The Brief, Madcap Life of Kay Kendall by Eve Golden

Author:Eve Golden
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Publisher: The University Press of Kentucky

Chapter 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 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.

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