When he was 16, Rex Harrison was told to forget about acting and find some other line of work.
At 81, he remembers the incident vividly. ”I was 16, not good for much-except cricket-until I discovered theater.” Engaged at the Liverpool Playhouse through the manipulations of his father, a stockbroker, Rex Carey Harrison made his debut in 1924-speaking a single line-in a play called
”Thirty Minutes in a Street.”
”Truth is, I made a mess of it, garbled the few syllables I had to say.” But he continued to act, even against the strongly worded advice of the company`s director, William Armstrong, who suggested he find some other line of work. By 1927, Rex Harrison was touring the provinces. Three decades later, he was world famous as Henry Higgins in ”My Fair Lady.”
”And the fact is, I wound up with an astonishing career,” Harrison says, saying the word ”astonishing” as though, he, too, is still astonished. (Harrison doesn`t say so, but William Armstrong must have spent several years tasting his own astonishment.) He went on to triumph in theater and film. Although his refusal to play Shakespeare clearly has kept him outside the castle shared by the royalty of the British stage (Olivier, Richardson, Gielgud, Redgrave and Scofield), he seems to have no regrets.
He`s relatively candid about most aspects of his career. His memories hesitate only on questions relating to his six wives. He prompty rings down the curtain at the slightest mention of Carole Landis (1919-48), the Hollywood actress who, according to the gossip hens of the era, committed suicide in despair over their romance. (Harrison was then married to his second wife, actress Lilli Palmer.) Harrison once believed that actors should be married to actresses, an observation he later canceled, saying: ”Absolute rubbish-actors should be married to wives.” His wives have been Marjorie Thomas, Lilli Palmer, Kay Kendall, Rachel Roberts, Elizabeth Rees (ex-wife of Richard Harris) and Mercia Mildred Tiner.
On the telephone from Baltimore, where he is appearing in W. Somerset Maugham`s ”The Circle,” Harrison frequently replenishes his memory by calling out ”when?” or ”where?” to his wife, Mercia. ”How long have we been married? Oh, I`d say 10 years-is that right, Mercia? No?” Mercia distantly says, ”13.” Harrison offers ”13” into the phone. (Records indicate, however, that they married in 1978.)
”I have two sons, Noel and Carey. Noel`s the eldest, an actor. Noel`s done Henry Higgins. Carey`s a playwright and a novelist and works for the BBC. Grandchildren? Oh they`ve had lots of babies. How many? Hmmmm, a lot. . .let`s see, four. . .? Yes, four grandchildren.”
Maugham`s ”The Circle” was a Broadway hit during the 1921-22 season. Although Brooks Atkinson called it ”conventional drama,” he went on to describe Maugham`s characters as poised: ”they sinned with the elegance of people bred to vice and ease.” ”The Circle” owes its current revival strictly to Harrison.
”I read it recently, liked it enormously and felt in the back of my mind that it would go. This will be the first time it has been revived in America. It`s a good play. Elliot Martin, who has produced some of the things I`ve been in, is as keen on it as I am. It`s a very good piece for actors, and we have Glynis (Johns) and Stewart (Granger). I never met Maugham. Ah, yes, I did meet Shaw, during the filming of `Major Barbara,` whenever that might have been. . . Alexander Korda produced it, you know.
”Shaw came to the studio, visited the set every day. And, well, there was this particular scene that had Wendy (Hiller) and me perplexed. It was a love scene, and we were having trouble with it, I mean it was a bit high-flown. Wendy and I went to Shaw to explain some of our difficulties. He listened, took the script, sat and read it solemnly over. He looked up and said, `Occhh, what a terrible scene it is,` Harrison says, mimicking Shaw`s Dublin brogue. ”Then he said, `I don`t know what to do about it,` and simply wandered off into the distance. He was very sweet, a very sweet man!”
If Shaw`s pedantic Professor Higgins is the capstone of Harrison`s career, Harrison is modest about his initial involvement with the musical Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe derived from Shaw`s ”Pygmalion.” He says the script came to him ”unfinished” without, for example, two of Higgins` most notable songs, ”I`m An Ordinary Man,” ”I`ve Grown Accustomed to Her Face.” While Harrison ”knew it was a lovely play,” he was ”of two minds about it.” The role was a gamble. For one thing, he couldn`t much sing, ”but an enormous plus was how Alan matched Shaw in his lyrics; the whole project suddenly rose in my mind.” Harrison spoke-sung his songs with an individual, clipped-if not Oxonian-speech/patter clarity that quickly became a vocal style for nonsinging (or nonmusical) actors.
He played Henry Higgins for two straight years on Broadway followed by a year`s run in the West End. In 1981, he appeared in a disappointing revival that ran only 119 performances. Harrison won an Academy Award for his filmed Higgins. (”Jack Warner wanted Cary Grant for my part,” he says, politely,
”and James Cagney for Dolittle.”)
During the conversation, Harrison occasionally uses lines he wrote for
”Rex,” his 1974 biography. Talking about the scandal and skulduggery surrounding the filming of ”Cleopatra,” with Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, he says it was ”an ignominious, farcical business,” then, discreetly referring to the hot-and-heavy extra-marital affair then going on between Taylor and Burton, Harrison says, ”As everyone knows, the balloon went up.” Both phrases occur in his book.
Although ”Rex” praises Taylor (”one of the most professional actresses I`ve ever met”), part of the text suggests exactly the opposite, a star ready to hold up production to suit her own whim.
On the phone, Harrison estimates Taylor`s talent, saying, ”Well, she relied on her looks. She was a professional, not bad. . . All I really have to say is that playing Caesar in `Cleopatra`-given all that was going on-was a lot more bloody difficult than playing Henry Higgins.”
After 65 years in the theater, Harrison is thinking about ”bringing things to a stop.” He was talking about the possibility of retirement ”just this morning, at breakfast with my wife,” then, admits, however, that he`s still ”deeply bitten.”
As keen as he still is about the theater, he shows much the same enthusiasm for his painting. He works in acrylic and describes his style as French Impressionist (”Landscapes, that sort of thing”). He took classes
”seven or eight years ago” with Clifford Enright at the New School in New York, and now paints with Enright, who`s become a friend.
He refers to a recent ”brush-stroke holiday” in Barbados. Harrison says, vaguely, that an exhibition of his work is to be held ”somewhere in New England sometime, I believe, during the run of `The Circle` in Boston.” He calls over his shoulder to his wife for confirmation, but she seems to have left the room. He`d be happy to sell his paintings. For how much?
”Oh, good heavens! Whatever anyone wants to give me for the lot!”
