This is a weekly feature on BroadwayLiving.com. It’s just like the game “Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon”. You know how it goes…someone throws out an actor’s name and you have to try to connect them to Kevin Bacon in six steps or less.
I thought it might be fun to do the same thing with the theater’s luminaries. I will be trying to connect them to the longest running show in Broadway history, The Phantom of the Opera and its very first “Phantom”, Michael Crawford.
Reginald Carey “Rex” Harrison was an acclaimed stage and screen actor. On Broadway, he was best known for his portrayal of Professor Henry Higgins in My Fair Lady. His turn as the curmudgeonly misogynist in the Lerner and Loewe classic earned him his second Tony Award. He also won an Oscar for his return to the role in the film version. Some of his other lauded performances on Broadway included: Henry VIII in Anne of a Thousand Days (1st Tony Award), Shepherd Henderson in Bell, Book and Candle and Captain Shotover in the 1983 revival of Heartbreak House (Tony Award nomination). Quite the lady’s man, he was married several times and it is rumored that young actress, Carole Landis, committed suicide “for love” after their notorious affair. His philandering ways earned him the moniker, “Sexy, Rexy” from famed columnist and commentator, Walter Winchell. Acting until the end, Mr. Harrison made his final appearance on Broadway in W. Somerset Maugham’s The Circle just three weeks before his death in June of 1990.
1) Rex Harrison did the ’81 revival of My Fair Lady with Nicholas Wyman
2) Nicholas Wyman was the original Monsieur Firmin in The Phantom of the Opera with Michael Crawford
“Why can’t a woman, be more like a man?”
- Henry Higgins in My Fair Lady
So that’s the game. Join me each week as I try to come up with new ways of connecting Michael Crawford to the entire theater community.
