REX HARRISON: A Biography

by Roy with Philip Masheter & Martin Masheter Moseley ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 6, 1987

A plunge into the heart of a towering egocentrist, not stylishly written but nonetheless hypnotic. The authors see Harrison on a par with Gielgud and Olivier, which perhaps is excusable after their long labors of research. The fact is, what Harrison does best, the bravura wit and pouring charm, he does better than anyone else alive. Harrison absorbed the rudeness and misogyny of Henry Higgins so completely that it seems all his earlier roles were way stations on the ascent to that summit--and that the rest of his career has been a falling off. Is this an unfair estimate? Harrison was a smash as Caesar in Cleopatra, giving a marvelously sincere reading of all the best lines in the picture. We recall him fondly as the drumbeating Salvationist in Major Barbara, the brittle hero bedeviled by his wife's ghost in Blithe Spirit, the jealousy-maddened orchestra conductor in Preston Sturges' Unfaithfully Yours, and for the weight he brought to his role as the King in Anna and the King of Siam. His stage triumphs have included T.S. Eliot's The Cocktail Party, Shaw's Heartbreak House, Chekhov's Platonov and Pirandello's The Emperor Henri IV. But when loading the other pan, the scale dips with some notable film flops, including The Foxes of Harrow, King Richard and the Crusaders, The Agony and the Ecstasy and several stage failures. We follow Rex's career both as an actor and wife-chewer. He is a terrible snob, who insults his own wine steward at home (for serving wine Rex himself has bought), and an actor renowned for his rudeness and need for absolute attention on the stage (so much so that he blue-pencils out other actors' lines that might detract from him). He has survived nearly all of his six wives, including the late Lilli Palmer (the longest-lasting), the tragic Kay Kendall (whose fatal leukemia he knew about three years before she did), and the alcoholic suicide Rachel Roberts. Paramour Carole Landis also was an alcoholic suicide. A swine and a ladykiller, whose genius sheds allure from every page.

Pub Date: April 6, 1987

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: St. Martin's

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 1987

Categories: NONFICTION