Rex, Richard are nervous about the gay

life'

Will they

talk, back

in Wales?

•

Rex Harrison

Richard Burton

PARIS (P "Can you imagine Rex and me playing in his dressing room at the studio. "Rex plays an old two homosexuals? It's incredible!”

"Rex and me" is Rex Harrison and Richard Burton, no less. and Burton was explaining his new film to a couple of strangers as he lunched at the Billancourt, studios in Paris.

Incredible it may be. but there they are. probably filmdom's most expensive and least likely odd couple, portraying a pair of middle-aged English homosexual barbers in an odd movie. "Staircase." This is the movie version of Charles Dyer's play, which Paul Scofield and Patrick Magee did in London and Eli Wallach and Milo O'Shea performed on Broadway.

NOW HARRISON, "sexy Rexy" himself-but surely not the "ordinary man" he claimed to be in song and dance in his classic "My Fair Lady" portrays Charlie, the preening, extroverted half of the pair.

And Burton-husband of Elizabeth Taylor, Welsh-born, Oxford-educated. Shakespearian actor by training-is his fair partner. Harry, the mild-mannered "doormat" of the duo, the butt of Charlie's sardonic wit.

It is their first film together since the near-disastrous "Cleopatra" and they are enjoying it to the hilt.

"He's absolutely adorable." Burton joked about his character Harry, as he relaxed with omnipresent friends

'mum.

"It's not the old Rex Harrison we knew and loved," he kidded. "He has, not a 'mincy' walk, but these little short steps," he said, getting up to mimic Harrison doing his fey best as Charlie. Rex is always 'posting' in his part." said Burton, finishing his after-hours playacting by imitating, with some admiration, Harrison shrugging his way into a chair for the role.

There is much off-set joking about the roles these two superstars play, but the laughter apparently hides much nervous tension. The set has been closed to outsiders, indeed to much of the crew itself Producer-director

difficult role. He had not seen the stage version when he was approached by Donen, who already had Burton in mind for the other part.

"Harris-

"IT WAS a case of 'I'll-do-it-if-you'll-do-it,' on said. “And I felt I was old enough and rich enough to risk it. I was loathe to do it, though, with anyone but an internationally known personality. But it turned out pretty fine."

Burton, in less-mannered language, said: “We were both hoping the other would break a leg, so we wouldn't have to do it."

**

He confided that he gave half-serious thought to “what Stanley Donen was not granting any interviews, on or off birthplace in the rugged coal mine area of Pontrhydyfen will the people in South Wales think?” referring to his set, at the start of filming early in September. 43 years ago-when he was still Richard Jenkins.

Burton, whose part calls for him to look somewhat like a fat old woman, had put on 10 pounds for the role but lost it all because of the nervous tension, he said.

The joking is constant, but as Harrison put it: “It's frightening, how much we've been enjoying it.” The emphasis was on "frightening."

Harrison, in smoking jacket and slippers in his dressing room after an evening rehearsal, spoke, in his finest Prof. Higgins manner, of his caution in accepting the

Aside from the likely profitable aspects for the two high-priced stars-about $1 million estimated for Burton and $750,000 for Harrison-there is the undeniable lure of two juicy acting roles.

"It really is an acting piece," said Harrison. “It is a comic tragedy about two lonely people. There is no salaciousness at all. The stage treated it in comedy, terms largely. Here, it is a serious picture, intensely tragic.'

Burton: "It's comedy and tragedy. Not unlike 'Virginia Woolf.' There are enormous laughs, then, suddenly.” His hands cut the air to indicate a shart break in the film mood.

The story is set in Brixton, a rundown suburb of London, which, with typical "Hollywood" logic, is why it is being filmed in Paris-with a $200,000 set of a London shopping street built on the side of the Seine.