The Brief, Madcap Life of Kay Kendall

Chapter Fourteen: "My career is still important but it's not that important."

Lyhapter Fourteen "My career is still important but it's not that important. " While Kay had been filming Quentin Durward and Simon and Laura, Harrison was dipping his toes into preparations for My Fair Lady. It had all begun back in February 1955, when Dirk Bogarde's friend, playwright Alan Jay Lerner, had begged for a meeting with Rex Harrison. Lerner had been working with his composing partner Frederick Loewe on a project based on Pygmalion. Tentatively titled Lady Liza, the show would be, Lerner felt, a perfect vehicle for Harrison—though he was hardly first choice for the role, as Harrison later loved to claim. Everyone from David Niven to Noël Coward to George Sanders had either rejected, or been rejected for, the part. Harrison, too, was a very difficult man to pin down. Bogarde and Tony Forwood tipped Kay off to the plan, and she dragged Harrison to Beel House for a February weekend trip. Lerner and his wife Nancy were introduced as "two friends from New York," and everything went swimmingly . Bogarde suggested everyone go for a stroll while he prepared lunch, and Kay feigned a headache. Bogarde recalled, "When they came back they were all great friends and Alan said, coming into the hall. . . 'Have you got a piano in this house of yours?'" He settled for a spinet, and played what had been so far written of the score—both Harrison and Kay were sold. One interesting sidelight added by Bogarde is that "I've Grown Accustomed to Her Face" had not yet been written—according to him, it was later inspired by, and dedicated to, Kay. It must be noted that Harrison biographer Roy Moseley says that "this version of Dirks is absolute nonsense—Rex and Lerner met in London and went over the show. Dirk could be such a liar." Although Harrison had agreed to play Prof. Henry Higgins, he was far from calm about the prospects. He knew he'd be competing not only against Leslie Howard s film performance in Pygmalion but against whatever actress was playing Eliza Doolittle (there was never any serious thought 9 6 The Brief, Madcap Life of Kaij Kendall of putting the non-musical Kay into the role). Rex Harrison was no singer, either, and spent many fretful weeks in a rehearsal room trying to work his raspy tenor around the score. After the decision that he should talk his songs in character rather than trying to sing, things went much more smoothly. Producer Herman Levin bought out of the rest of Harrisons Bell, Book and Candle contract—Binkie Beaumont got twenty-five thousand pounds and a chunk of the play's grosses—and in December 1955 Harrison flew to New York to begin rehearsals. Kay had every intention of following him, about which prospect Harrison had mixed feelings—he was already terrified at the prospect of this new show, and he wasn't sure if he could handle Kay's dramatics as well. His leave-taking proved to be a very public scene, as he and Kay kissed openly in the airport's departures lounge, to the edification of reporters. After Harrison's plane took off, Kay sat right down in the lounge and cried. Harrison borrowed actor Tyrone Power's Manhattan apartment and set to work. Playwright {You Cant Take It With You, The Man Who Came to Dinner) and director Moss Hart was hired to head the project. Hart had handled such difficult stars as Marilyn Miller and Gertrude Lawrence, but Rex Harrison was prepared to take "difficult" to a whole new level. Hart was recovering from a coronary, was an insomniac, and had just been put on antidepressants when rehearsals began. Also in the cast of My Fair Lady were Stanley Holloway as Eliza Doolittles Cockney dad and Cathleen Nesbitt as Higgins' aristocratic mother. The remarkable, stylized Edwardian costumes were designed by Cecil Beaton—except for Harrison's tweed hat, which was bought in Bond Street and eventually became his trademark (Harrison was quite balding by this time and the hat made it easier to go without his toupee). Playing the female lead was twenty-year-old Julie Andrews, adding to Harrison's nervousness. Andrews was a veteran of British revues and had made her Broadway debut as the lead in The Boy Friend a year earlier. Harrison was afraid that her remarkable singing voice would blow him off the stage, and he was annoyed by her inability to immediately grasp...