Now that The Apprentice has been mercifully canceled, Donald Trump is branching out into new television shows:
Down through the ages, artists have reinterpreted Greek mythology’s Pygmalion story, about a sculptor who falls in love with his statue of a woman, which comes to life and they all live happily ever after:
A.D. 2-8: Poet Ovid uses it in “Metamorphoses.”
1748: Jean-Philippe Rameau tosses off Pygmalion opera.
1770: Jean-Jacque Rousseau weighs in with Pygmalion melodrama.
1816: Gaetano Donizetti pens opera “Il Pigmalione.”
1912: George Bernard Shaw writes play “Pygmalion,” in which sculptor is phonetics prof and statue is Cockney girl transformed into lady (adapted into “My Fair Lady” in the ’50s).
2007: Donald Trump develops “Lady or a Tramp” for Fox.
Fox, Trump and RDF USA (“Wife Swap,” “Ice-T’s Rap School”) have rolled up their sleeves to develop the reality series in which party girls gone wild — a.k.a. “tramps” — are transformed into ladies, or at least debutantes, which is the next best thing.
Apparently, Donald is in the market for the next wife.
