Rex Harrison

From Robert Gore-Langton:

He was cordially loathed by almost everybody.

The star who personified the ultimate suave bachelor and who played Professor Henry Higgins in My Fair Lady (Lerner and Loewe's great musical masterpiece) was, in life, comically awful. Even his several biographers can't quite bring themselves to spell out just how ghastly.

He was an abusive, philandering, self-serving, gluttonous egomaniac with a blind indifference to the thoughts and feelings of others. Nobody escaped his vile temper or his scathing tongue - not even his fans.

One night, after a stage performance of My Fair Lady, an elderly woman was standing alone in the rain outside the stage door and asked for his autograph. Rex told her to "sod off", which so enraged the old woman she promptly rolled up her programme and hit him with it.

Fellow actor Stanley Holloway, who witnessed the scene, remarked that it was the first time "the fan has hit the s***!".