Noel Coward

Sir Noel Coward
Birth name:	Noël Peirce Coward
Date of birth:	16 December 1899
Birth location:	Middlesex, England
Date of death:	26 March 1973 (aged 73)
Death location:	Blue Harbour, Jamaica
Academy Awards:	Academy Honorary Award 1943 In Which We Serve

Sir Noël Peirce Coward (16 December 1899 – 26 March 1973) was an Academy Award winning English actor, playwright, and composer of popular music.

Early life

He was born in Teddington, Middlesex, England to Arthur Sabin Coward (1856–1937), a clerk, and his wife Violet Agnes (1863–1954), daughter of Henry Gordon Veitch, captain and surveyor in the Royal Navy. He was the second of their three sons, the eldest of whom had died in 1898 at the age of six. He began performing in the West End at an early age. He was a childhood friend of Hermione Gingold, whose mother warned her against him.

A student at the Italia Conti Academy stage school, Coward’s first professional engagement was on 27 January, 1911, in the children’s play The Goldfish. After this appearance, he was sought after for children’s roles by other professional theatres.

At the age of 14 he was the lover of Philip Streatfeild, a society painter who took him in and introduced him to high society in the form of Mrs Astley Cooper. She gathered a salon of artists and invited him to live on her property at Hambleton, Rutland, but on the farm rather than in the Hall, due to his lower social class.[1] Streatfeild died from tuberculosis in 1915.

He played in several productions with Sir Charles Hawtrey, a Victorian actor and comedian, whom he idolized and to whom he virtually apprenticed himself until he was 20. It was from Hawtrey that Coward learned comic acting techniques and playwriting. He was drafted briefly into the British Army during World War I but was discharged due to ill health. Coward appeared in the D. W. Griffith film Hearts of the World (1918) in an uncredited role. He found his voice and began writing plays that he and his friends could star in while at the same time writing revues.

Success

He starred in one of his first full-length plays, the inheritance comedy I'll Leave It To You, in 1920 at the age of 20. The following year he completed a one-act satire, The Better Half, about a man's relationship with two women, and it had a short run at the Little Theatre, London in 1922. The play was thought to be lost until a typescript was rediscovered in 2007 in the archive of the Lord Chamberlain's Office, which at that time licensed all plays for performance in the UK , and imposed cuts or complete bans.

After he enjoyed some moderate success with the Shaw-esque The Young Idea in 1923, the controversy surrounding his play The Vortex (1924), which contains many veiled references to drug abuse and homosexuality, made him an overnight sensation on both sides of the Atlantic. Coward followed this with three more major hits, Hay Fever, Fallen Angels (both 1925) and Easy Virtue (1926).

Much of Coward's best work came in the late 1920s and early 1930s. Enormous (and enormously popular) productions, such as the full-length operetta Bitter Sweet (1929) and Cavalcade (1931), a huge extravaganza requiring a very large cast, gargantuan sets and an exceedingly complex hydraulic stage, were interspersed with finely-wrought comedies such as Private Lives (1930), in which Coward himself starred alongside his most famous stage partner, Gertrude Lawrence; and the black comedy Design for Living (1932), written for Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne.

Coward again partnered Lawrence in Tonight at 8:30 (1936), an ambitious cycle of ten short plays that were randomly "shuffled" to make up a different playbill of three plays each night. One of these plays, Still Life, was expanded into the 1945 David Lean film Brief Encounter. He was also a prolific writer of popular songs, and a lucrative recording contract with HMV allowed him to release a number of recordings, many now reissued on CD. Coward's most popular hits include the romantic I'll See You Again and Dear Little Café; and the comic Mad Dogs and Englishmen, The Stately Homes of England and (Don't Put Your Daughter on the Stage) Mrs Worthington

World War II

The outbreak of World War II in 1939 saw Coward working harder than ever. When the war started he had only just left Paris. He took time off from writing to perform for the troops, but after was eager to return. Alongside his highly-publicised tours entertaining Allied troops, he was also engaged by the British Secret Service MI5 in intelligence work. He was often frustrated by the criticism he faced for his ostensibly glamorous lifestyle, apparently living the high life while his countrymen suffered - especially his trips to America to sway opinion formers there. He was unable, however, to defend himself by revealing details of his work for the Secret Service.

George VI, a personal friend, encouraged the government to award Coward a knighthood for his efforts in 1942. This was blocked by Winston Churchill, who disapproved of Coward's flamboyant lifestyle. Churchill advised giving the official reason as being Coward's fine of ₤200 for currency offences (he had spent ₤11,000 on a trip to America).

Had the Germans invaded Britain, Coward would have been arrested and liquidated as he was on The Black Book, along with other public figures such as H. G. Wells, targeted for his socialist views. While some feel that this may have been due to his homosexuality, recent documents have surfaced showing Coward to have been a covert operative in the Secret Service.

He also wrote and released some extraordinarily popular songs during the war, the most famous of which are London Pride and Don't Let's Be Beastly To The Germans. He complained to Churchill, his frequent painting companion, that he felt he was not doing enough to support the war effort. Churchill suggested he make a movie based on the career of Captain Lord Louis Mountbatten. The result was a naval film drama, In Which We Serve, which Coward wrote, starred in, composed the music for and co-directed, with David Lean. The film was immensely popular on both sides of the Atlantic and Coward was awarded an honorary Oscar.

The 1940s also saw Coward write some of his best plays. The social commentary of This Happy Breed and the intricate semi-autobiographical comedy-drama Present Laughter (both 1939) were later combined with the hugely successful black comedy Blithe Spirit (1941) to form a West End triple-bill, which starred Coward in all three simultaneous productions. Blithe Spirit went on to make box-office records for a West End comedy that were not beaten until the 1970s, and was made into a film directed by David Lean.

Later works

Coward's popularity as a playwright declined sharply in the 1950s, with plays such as Quadrille, Relative Values, Nude with Violin and South Sea Bubble failing to find much favour with critics or audiences. Despite this he maintained a high public profile, continuing to write (and occasionally star in) moderately successful West End plays and musicals, performing an acclaimed solo cabaret act in Las Vegas (available on CD), and starring in films such as Bunny Lake is Missing, Around the World in 80 Days, Our Man in Havana, Boom! and The Italian Job.

After starring in a number of American TV specials in the late 1950s alongside Mary Martin, Coward left the UK for tax reasons. He first settled in Bermuda but later moved to Jamaica, where he remained for the rest of his life. His play Waiting in the Wings (1960), set in a rest home for retired actresses, marked a turning-point in his popularity, gaining plaudits from critics, who likened it to the work of Anton Chekhov. The late 1960s saw a revival in his popularity, with several new productions of his 1920s plays and a number of revues celebrating his music; Coward dubbed this comeback "Dad's Renaissance."

Coward's final stage work was Suite in Three Keys (1966), a trilogy set in a hotel penthouse suite, with him taking the lead roles in all three. The trilogy gained excellent reviews and did good box office business in the UK. Coward intended to star in Suite in Three Keys on Broadway but was unable to travel due to illness. Only two of the plays were performed in New York, with the title changed to Noel Coward in Two Keys and the lead taken by Hume Cronyn.

Death

By now suffering from severe arthritis and bouts of memory loss, which affected his work on The Italian Job, Coward retired from the theatre. He was knighted in 1970, and died in Jamaica in March 1973 of heart failure at the age of 73. He was buried three days later on the brow of Firefly Hill, Jamaica, overlooking the north coast of the island. On 28 March 1984 a memorial stone was unveiled by the Queen Mother in Poets’ Corner, Westminster Abbey.

As well as over 50 published plays and many albums' worth of original songs, Coward wrote comic revues, poetry, several volumes of short stories, the novel Pomp and Circumstance (1960) and three volumes of autobiography. Books of his song lyrics, diaries and letters have also been published.

He was a spirited painter, and a volume containing reproductions of some of his artwork has also been published.

The Noël Coward Theatre on St Martin's Lane opened on 1 June 2006, after extensive refurbishment, for the London premiere of Avenue Q. The theatre opened in 1903 as the New Theatre, renamed the Albery Theatre in 1973. Coward made his West End début at the New Theatre, in 1920.

Private life

Coward was homosexual and never married, but he maintained close personal friendships with many women. These included actress and author Esmé Wynne-Tyson, his first collaborator and constant correspondent; the designer and lifelong friend Gladys Calthrop; secretary and close confidante Lorn Loraine; his muse, the gifted musical actress Gertrude Lawrence; actress Joyce Carey; compatriot of his middle period, the light comedy actress Judy Campbell; and (in the words of Cole Lesley) 'his loyal and lifelong amitié amoureuse ', film star Marlene Dietrich.

He was also a valued friend of Vivien Leigh, Judy Garland, Princess Margaret and Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother. He was a close friend of Ivor Novello and Winston Churchill.

Coward's insights into the class system can be traced back to London life in World War I, when thousands of troops passed through the capital every day, and gay officers and other ranks met civilians in dozens of highly secret clubs.

He enjoyed a 19-year relationship with Prince George, Duke of Kent and another lengthy one with the stage and film actor, Graham Payn, for almost 30 years until his death. Payn later co-edited with Sheridan Morley the collection of his diaries, published in 1982. He was also connected to composer Ned Rorem, with details of their relationship published in Rorem's diaries.

Coward refused to acknowledge his homosexuality, wryly stating, "There is still a woman in Paddington Square who wants to marry me, and I don't want to disappoint her." From his youth Coward had a distaste for penetrative sex and held the modern homosexual scene in disdain.

He was the president of The Actors' Orphanage, an orphanage supported by the theatrical industry. In that capacity he befriended the young Peter Collinson, who was in the care of the orphanage, becoming Collinson's godfather and helping him get started in show business. When Collinson was a successful director he invited Coward to play a role in the film The Italian Job; Graham Payn also played a small role.

Coward was a neighbour in Jamaica of James Bond's creator Ian Fleming and his wife Anne, the former Lady Rothermere. Though he was very fond of both of them, the Flemings' marriage was not a happy one, and Noel eventually tired of their constant bickering, as recorded in his diaries. When the first film adaptation of a James Bond novel, Dr. No was being produced, Coward was approached for the role of the villain. He is said to have responded, "Doctor No? No. No. No."

When speaking to Peter O'Toole about his performance in Lawrence of Arabia, he said "If you'd been any prettier, it would have been 'Florence of Arabia'."

When someone pointed out a rising young actor at a party with the words "Keir Dullea" Coward's instant reply was "Gone tomorrow."

The Papers of Noel Coward are held in the University of Birmingham Special Collections.

On the BBC Midweek television programme on 11 October 2006 Hunter Davies revealed that Coward had told him during an interview that he liked to attend and watch hospital operations in his spare time; apparently when Davies started to push this line further Coward clammed up on the subject and would not elaborate.

Parodies and popular culture

Parodies of and homages to Coward and his style include:

• The character of Beverly Carlton in the 1939 Broadway play The Man Who Came to Dinner was based on Coward. He was portrayed by Reginald Gardiner in the 1942 film of the play.
• In the sixth season of Frasier in an episode entitled "How to Bury a Millionaire," Niles Crane purchases a pen once owned by Coward.
• In the third season of Frasier, Frasier gives a Christmas gift to his father, that he says "Noel Coward would love it, but it's not you."
• Charles and Fiona (Dame Celia Molestrangler and Ageing juvenile Binkie Huckaback), characters in Round the Horne.
• In the 1982 film Better Late Than Never, David Niven played Nick Cartland, an ageing cabaret artiste, whose showpiece is I've Been To A Marvellous Party.
• Jon Wynne-Tyson's play Marvellous Party, about a middle-age reunion in Las Vegas of Coward and his collaborator Esmé Wynne-Tyson was broadcast by the BBC World Service in May 1994, starring Stanley Baxter as Coward and Dorothy Tutin as Wynne-Tyson.
• In 1998 Twentieth-Century Blues: The Songs of Noel Coward was released. The album contains Coward's songs performed by Sting, Elton John, Pet Shop Boys, The Divine Comedy, Vic Reeves, Paul McCartney and others.
• Coward appeared as a regular character in the fifth and sixth series of the BBC sitcom Goodnight Sweetheart.
• Coward is the leading figure in Jeremy Kingston's comedy, Making Dickie Happy, also featuring Agatha Christie and Louis Mountbatten (the 'Dickie' of the title), first staged at the Rosemary Branch Theatre in London in September 2004 [2]'
• The name of the men's clothing line 'Godspeed the Well-Dressed Man' came from the closing of one of Coward's letters.
• Monty Python parodied Noel Coward in the Penis Song segment of their 1983 movie, The Meaning of Life and in their album Monty Python Sings as Penis Song (Not the Noel Coward Song).
• The Doctor Who novel Mad Dogs and Englishmen features a version of Coward who has allied himself with alien poodles and gained time travel technology.
• The opening to the song "The Lady Is a Tramp" includes the line "Alas, I missed the Beaux Arts Ball, and what is twice as sad I was never at a party where they honored Noel Ca-ad (Coward)."
• Coward's play "Private Lives" is parodied in the off-Broadway musical revue "Secrets Every Smart Traveler Should Know" in a short scene entitled "Private Wives."
• Marcy Kahan's Noel Coward quintet for BBC Radio 4 dramatises Coward as a detective in "Design For Murder" (2000), "A Bullet at Balmain's" (2003) and "Death at the Desert Inn" (2005), and as a spy in "Blithe Spy" (2002) and "Our Man In Jamaica" (2007). The cast of the quintet includes Malcolm Sinclair as Coward, Eleanor Bron as his secretary and Tam Williams as Cole Lesley.
• 'Two Old Queens' (2007), Perth, Western Australia, starring Edgar Metcalf as the Queen Mother and John Michael Swinbank as Coward. A conversation between the two at the unveiling of the statue of Coward in Poets' Corner.
• In the (1969) classic English film Kes a man inquires about his interest in Coward's autobiography Present Indiciative.

'The Actors Nightmare' contains a scene from 'Private Lives'

Plays

• The Last Chapter (Ida Collaborates) (1917), one-act comedy, co-written with Esmé Wynne under their joint pen name Esnomel, first performed 1917
• Woman and Whisky (1918), one-act play, co-written with Esmé Wynne, fp 1918
• The Rat Trap (1918), play in four acts, fp Everyman, Hampstead 1926, revived Finborough, London 2006
• I'll Leave It To You (1919), light comedy in three acts, fp 1920
• The Young Idea (1921), comedy of youth in three acts, fp 1922
• The Sirocco (1921), play in three acts, revised and fp 1927
• The Better Half (1921), comedy in one act, fp 1922
• The Queen Was in the Parlour (1922), play in three acts, fp 1926
• Mild Oats (1922), play in one act, unproduced
• Weatherwise (1923), comedy in two scenes, fp 1932
• Fallen Angels (1923), comedy in three acts, fp 1925
• The Vortex (1923), play in three acts, fp 1924
• Hay Fever (1924), comedy, fp 1925
• Easy Virtue (1924), play in three acts, fp 1925
• Semi-Monde originally Ritz Bar (1926), play in three acts, fp Glasgow Citizens 1988
• This Was a Man (1926), comedy in three acts, fp 1926
• The Marquise (1926), comedy in three acts, fp 1927
• Home Chat (1927), play in three acts, fp 1927
• Private Lives (1929), intimate comedy in three acts, fp 1930
• Post-Mortem (1932), play in eight scenes, fp King's Head, London, 1992
• Cavalcade (1930, 1931), play in three parts, fp 1931
• Design For Living (1932), comedy in three acts, fp 1933
• Point Valaine (1934), play in three acts, fp 1934
• Tonight at 8.30 (1935, 1936), three programmes of one-act plays, fp 1935
  • We Were Dancing, The Astonished Heart, Red Peppers
  • Hands Across the Sea, Fumed Oak, Shadow Play
  • Ways and Means, Still Life, Family Album
  • Star Chamber (one performance only, 1936)
• Present Laughter (1939), play in three acts, fp 1942
• This Happy Breed (1939), play in three acts, fp 1942
• Blithe Spirit (1941), improbable farce in three acts, fp 1941
• Peace In Our Time (1946), play in two acts, fp 1947
• Long Island Sound (1947), comedy adapted from his short story What Mad Pursuit?, fp 1989 (Windsor gala performance)
• South Sea Bubble, Island Fling in USA, (1949), comedy in three acts, fp 1951
• Relative Values (1951), comedy in three acts, fp 1951
• Quadrille (1951-2), romantic comedy in three acts, fp 1952
• Nude With Violin (1954), comedy in three acts, fp 1956
• Look After Lulu! (1958), three act farce adapted from Feydeau, fp 1959
• Volcano (1957), play in two acts, Mill at Sonning, staged reading 1989
• Waiting in the Wings (1959-60), play in three acts, fp 1960
• Suite in Three Keys: A Song at Twilight; Shadows of the Evening; Come into the Garden, Maud (1965), a trilogy, fp 1966
• Star Quality (1967), Coward's last play, comedy in three acts, fp Bath, 1985

Revues, musicals and operetta

• London Calling (1922, 1923), revue in collaboration with Ronald Jeans, fp 1923
• On With the Dance (1924, 1925) , revue, fp 1925
• This Year of Grace (1927, 1928), revue, fp as Charles B Cochrane's 1928 Revue
• Bitter Sweet (1928, 1929), operetta, fp 1929
• Words and Music (1932), revue, fp 1932
• Conversation Piece (1933), comedy with music, fp 1934
• Operette (1937), musical play, fp 1938
• Set to Music (1938), revue, fp 1938
• Sigh No More (1945), revue, fp 1945
• Pacific 1860 (1946), musical romance, fp 1946
• Ace of Clubs (1949), musical play, fp 1950
• After the Ball (1953), musical based on Lady Windermere's Fan, fp 1954
• Sail Away (1959-61), musical comedy, fp 1961
• The Girl Who Came to Supper (1963), musical comedy based on Terence Rattigan's The Sleeping Prince, fp 1963
• Oh, Coward! revue fp 1972
• Cowardy Custard revue fp 1972

Filmography

• Hearts of the World (1918, uncredited)
• Across the Continent (1922, uncredited)
• The Scoundrel (1935)
• In Which We Serve (1942, also director/screenwriter)
• Blithe Spirit (1945, as narrator)
• The Astonished Heart (1949)
• Around the World in Eighty Days (1956)
• Our Man in Havana (1959)
• Surprise Package (1960)
• Paris - When It Sizzles (1964)
• Present Laughter (1964, TV)
• The Vortex (1964, TV)
• Bunny Lake Is Missing (1965)
• Androcles and the Lion (1967, TV)
• Boom! (1968)
• The Italian Job (1969)

Bibliography

• Coward, Noel Present Indicative, autobiography to 1931. Heinemann 1937, facsimile reissue 1974 ISBN 0-434-14723-0
• Coward, Noel Future Indefinite, second volume of autobiography, WWII. Heinemann 1954
• Coward, Noel Past Conditional, third volume (unfinished) of autobiography. Heinemann 1986
• Coward, Noel Middle East Diary, a diary of a wartime tour to entertain the troops "from Gib to Baghdad." Heinemann 1944
• Morley, Sheridan A Talent to Amuse, biography. Heinemann 1969 ISBN 0-434-47895-4
• Lesley, Cole The Life of Noel Coward, biography. Cape 1976 ISBN 0-224-01288-6
• Payn, Graham and Morley, Sheridan edited The Noel Coward Diaries (1941-1969). Methuen 1982 ISBN 0-297-78142-1
• Tickner, Martin preface to Noel Coward: The Complete Stories. Methuen Paperback Original 1985 ISBN 0-413-59970-1
• Coward, Noel, with an introduction by Morley, Sheridan Noel Coward Autobiography (a single volume combining Present Indicative and Future Indefinite). Methuen 1986 ISBN 0-413-606600
• Payn, Graham and Tickner, Martin edited Noel Coward: Collected Verse. Methuen 1984, corrected edition 1987 ISBN 0-413-551504
• Fisher, Clive Noel Coward. Weidenfeld 1992 ISBN 0-297-81180-0
• Hoare, Philip Noel Coward, A Biography. Sinclair-Stevenson 1995 ISBN 1-85619-265-2
• Day, Barry edited and annotated Noel Coward: The Complete Lyrics. Methuen 1998 ISBN 0-413-73230-4
• Mander, Raymond and Mitchenson, Joe Theatrical Companion to Coward, updated by Day, Barry and Morley, Sheridan. Oberon 2000 ISBN 1-84002-054-7

External links

• Noel Coward at the Internet Movie Database
• Noel Coward at the Internet Broadway Database
• The Noël Coward Society
• Noel Coward 101
• Audio (.ram files) of a 1969 interview by Patrick Garland for the BBC
• Find-A-Grave profile for Noel Coward

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