespeare: The Animated Tales. This version adapted the end of The Taming of a Shrew to round out the frame; after Sly announces he now knows how to tame a shrew, he proudly walks 
caption: Lilli Palmer and Maurice Evans in the 1956 Hallmark Hall of Fame adaptation directed by George Schaefer.
exif: {"Image ExifOffset": "69", "Image Software": "Adobe Photoshop Express Editor"}