Sir Reginald Carey
"Rex" Harrison (5 March 1908 – 2 June 1990) was an
English actor of stage and screen.
Harrison began his
career on the stage in 1924. He won his first Tony Award for his
performance as Henry VIII in the play Anne of the Thousand Days in
1949. He won his second Tony for the role of Professor Henry Higgins
in the stage production of My Fair Lady in 1957. He reprised the role
for the 1964 film version, which earned him a Golden Globe Award and
Best Actor Oscar.
In addition to his
stage career, Harrison also appeared in numerous films, including
Anna and the King of Siam (1946), The Ghost and Mrs. Muir (1947),
Cleopatra (1963), and Doctor Dolittle (1967). In July 1989, Harrison
was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II.
In 1975, Harrison
released his first autobiography. His second, A Damned Serious
Business: My Life in Comedy, was published posthumously in 1991.
Harrison was married
six times and had two sons: Noel and Carey Harrison. He continued
working in stage productions until shortly before his death from
pancreatic cancer in June 1990 at the age of 82.
Harrison was married
six times. In 1942, he divorced his first wife, Colette Thomas, and
married actress Lilli Palmer the next year; they later appeared
together in numerous plays and films, including The Four Poster.
In 1947, while
married to Palmer, Harrison began an affair with actress Carole
Landis. Landis committed suicide in 1948 after spending the evening
with Harrison. Harrison's involvement in the scandal by waiting
several hours before calling a doctor and police briefly damaged his
career and his contract with Fox was ended by mutual consent.
In 1957, Harrison
married the actress Kay Kendall. Kendall died of myeloid leukaemia in
1959.
Terence Rattigan's
1973 play In Praise of Love was written about the end of this
marriage, and Harrison appeared in the New York production playing
the character based on himself. Rattigan was said to be "intensely
disappointed and frustrated" by Harrison's performance, as
"Harrison refused to play the outwardly boorish parts of the
character and instead played him as charming throughout, signalling
to the audience from the start that he knew the truth about [the]
illness." Critics however were quite pleased with the
performance and although it did not have a long run, it was yet
another of Harrison's well-plotted naturalistic performances.
He was subsequently
married to Welsh-born actress Rachel Roberts from 1962 to 1971. After
a final attempt to win Harrison back proved futile, Roberts committed
suicide in 1980.
Harrison then
married Elizabeth Rees-Williams, divorcing in 1975, and finally in
1978, Mercia Tinker, who would become his sixth and final wife.
Harrison's eldest son Noel Harrison became an olympic skier, singer
and occasional actor; he toured in several productions including My
Fair Lady in his father's award-winning role. Noel died suddenly of a
heart attack on 19 October 2013 at age 79. Rex's younger son Carey
Harrison is a playwright and social activist.
Harrison's sister
Sylvia was married to David Maxwell Fyfe, a lawyer, Conservative
politician and judge who was successively the lead British prosecutor
at Nuremberg, Home Secretary and Lord Chancellor (head of the English
judiciary); after his death she married another Cabinet minister,
Lord de la Warr.
Having retired from
films after the 1982 picture A Time to Die, Harrison continued to act
on Broadway and the West End until the end of his life, despite
suffering from glaucoma, painful teeth, and a failing memory. He was
nominated for a third Tony Award in 1984 for his performance as
Captain Shotover in the revival of George Bernard Shaw's Heartbreak
House. He followed with two successful pairings with Claudette
Colbert, The Kingfisher in 1985 and Aren't We All? in 1986. In 1989,
he appeared with Edward Fox in The Admirable Crichton in London. In
1989/90, he appeared on Broadway in The Circle by W. Somerset
Maugham, opposite Glynis Johns, Stewart Granger, and Roma Downey.The
production opened at Duke University for a three-week run followed by
performances in Baltimore and Boston before opening 14 November 1989
on Broadway.
Harrison died of
pancreatic cancer at his home in Manhattan on 2 June 1990 at the age
of 82. He had only been diagnosed with the disease for a short time.
The stage production in which he was appearing at the time, The
Circle, came to an end upon his death.
He was cremated and
some of his ashes were scattered in Portofino and the rest were
scattered at his second wife Lilli Palmer's grave at Forest Lawn
Memorial Park in Glendale, California in the Commemoration section,
Map 1, Lot 4066, Space 2.
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