Wilfrid Hyde-White - My Fair Lady

My Fair Lady

Hyde-White was increasingly busy on screen, usually as lords, gentlemen or conmen, often "smallish roles which he somehow succeeded in making appear bigger", such as The Browning Version as the headmaster, and in his own favourite role, as the bogus Reverend Fowler (alias "Soapy" Stevens) in Two Way Stretch. He was in Hollywood for Let's Make Love with Marilyn Monroe, and many other films followed. In particular, he co-starred in My Fair Lady from the Lerner and Loewe musical as Colonel Pickering, which brought him international recognition.

He continued to act on the stage, and played opposite Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh in Caesar and Cleopatra and Antony and Cleopatra in 1951. He also appeared on Broadway and was nominated for two Tony Awards as best actor. In the 1970s and 1980s, he featured in the US TV series Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, Battlestar Galactica and The Associates.

His television films and guest appearances kept him busy from the late 1960s to the early 1980s. His lifestyle had been expensive to maintain in real life, exemplified by Rolls-Royces, racehorses and mistresses, which led to his being declared bankrupt in London in 1979. He gave up gambling on horses for a year, becoming even busier on television.