Fatal Charm: The Life of Rex Harrison

For decades Rex Harrison was the king of the English stage. My Fair Lady immortalised his persona, the epitome of the English gentleman, but beneath those easy manners and cool wit lurked a tyrannical egoism. Rex always needed a woman beside him and he married six times; both Carole Landis, a young starlet, and Rachel Roberts, the actress who was his fourth wife, committed suicide. Alexander Walker traces the public and private life of this brilliant actor, from his genteel beginnings in the suburbs of Liverpool through hard graft and triumph on the English stage, to a prurient Hollywood from which scandal forced him to flee. Drawing on unpublished sources, on conversations with Rex Harrison and on interviews with Harrison's closest family and friends, Alexander Walker portrays Rex Harrison, the high-comedy actor, and Rex Harrison, the incomparable despot.

Alexander Walker is the author of over twenty books about the cinema and its stars, including bestselling biographies of Elizabeth Taylor, Vivien Leigh, Joan Crawford, Bette Davis, Peter Sellers and Audrey Hepburn. He has also written standard works on the coming of the Talkies, a monograph on Stanley Kubrick, and the fullest account to date of the British film industr from 1960 to 1985. He has been the London "Evening Standard's" influential film critic since 1960 and has been named "Critic of the Year" three times in the British Press Awards. A prolific broadcaster on television and radio, he wrote and narrated four series of "Film Star" for the BBC. Alexander Walker was born in Ireland, and educated there, on the Continent and in the United States.