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Rex Harrison was born Reginald Carey Harrison in Lancashire, England in 1908. He decided to become "Rex" while still a boy, because it is the Latin word for "king"! He started acting on the London stage at 16. He had some success, but his breakthrough role came twelve years later in French Without Tears, a comic farce which was the first play by Terence Rattigan. After that, he continued to appear in plays, but he also appeared in major English films, including Major Barbara and Blithe Spirit. He came to the U.S. after Blithe Spirit, and made three movies, and then made Anna and the King of Siam (the non-musical precursor of The King and I), and quickly followed it with four more movies the following two years. But tragedy struck in 1947, because of Harrison's very active love life! He had divorced his first wife in 1942 and married German actress Lilli Palmer. In 1947, still married to Palmer, he had an affair with Carole Landis, and she committed suicide, and he discovered the body. He attended the funeral with Palmer in an attempt to smooth things over, but the scandal was too great, and Harrison's contract was dissolved and he left Hollywood. For most of the next decade he stayed on the stage, in both London and New York. In 1956, he was Henry Higgins in the first production of My Fair Lady, and it was one of the most successful shows of all time. Harrison played the role in the 1964 film version, and won the Best Actor Oscar. The year before he had played Julius Caesar in Cleopatra (nominated for the Best Actor Academy Award for this film). He appeared in a number of big budget movies over the next few years, including The Agony and the Ecstasy and Doctor Dolittle. He mostly retired from movies in the late 1970s, but continued to act on stage the rest of his life. He was married a total of six times and he was nicknamed "Sexy Rexy"! He passed away in 1990 at the age of 82.

Important Added Info: Note that this REPRODUCTION still has been personally autographed (signed) by Rex Harrison! Also note that this still measures 8" x 10 1/4" [20 x 26 cm].

Note that this autographed item is part of a remarkable collection. In our last two all-signed auctions, we auctioned hundreds of items from this collection and now we are auctioning 213 more items (plus signed index cards that have a different note on those)!
     In the 1970s, our consignor was a teacher who taught a film class, and he also part-time ran the local movie theater (and he saved all the presskits from the movies the theater showed).
     Starting in the late 1970s through the late 1980s, he wrote to famous celebrities, and enclosed an 8x10 from his collection, and he wrote a literate personalized letter, talking about his work as a film teacher, and discussing his favorite movie by that star.
     He received signed photos back from a good percentage of the people he wrote to, and if the people simply sent him a stock photo back, he did not save it, but if he felt the autograph was genuine, and if they added a personalized note, then he did save them.
     In the late 1980s, he pretty much stopped sending letters and photos, simply because he was just too busy. So this photo (and the vast majority of the other photos we are auctioning for this consignor) were obtained in the late 1970s or 1980s, through personal correspondence with this star. This is of course excellent, because back at that time celebrities were not selling their signatures nearly as much, and many of the stars were pretty forgotten and were happy to get letters from people like our consignor!
     He of course does not have any "Certificates of Authenticity", but he only kept ones he felt were surely authentic, and those are the ones we are auctioning. However, bidders can certainly compare the signatures to known examples on the internet to judge for themselves.

As is true of all the signed items we are currently auctioning, we give every buyer 30 days in which to review what they purchased and they can return any item as long as it is within 30 days of the end of the auction. On non-signed items, we give a "lifetime guarantee" on everything we auction, but on signed items, we give the above modified guarantee of 30 days after the auction closes.

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Bruce Hershenson,
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