Perhaps we were wrong to expect a conventional biography of actor Rex Harrison, because Patrick Garland’s book isn’t quite like that. The author eschews what might be regarded as the standard openings, either – “Reginald Carey ’Rex’ Harrison was born in Huyton, Lancashire, England, on March 5, 1908, to Edith Mary (Carey) and William Reginald Harrison, a cotton broker… ”, or, alternatively, open up with a juicy cause célèbre in the subject’s later life before reverting to the “Reginald Carey ’Rex’ Harrison was born in Huyton, Lancashire, England, on March 5, 1908,… ” chronological approach.
Rather, it quickly becomes apparent to the reader that the crux of Garland’s book concerns his own role as the director and Harrison as the star of a “My Fair Lady” stage production that toured the United States in 1980-81. Garland doesn’t worry himself too much about what went before in Harrison’s life – though of course there was a lot – and he wasn’t about to go racing off to Huyton to find out. (Working for television once, he had the services of an excellent research assistant, and sent her to Huyton for the fun of it, whereupon she was unable to find the house or road where Harrison said he and his two sisters had been raised, or the spot where his grandmother supposedly cruised the lawns in her electric wheelchair.)
Here is one biography that doesn’t follow the typically oft-seen promises about “drawing on new interviews, unpublished papers, diaries, memoirs”, et cetera. Harrison’s early life is mostly covered by the actor’s own occasional reminiscences, not all of which are to be relied upon, it seems. Still, who knew that he lost sight in one eye due to childhood mumps?
The two men met in Nice in 1976 and then were collaborators and good-enough friends through 14 years and four productions until Harrison’s death in New York on June 2, 1990 aged 82 years. His illustrious career went back a lot further than that, of course, the fledgling actor having begun on stage at the Liverpool Playhouse in 1924 and having made his West End debut in 1936 in the play “French Without Tears”, which was his breakthrough role.
All up, he made some 45 films, 14 television and radio appearances, and 17 substantial theatrical productions, building up to starring roles. Harrison’s greatest stage triumph came during the 1956-59 seasons with his portrayal of professor of phonetics Henry Higgins in “My Fair Lady”, which was Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe’s musical adaptation of George Bernard Shaw’s 1913 play “Pygmalion”. He repeated the role for Warner Brothers’s lavish 1964 screen adaptation, opposite Audrey Hepburn, winning the Oscar for Best Actor.
As for Patrick Ewart Garland (1935-2013), he became one of British theatre’s most acclaimed producers and directors, as well as a writer, actor and anthologist. A leading light of the BBC Television arts department for 12 years, he was twice artistic director of the Chichester Festival, from 1981 to 1985 and 1990 to 1994. The festival is a month-long celebration of the arts each June and July in the historic city in West Sussex, UK, and it was there that Garland found himself directing Harrison in the French farce “Monsieur Perrichon’s Travels” in 1976.
The collaboration led to working with Harrison on a selection of George Bernard Shaw criticism at the Edinburgh Festival in 1977 and then the aforementioned revival of “My Fair Lady”. It toured New Orleans, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Miami, Boston and Chicago for some six months before arriving at Broadway in New York. Garland kept journals all his life, and he drew on these for the book, which was published in 1998 and remains available.
Harrison is fondly remembered at The Budapest Times for two films in particular, as Charles Condomine in the 1945 adaptation of Noël Coward’s play “Blithe Spirit”, and as the dissolute Vivian Kenway in “The Rake’s Progress” the same year. These and a lot more don’t get a mention by Garland, and there are only brief references to his six marriages, for instance.
If ever there was a cause célèbre, it was in 1947 when, while married to actress Lilli Palmer, Harrison began an affair with another actress, Carole Landis. She was apparently crushed when he refused to divorce Palmer, and took her own life with pills in 1948 after spending the previous evening with Harrison, the last person to see her alive.
He and her maid found the body but Harrison waited several hours before calling a doctor and police, then denied knowing any motive for her death and told the coroner he did not know of any rumoured second suicide note to himself. This all briefly damaged his career, and his contract with Fox was ended by mutual consent, but Garland skips it all.
While best known for his portrayals of urbane, eccentric English gentlemen in sophisticated comedies and social satires, the behind-the-scenes Harrison was without doubt self-centered and possessed of an ugly tongue. “Incomparable” seems about right, thank heaven. Also, irascible, irritating, insulting, insecure, preposterous, egotistical, envious – and gifted.
We find Reginald Carey “Rex” Harrison, consumer of producers’ budgets with flights on Concorde, suites at the Ritz and Savoy in London, very expensive meals and wines, and hell-driver on the French Riviera. Nearly everyone around him – tailors, waiters, sommeliers, fellow thespians, musicians, Customs officers – became “cunts”, his favourite word of opprobrium. He was a narcissist always looking to denigrate others, albeit sometimes wittily.
At the same time the leading man could be charming and generally good company. For Garland it was a relationship that was constantly to delight and frustrate him, perhaps more than anything he could remember before or since. The author, who worked with many stars of stage and film, could take it on the chin – mostly. He understood that allowances could be made for such artists, though it’s better not to be around when the volcano erupts.
His portrait is not intended to be a mauling. He came to praise Caesar, not to bury him, for instance Harrison’s “sublimely elegant and reposeful” performances. Something taxing at the time could often be funny in retrospect. Told that his violent rages could give him a heart attack, Harrison shouted: “I don’t have heart attacks. I give them to other people.”
Harrison corrected Garland once when he spoke of light comedy not high comedy, the actor calling it a very important distinction. But what exactly is the “high comedy” of the book’s title? One definition is: “High comedy or pure comedy is a type of comedy characterised by witty dialogue, satire, biting humour, wordplay, or criticism of life. The term was coined in England in 1877 by English novelist and poet George Meredith for his ’An Essay on Comedy’.”
Apart from our learning such a thing, here are a lot of fun anecdotes, ripostes, rivalries and jokes, such as the one about the little boy who tells Dad he is going to be an actor when he grows up. “You can’t do both, son” replies Dad. As for Harrison’s own two sons, on his deathbed he was incredibly cruel to them, telling one to “Drop dead” before expiring himself.
As the “star” of the “My Fair Lady” revival, Harrison dominated just about everybody, his very short temper exploding like a bomb if he was crossed. Unfortunately he had been given casting control and he caused a great deal of damage, ultimately sinking the show by trying to control aspects he should have left alone, rather than just concentrating on his own part.
The book has its limited scope but gets better and better as we delve deeper into a complex man. Final word to Harrison’s friend Harold French who, when the actor was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II at Buckingham Palace on June 17, 1989, commented: “What has Rex ever done for England, except live abroad on his illegal income-tax and call everybody a cunt?”
