Rex Harrison

Fülszöveg

¦


Tf you weren't the best hght comedian in the country,' said Noel Coward to Rex Harrison in 1950, 'all you'd be fit for is selling cars in Great Portland Street.'
But Rex Harrison was the best light comedian in the country — with the possible exception of Noel Coward himself. He was also — in spite of his preference for comic roles, his refusal to play Shakespeare and his image as a debonair screen lover — a serious and hard-working professional and a complete perfectionist.
In a career that began in earnest in 1927, Rex Harrison has made over 100 stage and screen appearances. On stage he has been equally successful on Broadway and the West End, while his film career has also been split between England and Hollywood. His earliest success came with the West End production of French Without Tears, and with the films Night Train to Munich, Blithe Spirit and The Rake's Progress. After the war he went to Hollywood and made such classics as The Ghost and Mrs Muir and... Tovább

Fülszöveg

¦


Tf you weren't the best hght comedian in the country,' said Noel Coward to Rex Harrison in 1950, 'all you'd be fit for is selling cars in Great Portland Street.'
But Rex Harrison was the best light comedian in the country — with the possible exception of Noel Coward himself. He was also — in spite of his preference for comic roles, his refusal to play Shakespeare and his image as a debonair screen lover — a serious and hard-working professional and a complete perfectionist.
In a career that began in earnest in 1927, Rex Harrison has made over 100 stage and screen appearances. On stage he has been equally successful on Broadway and the West End, while his film career has also been split between England and Hollywood. His earliest success came with the West End production of French Without Tears, and with the films Night Train to Munich, Blithe Spirit and The Rake's Progress. After the war he went to Hollywood and made such classics as The Ghost and Mrs Muir and Unfaithfully Yours. He later starred in the epic Cleopatra and in the musical Doctor Dolittle. But it is as Henry Higgins in My Fair Lady that Harrison will be best remembered. His superb flair for comedy and unique way of delivering a song made the play one of the biggest hits of the 1950s on both sides of the Atlantic. In spite of this, however, when the cast was being chosen for the film version, Harrison was not the first choice. Jack Warner offered the part to Gary Grant who gave him the celebrated response: 'Not only will I not do it, but if you don't use Rex Harrison, I won't go to see it.'
From Harrison's student performances with the Liverpool Playhouse to his recent successes in the West End and on Broadway with Aren't We All? — sixty years later — Allen Eyles analyses his career with keen professional insight. The book also includes a fully detailed record of all Harrison's stage and screen appearances and a bibliography. Vissza