NEW YORK — Oscar-winning actor Sir Rex Harrison, who taught the king's English in My Fair Lady and talked to animals as the lovable Dr. Dolittle during a 66-year career, died in his sleep yesterday. He was 82.
He died of pancreatic cancer at his Manhattan home, said his attorney, Harold Schiff. Schiff said Mr. Harrison had dropped out of the hit Broadway show The Circle three weeks ago, a week before its scheduled close, because he thought he had a gall bladder inflammation.
"He just thought he was not well. He didn't want to know" that he had cancer, Schiff said.
With Mr. Harrison when he died were his sixth wife, the former Mercia Tinker, and two sons by earlier marriages, Noel and Carey Harrison.
"To watch him and to work with him was a joyful experience," said Julie Andrews, who played Eliza Doolittle to Mr. Harrison's Professor Henry Higgins in My Fair Lady on Broadway for three years.
"I doubt there was anyone before like him. . . . The theater has lost an extraordinary one-of-a-kind."
Mr. Harrison won a Tony for his Broadway portrayal of Higgins and a best- actor Oscar for his screen version opposite Audrey Hepburn.
Of his high-tone Higgins in My Fair Lady, New York Times critic Brooks Atkinson wrote, "Mr. Harrison is perfect in the part - crisp, lean, complacent and condescending, until at last a real flare of human emotions burns the egotism away."
The musical version of Shaw's Pygmalion opened on Broadway in 1956, with the film coming eight years later. He reprised his role in 1981 on Broadway.
Mr. Harrison, who characterized his vocal range as "one and a half notes," half-spoke, half-crooned "I've grown accustomed to her face" hundreds of times as the stuffy language professor who falls in love with a Cockney waif after teaching her how to overcome her lower-class accent and speak proper English.
"I could have played Higgins for 20 years, but I wanted to do other things," Mr. Harrison said in 1985. "And I did, in fact."
MANY AWARDS
He was knighted last year by Queen Elizabeth II. His honors included the New York Film Critics Award for motion pictures; two Antoinette Perry awards for stage performances and the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic (not to mention a Golden Globe, a special Tony for life achievement, various newspaper and magazine trophies and the David di Donatello Award) and a Tony for his Henry VIII in Maxwell Anderson's Anne of the Thousand Days.
