Rex Harrison

Rex Harrison 1908-90, English actor. Born Reginald Carey, he entered repertory theater at 16 as an apprentice. Harrison, noted for his suave, insouciant style, has appeared in many plays, including Anne of the Thousand Days (1949), Bell, Book, and Candle (1950), and In Praise of Love (1974). His performance in both the stage (1956) and film (1964) versions of My Fair Lady won enormous popular and critical acclaim. Harrison's other films include The Ghost and Mrs. Muir (1947), The Fourposter (1952), and Cleopatra (1962).

Bibliography: See his autobiography.

Harrison, [Reginald Carey] Rex (1908–90), actor. The slim, suave, slightly reptilian English‐born leading man made his first American appearance as the witty friend Tubbs Barrow in Sweet Aloes (1936). The play was a failure, and Harrison did not return to the New York stage until after he had become a celebrated film star. He then starred as Henry VIII in Anne of the Thousand Days (1948), publisher Shepherd Henderson in Bell, Book and Candle (1950), the philandering Duke Hereward in Venus Observed (1952), and the evil spirit called the Man in The Love of Four Colonels (1953). But his greatest success came when he created the role of Henry Higgins in My Fair Lady (1956). Walter Kerr wrote of his performance, “Mr. Harrison's slouch was a rhythmic slouch. His voice was a showman's voice—twangy, biting, confident beyond questioning. . . . But most of all Mr. Harrison was still an actor, believing every cranky, snappish, exhilarating syllable of the Alan Jay Lerner lyric he was rattling off, and a fourteen‐carat character simply crashed its way onto the stage.” He played the role for several years and revived it afterwards. Subsequent performances of note include the General in The Fighting Cock (1959), the crazed Emperor Henry IV (1973), the indifferent husband Sebastian Crutwell in In Praise of Love (1974), the aged lover Hawkins in The Kingfisher (1979), Captain Shotover in Heartbreak House (1983), Lord Gresham in Aren't We All? (1985), and Lord Porteous in The Circle (1989). Autobiography: Rex, 1974. Biography: The Incomparable Rex: The Last of the High Comedians, Patrick Garland, 1998.

Harrison, Sir Rex Carey (1908–90), English actor, who made his first appearance at the Liverpool Playhouse in 1924 and was first seen in London in 1930. His good looks and elegant presence led almost inevitably to his being cast in a succession of featherweight parts in comedy, though his performances in Rattigan's French without Tears (1936) and Coward's Design for Living (1939) hinted at reserves of irony and anger. During the Second World War he was in the RAF, and he then went into films. He returned to the stage to play Henry VIII in Maxwell Anderson's Anne of the Thousand Days (NY, 1948) and the Uninvited Guest in T. S. Eliot's The Cocktail Party (London, 1950). He then starred in New York in Van Druten's Bell, Book and Candle (1951; London, 1954), Fry's Venus Observed (1952), and Ustinov's The Love of Four Colonels (1953). In 1956 he was seen in his most famous role, Henry Higgins in My Fair Lady, a musical based on Shaw's Pygmalion, which he played for two years on Broadway before repeating the part in London; he showed exactly the right tetchy authority and charming intolerance for Shaw's language-loving professor. Later he played the General in Anouilh's The Fighting Cock (NY, 1959) and the title-roles in Chekhov's Platonov (London, 1960) and Pirandello's Henry IV (NY, 1973; London, 1974). He also appeared in Shaw's Caesar and Cleopatra (NY, 1977) and Heartbreak House (London and NY, 1983); Lonsdale's Aren't We All? (London, 1984; NY, 1986); Barrie's The Admirable Crichton (London, 1988); and Maugham's The Circle (NY, 1989). He was also a major film star.