Reviews

This entertaining memoir is too sketchy, chatty, and chronologically challenged to qualify as a serious biography. Its subject, the great actor Rex Harrison, may have been incomparable, but he was also an elitist snob, as were his small (very small) circle of friends, including theater director Garland, who narrates here in very high tones and only occasionally wanders from his subject onto other things on his mind or onto other memories of a life in the theater. Harrison's utter egocentricity and selfishness are readily admitted and illustrated by the author, but with great affection, since the self-centeredness was also, Garland implies, the source of Harrison's great charm and command of stage and screen. It is absolutely trueÄone can't listen to the countless examples of Harrison's consistent pettiness and mean-spiritedness without finally resigning oneself to liking the old snake. Goodness had nothing to do with it, but where Harrison was concerned, it was never boring. Highly recommended.ÄMark Pumphrey, Polk Cty. P.L., Columbus, NC Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.