Book review - "Rex Harrison: Fatal Charm" by Alexander Walker

Typically thorough and well-written bio from Walker, this one about the famous dashing debonair prick Rex Harrison, who often pops up in cameos in other people's memoirs or biographies, usually saying something insensitive.

From Walker's longer picture it seems this was entirely accurate - he gave full reign to his nastiness, something inherent in most stars but which Harrison seemed to let flourish in himself because it was entirely consistent with his star persona.

I would argue Rex was never really a film star - maybe in the post war period briefly, where he was under contract to Fox and made films like Anna and The King, but even in his 1960s post My Fair Lady hey day all his films flopped (Agony and the Ecstasy, Dr Doolittle, Staircase, etc) - it's interesting that most of these films were made for Fox, too, under the Zanuck II regime; the Zanucks lost a lot of dough under Harrison.

On stage it was a different story; Harrison was a star, one of the biggest. I was unaware he turned his career around after the Carole Landis story with a stage hit, Anne of a Thousand Days, and he continued to return to the stage throughout his career.

A notable feature of Rex's life was his love life and Walker divides up the book into sections according to wives a la Henry VIII - his wives ranged from casual (1st wife Constance), to the no-nonsense but long-suffering (2nd wife Lili Palmer), to the madcap (3rd Kay Kendall) and the simply mad (4th Rachel Roberts), to the suspiciously nice probably because she co operated with the biographer (5th Elizabeth Harris) to the murky because she didn't (6th wife Marcia).

The dramas of Rex's career, particularly with Kay, Rachel and Carole, make this an engrossing read, with mean, miserly yet still suffering Rex at the centre a worthy protagonist. Idea for a play: set at Rex's Italian villa - follow the path of several wives, Lili, Kay, Rachel and Elizabeth (he had to leave it during the latter's time because the servants got all communist and bolshie and started demanding more money.)