99-471: We Were Dancing is a short comic play in two scenes by Noël Coward . It is one of ten short plays that make up Tonight at 8.30 , a cycle written to be performed in groups of three plays across three evenings. The original production, starring Coward and Gertrude Lawrence played in a pre-London tour, and then the West End , and finally New York, in 1935–1937. We Were Dancing has been revived periodically and
198-425: A baritone dove, he gave us "I'll See You Again" and the other bat's-wing melodies of his youth. Nothing he does on these occasions sounds strained or arid; his tanned, leathery face is still an enthusiast's.... If it is possible to romp fastidiously, that is what Coward does. He owes little to earlier wits, such as Wilde or Labouchere . Their best things need to be delivered slowly, even lazily. Coward's emerge with
297-523: A 1968 Off-Broadway production of Private Lives at the Theatre de Lys starring Elaine Stritch , Lee Bowman and Betsy von Furstenberg , and directed by Charles Nelson Reilly . Despite this impressive cast, Coward's popularity had risen so high that the theatre poster for the production used an Al Hirschfeld caricature of Coward ( pictured above ) instead of an image of the production or its stars. The illustration captures how Coward's image had changed by
396-855: A bust of him in the library in Teddington, near where he was born. In 2008 an exhibition devoted to Coward was mounted at the National Theatre in London. The exhibition was later hosted by the Museum of Performance & Design in San Francisco and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in Beverly Hills , California. In June 2021 an exhibition celebrating Coward opened at the Guildhall Art Gallery in
495-584: A cabaret performer, performing his own songs, such as " Mad Dogs and Englishmen ", " London Pride ", and " I Went to a Marvellous Party ". Coward's plays and songs achieved new popularity in the 1960s and 1970s, and his work and style continue to influence popular culture. He did not publicly acknowledge his homosexuality, but it was discussed candidly after his death by biographers including Graham Payn , his long-time partner, and in Coward's diaries and letters, published posthumously. The former Albery Theatre (originally
594-476: A carefully crafted image. As a suburban boy who had been taken up by the upper classes he rapidly acquired the taste for high life: "I am determined to travel through life first class." He first wore a dressing gown onstage in The Vortex and used the fashion in several of his other famous plays, including Private Lives and Present Laughter . George Walden identifies him as a modern dandy . In connection with
693-459: A cigarette holder: "I looked like an advanced Chinese decadent in the last phases of dope." Soon after that, Coward wrote: He soon became more cautious about overdoing the flamboyance, advising Cecil Beaton to tone down his outfits: "It is important not to let the public have a loophole to lampoon you." However, Coward was happy to generate publicity from his lifestyle. In 1969 he told Time magazine, "I acted up like crazy. I did everything that
792-558: A combination of cheek and chic, pose and poise". Coward attended a dance academy in London as a child, making his professional stage début at the age of eleven. As a teenager he was introduced into the high society in which most of his plays would be set. Coward achieved enduring success as a playwright, publishing more than 50 plays from his teens onwards. Many of his works, such as Hay Fever , Private Lives , Design for Living , Present Laughter , and Blithe Spirit , have remained in
891-551: A complex hydraulic stage. Its 1933 film adaptation won the Academy Award for best picture. Coward's intimate-scale hits of the period included Private Lives (1930) and Design for Living (1932). In Private Lives , Coward starred alongside his most famous stage partner, Gertrude Lawrence, together with the young Laurence Olivier . It was a highlight of both Coward's and Lawrence's career, selling out in both London and New York. Coward disliked long runs, and after this he made
990-428: A curtain-raiser appears in the provinces but wearing a sadly hang-dog expression, because it knows only too well, poor thing, that it would not be there at all were the main attraction of the evening long enough.[…] A short play, having a great advantage over a long one in that it can sustain a mood without technical creaking or overpadding, deserves a better fate, and if by careful writing, acting, and producing I can do
1089-489: A cycle of ten short plays, presented in various permutations across three evenings. One of these plays, Still Life , was expanded into the 1945 David Lean film Brief Encounter . Tonight at 8.30 was followed by a musical, Operette (1938), from which the most famous number is "The Stately Homes of England", and a revue entitled Set to Music (1938, a Broadway version of his 1932 London revue, Words and Music ). Coward's last pre-war plays were This Happy Breed ,
SECTION 10
#17331052643881188-601: A dance academy in London, Coward's first professional engagement was in January 1911 as Prince Mussel in the children's play The Goldfish . In Present Indicative , his first volume of memoirs, Coward wrote: One day ... a little advertisement appeared in the Daily Mirror .... It stated that a talented boy of attractive appearance was required by a Miss Lila Field to appear in her production of an all-children fairy play: The Goldfish. This seemed to dispose of all argument. I
1287-486: A dance at the club on a British South Pacific island colony, a young man and woman, George Davies and Eva Blake, leave the dance floor and drive off in his car, heading for a deserted beach where they can be alone. As they leave, Louise Charteris and Karl Sandys waltz in, locked in mutual fascination. They kiss, and are discovered by Louise's husband, Hubert, and his sister Clare. Hubert listens civilly to Karl's protestations of love for Louise, and admits to Karl that he himself
1386-403: A drama about a working-class family, and Present Laughter , a comic self-caricature with an egomaniac actor as the central character. These were first performed in 1942, although they were both written in 1939. Between 1929 and 1936 Coward recorded many of his best-known songs for His Master's Voice (HMV), now reissued on CD, including the romantic " I'll See You Again " from Bitter Sweet ,
1485-458: A farce, Look After Lulu! (1959), and a tragi-comic study of old age, Waiting in the Wings (1960), both of which were successful despite "critical disdain". Coward argued that the primary purpose of a play was to entertain, and he made no attempt at modernism, which he felt was boring to the audience although fascinating to the critics. His comic novel, Pomp and Circumstance (1960), about life in
1584-403: A few mildly dirty stories, and I loved her from then onwards." In 1914, when Coward was fourteen, he became the protégé and probably the lover of Philip Streatfeild , a society painter. Streatfeild introduced him to Mrs Astley Cooper and her high society friends. Streatfeild died from tuberculosis in 1915, but Mrs Astley Cooper continued to encourage her late friend's protégé, who remained
1683-456: A frank biography once Coward was safely dead. Coward's most important relationship, which began in the mid-1940s and lasted until his death, was with the South African stage and film actor Graham Payn. Coward featured Payn in several of his London productions. Payn later co-edited with Sheridan Morley a collection of Coward's diaries, published in 1982. Coward's other relationships included
1782-734: A frequent guest at her estate, Hambleton Hall in Rutland. Coward continued to perform during most of the First World War, appearing at the Prince of Wales Theatre in 1916 in The Happy Family and on tour with Amy Brandon Thomas 's company in Charley's Aunt . In 1917, he appeared in The Saving Grace , a comedy produced by Hawtrey. Coward recalled in his memoirs, "My part was reasonably large and I
1881-506: A great demand for new Coward plays. In 1925 he premiered Fallen Angels , a three-act comedy that amused and shocked audiences with the spectacle of two middle-aged women slowly getting drunk while awaiting the arrival of their mutual lover. Hay Fever , the first of Coward's plays to gain an enduring place in the mainstream theatrical repertoire, also appeared in 1925. It is a comedy about four egocentric members of an artistic family who casually invite acquaintances to their country house for
1980-562: A hit 1963 revival of Private Lives in London and then New York. Invited to direct Hay Fever with Edith Evans at the National Theatre , he wrote in 1964, "I am thrilled and flattered and frankly a little flabbergasted that the National Theatre should have had the curious perceptiveness to choose a very early play of mine and to give it a cast that could play the Albanian telephone directory." Other examples of "Dad's Renaissance" included
2079-465: A little towards reinstating it in its rightful pride, I shall have achieved one of my more sentimental ambitions. We Were Dancing was the first of the Tonight at 8.30 cycle to be presented. All the plays in the cycle starred Coward and Gertrude Lawrence . Coward directed the plays and wrote the words and music for songs in four of them. In this play Lawrence's character sings the song "We Were Dancing" in
SECTION 20
#17331052643882178-575: A night club, were financial failures. Further blows in this period were the deaths of Coward's friends Charles Cochran and Gertrude Lawrence, in 1951 and 1952 respectively. Despite his disappointments, Coward maintained a high public profile; his performance as King Magnus in Shaw's The Apple Cart for the Coronation season of 1953, co-starring Margaret Leighton , received much coverage in the press, and his cabaret act, honed during his wartime tours entertaining
2277-402: A one-act satire, The Better Half , about a man's relationship with two women. It had a short run at The Little Theatre, London, in 1922. The critic St John Ervine wrote of the piece, "When Mr Coward has learned that tea-table chitter-chatter had better remain the prerogative of women he will write more interesting plays than he now seems likely to write." The play was thought to be lost until
2376-419: A playwright with The Vortex . The story is about a nymphomaniac socialite and her cocaine-addicted son (played by Coward). Some saw the drugs as a mask for homosexuality; Kenneth Tynan later described it as "a jeremiad against narcotics with dialogue that sounds today not so much stilted as high-heeled". The Vortex was considered shocking in its day for its depiction of sexual vanity and drug abuse among
2475-477: A playwright with The Young Idea . The play opened in London in 1923, after a provincial tour, with Coward in one of the leading roles. The reviews were good: "Mr Noël Coward calls his brilliant little farce a 'comedy of youth', and so it is. And youth pervaded the Savoy last night, applauding everything so boisterously that you felt, not without exhilaration, that you were in the midst of a 'rag'." One critic, who noted
2574-667: A rule of starring in a play for no more than three months at any venue. Design for Living , written for Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne , was so risqué, with its theme of bisexuality and a ménage à trois , that Coward premiered it in New York, knowing that it would not survive the censor in London. In 1933 Coward wrote, directed and co-starred with the French singer Yvonne Printemps in both London and New York productions of an operetta, Conversation Piece (1933). He next wrote, directed and co-starred with Lawrence in Tonight at 8.30 (1936),
2673-552: A sense of comedy, and if he can overcome a tendency to smartness, he will probably produce a good play one of these days." The Times , on the other hand, was enthusiastic: "It is a remarkable piece of work from so young a head – spontaneous, light, and always 'brainy'." The play ran for a month (and was Coward's first play seen in America), after which Coward returned to acting in works by other writers, starring as Ralph in The Knight of
2772-563: A tropical British colony, met with more critical success. Coward's final stage success came with Suite in Three Keys (1966), a trilogy set in a hotel penthouse suite. He wrote it as his swan song as a stage actor: "I would like to act once more before I fold my bedraggled wings." The trilogy gained glowing reviews and did good box office business in the UK. In one of the three plays, A Song at Twilight , Coward abandoned his customary reticence on
2871-519: A typescript was found in 2007 in the archive of the Lord Chamberlain's Office , the official censor of stage plays in the UK until 1968. In 1921, Coward made his first trip to America, hoping to interest producers there in his plays. Although he had little luck, he found the Broadway theatre stimulating. He absorbed its smartness and pace into his own work, which brought him his first real success as
2970-627: Is a theatre in South Hampstead , in the London Borough of Camden . It specialises in commissioning and producing new writing, supporting and developing the work of new writers. The original Hampstead Theatre Club was created in 1959, in Moreland Hall, a parish church school hall in Holly Bush Vale, Hampstead Village . James Roose-Evans was the founder and first Artistic Director, and
3069-476: Is a political comedy set in a British colony; Quadrille (1952) is a drama about Victorian love and elopement; and Nude with Violin (1956, starring John Gielgud in London and Coward in New York) is a satire on modern art and critical pretension. A revue, Sigh No More (1945), was a moderate success, but two musicals, Pacific 1860 (1946), a lavish South Seas romance, and Ace of Clubs (1950), set in
We Were Dancing - Misplaced Pages Continue
3168-484: Is no longer madly in love with Louise after 13 years of marriage, although he still cares for her greatly. The exchange is interrupted by the entrance of Major Blake, looking for his wife, Eva. Clara fobs him off by saying that Eva is with mutual friends, the Baileys and he goes out. Hubert remains concerned that Louise is so sure that she wants to be with a man she has only just met. She replies in song – "We were dancing … When
3267-400: The 1943 Academy Awards ceremony. Coward played a naval captain, basing the character on his friend Lord Louis Mountbatten . Lean went on to direct and adapt film versions of three Coward plays. Coward's most enduring work from the war years was the hugely successful black comedy Blithe Spirit (1941), about a novelist who researches the occult and hires a medium. A séance brings back
3366-497: The City of London . Coward was homosexual but, following the convention of his times, this was never publicly mentioned. The critic Kenneth Tynan's description in 1953 was close to an acknowledgment of Coward's sexuality: "Forty years ago he was Slightly in Peter Pan , and you might say that he has been wholly in Peter Pan ever since. No private considerations have been allowed to deflect
3465-689: The D. W. Griffith film Hearts of the World in an uncredited role. He began writing plays, collaborating on the first two ( Ida Collaborates (1917) and Women and Whisky (1918)) with his friend Esmé Wynne. His first solo effort as a playwright was The Rat Trap (1918) which was eventually produced at the Everyman Theatre , Hampstead , in October 1926. During these years, he met Lorn McNaughtan, who became his private secretary and served in that capacity for more than forty years, until her death. In 1920, at
3564-469: The Great Depression , writing a succession of popular hits. They ranged from large-scale spectaculars to intimate comedies. Examples of the former were the operetta Bitter Sweet (1929), about a woman who elopes with her music teacher, and the historical extravaganza Cavalcade (1931) at Drury Lane , about thirty years in the lives of two families, which required a huge cast, gargantuan sets and
3663-570: The OMs , demonstrably the greatest living English playwright." Time wrote that "in the 60s... his best work, with its inspired inconsequentiality, seemed to exert not only a period charm but charm, period." By the end of the 1960s, Coward developed arteriosclerosis and, during the run of Suite in Three Keys , struggled with bouts of memory loss. This also affected his work in The Italian Job , and he retired from acting immediately afterwards. Coward
3762-552: The Savoy Hotel . During one air raid on the area around the Savoy he joined Carroll Gibbons and Judy Campbell in impromptu cabaret to distract the captive guests from their fears. Another of Coward's wartime projects, as writer, star, composer and co-director (alongside David Lean), was the naval film drama In Which We Serve . The film was popular on both sides of the Atlantic, and he was awarded an honorary certificate of merit at
3861-580: The diæresis (" I didn't put the dots over the 'e' in Noël. The language did. Otherwise it's not Noël but Nool!"). The press and many book publishers failed to follow suit, and his name was printed as 'Noel' in The Times , The Observer and other contemporary newspapers and books. "Why", asked Coward, "am I always expected to wear a dressing-gown, smoke cigarettes in a long holder and say 'Darling, how wonderful'?" The answer lay in Coward's assiduous cultivation of
3960-574: The 1959–1960 season included The Dumb Waiter and The Room by Harold Pinter , Eugène Ionesco 's Jacques and The Sport of My Mad Mother by Ann Jellicoe . In 1962, the company moved to a portable cabin in Swiss Cottage where it remained for nearly 40 years, before, in 2003, the new purpose-built Hampstead Theatre opened in Swiss Cottage. The main auditorium seats 373 people. The studio theatre, Hampstead Downstairs, seats up to 100 people and
4059-483: The 1960s: he was no longer seen as the smooth 1930s sophisticate, but as the doyen of the theatre. As The New Statesman wrote in 1964, "Who would have thought the landmarks of the Sixties would include the emergence of Noël Coward as the grand old man of British drama? There he was one morning, flipping verbal tiddlywinks with reporters about "Dad's Renaissance"; the next he was ... beside Forster , T. S. Eliot and
We Were Dancing - Misplaced Pages Continue
4158-562: The Burning Pestle in Birmingham and then London. He did not enjoy the role, finding Francis Beaumont and his sometime collaborator John Fletcher "two of the dullest Elizabethan writers ever known ... I had a very, very long part, but I was very, very bad at it". Nevertheless, The Manchester Guardian thought that Coward got the best out of the role, and The Times called the play "the jolliest thing in London". Coward completed
4257-407: The National Theatre's 2008 exhibition, The Independent commented, "His famous silk, polka-dot dressing gown and elegant cigarette holder both seem to belong to another era. But 2008 is proving to be the year that Britain falls in love with Noël Coward all over again." As soon as he achieved success he began polishing the Coward image: an early press photograph showed him sitting up in bed holding
4356-628: The New Theatre) in London was renamed the Noël Coward Theatre in his honour in 2006. Coward was born in 1899 in Teddington , Middlesex , a south-western suburb of London. His parents were Arthur Sabin Coward (1856–1937), a piano salesman, and Violet Agnes Coward (1863–1954), daughter of Henry Gordon Veitch, a captain and surveyor in the Royal Navy . Noël Coward was the second of their three sons,
4455-737: The Queen Mother replied, "I came because he was my friend." The Noël Coward Theatre in St Martin's Lane , originally opened in 1903 as the New Theatre and later called the Albery, was renamed in his honour after extensive refurbishment, re-opening on 1 June 2006. A statue of Coward by Angela Conner was unveiled by the Queen Mother in the foyer of the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane in 1998. There are also sculptures of Coward displayed in New York and Jamaica, and
4554-795: The Second World War. It is a Grade II listed building . In the 1950s, Coward left the UK for tax reasons, receiving harsh criticism in the press. He first settled in Bermuda but later bought houses in Jamaica and Switzerland ( Chalet Covar in the village of Les Avants , near Montreux ), which remained his homes for the rest of his life. His expatriate neighbours and friends included Joan Sutherland , David Niven , Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor , and Julie Andrews and Blake Edwards in Switzerland and Ian Fleming and his wife Ann in Jamaica. Coward
4653-617: The Shaw Festival in 2009. The play, together with ideas from Ways and Means , another play in the Tonight at 8.30 cycle, was loosely adapted as a film of the same name in 1942. It was directed by Robert Z. Leonard and starred Norma Shearer and Melvyn Douglas . The plot was modified to so that the couple were now expatriate impoverished European aristocrats, professional houseguests of, and looking for mates among, nouveau riche Americans who are impressed by their titles. Coward described
4752-719: The West End in 1971. The play was given in 2018 at the Jermyn Street Theatre , London, as part of a three-evening cycle of Tonight at 8.30 , directed by Tom Littler , with Sara Crowe and Ian Hallard as Louise and Karl. The piece was presented at the Shaw Festival , Canada, in 1971 and at the Williamstown Theatre Festival in 2000. The Antaeus Company in Los Angeles revived all ten plays in October 2007, as did
4851-783: The West End: The Vortex , Fallen Angels , Hay Fever and On with the Dance . Coward was turning out numerous plays and acting in his own works and others'. Soon his frantic pace caught up with him while starring in The Constant Nymph . He collapsed and was ordered to rest for a month; he ignored the doctors and sailed for the US to start rehearsals for his play This Was a Man . In New York he collapsed again, and had to take an extended rest, recuperating in Hawaii. Other Coward works produced in
4950-485: The World in 80 Days (1956), Our Man in Havana (1959), Bunny Lake Is Missing (1965), Boom! (1968) and The Italian Job (1969). Stage and film opportunities he turned down in the 1950s included an invitation to compose a musical version of Pygmalion (two years before My Fair Lady was written), and offers of the roles of the king in the original stage production of The King and I , and Colonel Nicholson in
5049-555: The age of 20, Coward starred in his own play, the light comedy I'll Leave It to You . After a three-week run in Manchester it opened in London at the New Theatre (renamed the Noël Coward Theatre in 2006), his first full-length play in the West End. Neville Cardus 's praise in The Manchester Guardian was grudging. Notices for the London production were mixed, but encouraging. The Observer commented, "Mr Coward... has
SECTION 50
#17331052643885148-783: The children's play Where the Rainbow Ends . Coward played in the piece in 1911 and 1912 at the Garrick Theatre in London's West End . In 1912 Coward also appeared at the Savoy Theatre in An Autumn Idyll (as a dancer in the ballet) and at the London Coliseum in A Little Fowl Play , by Harold Owen, in which Hawtrey starred. Italia Conti engaged Coward to appear at the Liverpool Repertory Theatre in 1913, and in
5247-640: The comic " Mad Dogs and Englishmen " from Words and Music , and "Mrs Worthington". With the outbreak of the Second World War Coward abandoned the theatre and sought official war work. After running the British propaganda office in Paris, where he concluded that "if the policy of His Majesty's Government is to bore the Germans to death I don't think we have time", he worked on behalf of British intelligence. His task
5346-468: The critic Michael Billington considered it one of the most durable of the Tonight at 8.30 plays; in 2009 Coward's biographer Barry Day wrote that it was generally considered the weakest of the cycle. No%C3%ABl Coward Sir Noël Peirce Coward (16 December 1899 – 26 March 1973) was an English playwright, composer, director, actor, and singer, known for his wit, flamboyance, and what Time magazine called "a sense of personal style,
5445-562: The curtain calls and spitting at Coward as he left the theatre. Coward later said of this flop, "My first instinct was to leave England immediately, but this seemed too craven a move, and also too gratifying to my enemies, whose numbers had by then swollen in our minds to practically the entire population of the British Isles." By 1929 Coward was one of the world's highest-earning writers, with an annual income of £50,000, more than £3 million in terms of 2020 values. Coward thrived during
5544-502: The drive of his career; like Gielgud and Rattigan , like the late Ivor Novello, he is a congenital bachelor." Coward firmly believed his private business was not for public discussion, considering " any sexual activities when over-advertised" to be tasteless. Even in the 1960s, Coward refused to acknowledge his sexual orientation publicly, wryly observing, "There are still a few old ladies in Worthing who don't know." Despite this reticence, he encouraged his secretary Cole Lesley to write
5643-517: The duke's death, "I suddenly find that I loved him more than I knew." Coward maintained close friendships with many women, including the actress and author Esmé Wynne-Tyson, his first collaborator and constant correspondent; Gladys Calthrop , who designed sets and costumes for many of his works; his secretary and close confidante Lorn Loraine; the actresses Gertrude Lawrence, Joyce Carey and Judy Campbell; and "his loyal and lifelong amitié amoureuse ", Marlene Dietrich . In his profession, Coward
5742-415: The eldest of whom had died in 1898 at the age of six. Coward's father lacked ambition and industry, and family finances were often poor. Coward was bitten by the performing bug early and appeared in amateur concerts by the age of seven. He attended the Chapel Royal Choir School as a young child. He had little formal schooling but was a voracious reader. Encouraged by his ambitious mother, who sent him to
5841-487: The epic Cavalcade (1931), requiring a large cast, gargantuan sets and a complex hydraulic stage, to the intimate comedies Private Lives (1930), in which Coward starred alongside Gertrude Lawrence , and Design for Living (1932). Coward said that after Private Lives , he felt that the public enjoyed seeing him and Lawrence together on stage, and so he wrote the play cycle Tonight at 8.30 as "acting, singing, and dancing vehicles for Gertrude Lawrence and myself". In
5940-658: The film The Bridge on the River Kwai . Invited to play the title role in the 1962 film Dr. No , he replied, "No, no, no, a thousand times, no." In the same year, he turned down the role of Humbert Humbert in Lolita , saying, "At my time of life the film story would be logical if the 12-year-old heroine was a sweet little old lady." In the mid-1960s and early 1970s successful productions of his 1920s and 1930s plays, and new revues celebrating his music, including Oh, Coward! on Broadway and Cowardy Custard in London, revived Coward's popularity and critical reputation. He dubbed this comeback "Dad's Renaissance". It began with
6039-415: The first scene. Tonight at 8.30 opened at the Opera House, Manchester , on 15 October 1935, the first play on the bill, followed by two others from Tonight at 8.30 : The Astonished Heart and Red Peppers . It then opened in London on 9 January 1936 at the Phoenix Theatre , but for the first three weeks of the run only six of the plays were presented. We Were Dancing was added on 29 January, and
SECTION 60
#17331052643886138-587: The ghost of his first wife, causing havoc for the novelist and his second wife. With 1,997 consecutive performances, it broke box-office records for the run of a West End comedy, and was also produced on Broadway, where its original run was 650 performances. The play was adapted into a 1945 film , directed by Lean. Coward toured during 1942 in Blithe Spirit , in rotation with his comedy Present Laughter and his working-class drama This Happy Breed . In his Middle East Diary Coward made several statements that offended many Americans. In particular, he commented that he
6237-450: The home front than by intelligence work: "Go and sing to them when the guns are firing – that's your job!" Coward, though disappointed, followed this advice. He toured, acted and sang indefatigably in Europe, Africa, Asia and America. He wrote and recorded war-themed popular songs, including " London Pride " and " Don't Let's Be Beastly to the Germans ". His London home was wrecked by German bombs in 1941, and he took up temporary residence at
6336-502: The influence of Bernard Shaw on Coward's writing, thought more highly of the play than of Coward's newly found fans: "I was unfortunately wedged in the centre of a group of his more exuberant friends who greeted each of his sallies with 'That's a Noëlism!'" The play ran in London from 1 February to 24 March 1923, after which Coward turned to revue , co-writing and performing in André Charlot 's London Calling! In 1924, Coward achieved his first great critical and financial success as
6435-539: The king irresponsible, telling Churchill, "England doesn't wish for a Queen Cutie." Coward disliked propaganda in plays: Nevertheless, his own views sometimes surfaced in his plays: both Cavalcade and This Happy Breed are, in the words of the playwright David Edgar , "overtly Conservative political plays written in the Brechtian epic manner." In religion, Coward was agnostic. He wrote of his views, "Do I believe in God? I can't say No and I can't say Yes, To me it's anybody's guess." Coward spelled his first name with
6534-482: The mid-to-late 1920s included the plays Easy Virtue (1926), a drama about a divorcée's clash with her snobbish in-laws; The Queen Was in the Parlour , a Ruritanian romance ; This Was a Man (1926), a comedy about adulterous aristocrats; The Marquise (1927), an eighteenth-century costume drama; Home Chat (1927), a comedy about a married woman's fidelity; and the revues On with the Dance (1925) and This Year of Grace (1928). None of these shows has entered
6633-461: The north coast of the island. A memorial service was held in St Martin-in-the-Fields in London on 29 May 1973, for which the Poet Laureate , John Betjeman , wrote and delivered a poem in Coward's honour, John Gielgud and Laurence Olivier read verse, and Yehudi Menuhin played Bach . On 28 March 1984 a memorial stone was unveiled by the Queen Mother in Poets' Corner , Westminster Abbey . Thanked by Coward's partner, Graham Payn , for attending,
6732-446: The numbers from his Las Vegas act. It was followed by productions of Blithe Spirit in which he starred with Claudette Colbert , Lauren Bacall and Mildred Natwick and This Happy Breed with Edna Best and Roger Moore . Despite excellent reviews, the audience viewing figures were moderate. During the 1950s and 1960s Coward continued to write musicals and plays. After the Ball , his 1953 adaptation of Lady Windermere's Fan ,
6831-416: The other three followed later in the run. As in Manchester, We Were Dancing was followed by The Astonished Heart and Red Peppers . After a try-out in Boston , the Broadway opening took place on 24 November 1936 at the National Theatre , again starring Coward and Lawrence. We Were Dancing was included in the first of the three programmes in the cycle, along with Fumed Oak and Shadow Play . At
6930-415: The outbreak of the Second World War, Coward volunteered for war work, running the British propaganda office in Paris. He also worked with the Secret Service, seeking to use his influence to persuade the American public and government to help Britain. Coward won an Academy Honorary Award in 1943 for his naval film drama In Which We Serve and was knighted in 1970. In the 1950s he achieved fresh success as
7029-468: The piece as "a light episode, little more than a curtain-raiser" and felt that it fulfilled that function adequately". His friend the actress Lynn Fontanne disagreed, and told him that the audience needed to believe that the two main characters were in love, but that the idea came across as very silly. At the time of the first production The Manchester Guardian described the play as "a witty little piece", but subsequent critical opinion has varied. In 1970
7128-459: The playwright Keith Winter, actors Louis Hayward and Alan Webb , his manager Jack Wilson and the composer Ned Rorem , who published details of their relationship in his diaries. Coward had a 19-year friendship with Prince George, Duke of Kent , but biographers differ on whether it was platonic. Payn believed that it was, although Coward reportedly admitted to the historian Michael Thornton that there had been "a little dalliance". Coward said, on
7227-436: The programme for the London run Coward wrote: [T]he idea of presenting three short plays in an evening instead of one long one is far from original. In fact, if one looks back over the years, one finds that the "triple bill" formula has been used, with varying degrees of success, since the earliest days of the theatre. Latterly, however – that is during the last quarter of a century – it has fallen from favour. Occasionally still
7326-490: The public view of Coward's flamboyant lifestyle, Churchill used as his reason for withholding the honour Coward's £200 fine for contravening currency regulations in 1941. Had the Germans invaded Britain, Coward was scheduled to be arrested and killed, as he was in The Black Book along with other figures such as Virginia Woolf , Paul Robeson , Bertrand Russell , C. P. Snow and H. G. Wells . When this came to light after
7425-402: The regular repertoire, but the last introduced one of Coward's best-known songs, "A Room with a View". His biggest failure in this period was the play Sirocco (1927), which concerns free love among the wealthy. It starred Ivor Novello , of whom Coward said, "the two most beautiful things in the world are Ivor's profile and my mind". Theatregoers hated the play, showing violent disapproval at
7524-461: The regular theatre repertoire. He composed hundreds of songs, in addition to well over a dozen musical theatre works (including the operetta Bitter Sweet and comic revues ), screenplays, poetry, several volumes of short stories, the novel Pomp and Circumstance , and a three-volume autobiography. Coward's stage and film acting and directing career spanned six decades, during which he starred in many of his own works, as well as those of others. At
7623-692: The same year he was cast as the Lost Boy Slightly in Peter Pan . He reappeared in Peter Pan the following year, and in 1915 he was again in Where the Rainbow Ends . He worked with other child actors in this period, including Hermione Gingold (whose mother threatened to turn "that naughty boy" out); Fabia Drake ; Esmé Wynne , with whom he collaborated on his earliest plays; Alfred Willmore, later known as Micheál Mac Liammóir ; and Gertrude Lawrence who, Coward wrote in his memoirs, "gave me an orange and told me
7722-646: The spark has died. They part on good terms and she leaves. Eva Blake and George Davies return furtively from their illicit excursion hoping not to have been missed. Karl remembers the Major's enquiries and asks, "Is your name Eva?" When she says yes, he replies sardonically, "I congratulate you." We Were Dancing was included in a triple bill of plays from Tonight at 8.30 at the Hampstead Theatre in 1970, together with Red Peppers and Family Album , starring Millicent Martin and Gary Bond . The production transferred to
7821-411: The staccato, blind impulsiveness of a machine-gun. In 1955 Coward's cabaret act at Las Vegas, recorded live for the gramophone and released as Noël Coward at Las Vegas , was so successful that CBS engaged him to write and direct a series of three 90-minute television specials for the 1955–56 season. The first of these, Together With Music , paired Coward with Mary Martin , featuring him in many of
7920-524: The subject and played an explicitly homosexual character. The daring piece earned Coward new critical praise. He intended to star in the trilogy on Broadway but was too ill to travel. Only two of the Suite in Three Keys plays were performed in New York, with the title changed to Noël Coward in Two Keys , starring Hume Cronyn . Coward won new popularity in several notable films later in his career, such as Around
8019-627: The troops, was a supreme success, first in London at the Café de Paris , and later in Las Vegas . The theatre critic Kenneth Tynan wrote: To see him whole, public and private personalities conjoined, you must see him in cabaret ... he padded down the celebrated stairs ... halted before the microphone on black-suede-clad feet, and, upraising both hands in a gesture of benediction, set about demonstrating how these things should be done. Baring his teeth as if unveiling some grotesque monument, and cooing like
8118-598: The upper classes. Its notoriety and fiery performances attracted large audiences, justifying a move from a small suburban theatre to a larger one in the West End. Coward, still having trouble finding producers, raised the money to produce the play himself. During the run of The Vortex , Coward met Jack Wilson , an American stockbroker (later a director and producer), who became his business manager and lover. At first Wilson managed Coward's business affairs well, but later abused his position to embezzle from his employer. The success of The Vortex in both London and America caused
8217-469: The war, Coward wrote an alternative reality play, Peace in Our Time , depicting an England occupied by Nazi Germany . Coward's new plays after the war were moderately successful but failed to match the popularity of his pre-war hits. Relative Values (1951) addresses the culture clash between an aristocratic English family and a Hollywood actress with matrimonial ambitions; South Sea Bubble (1951)
8316-447: The war, Coward wrote: "If anyone had told me at that time I was high up on the Nazi blacklist, I should have laughed ... I remember Rebecca West , who was one of the many who shared the honour with me, sent me a telegram which read: 'My dear – the people we should have been seen dead with'." Churchill's view was that Coward would do more for the war effort by entertaining the troops and
8415-507: The weekend and bemuse and enrage each other's guests. Some writers have seen elements of Coward's old mentor, Mrs Astley Cooper, and her set in the characters of the family. By the 1970s the play was recognised as a classic, described in The Times as a "dazzling achievement; like The Importance of Being Earnest , it is pure comedy with no mission but to delight, and it depends purely on the interplay of characters, not on elaborate comic machinery." By June 1925 Coward had four shows running in
8514-485: The world caught on fire"; emotion overcomes her and she faints in Karl's arms. The four have been talking all night and are exhausted. Karl proposes to take Louise with him on a business trip to Australia, and Hubert, resignedly bidding him make her happy, leaves with Clara. Left alone together Louise and Karl realise that their earlier emotions were transitory and that they are not in love with each other. They dance together, but
8613-411: The world is relatively small. On the other hand, my sense of my own importance to myself is tremendous." When a Time interviewer apologised, "I hope you haven't been bored having to go through all these interviews for your [70th] birthday, having to answer the same old questions about yourself", Coward rejoined, "Not at all. I'm fascinated by the subject." Hampstead Theatre Hampstead Theatre
8712-585: Was knighted in 1970, and was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature . He received a Tony Award for lifetime achievement in 1970. In 1972, he was awarded an honorary Doctor of Letters degree by the University of Sussex . At the age of 73, Coward died at his home, Firefly Estate , in Jamaica on 26 March 1973 of heart failure and was buried three days later on the brow of Firefly Hill, overlooking
8811-521: Was "less impressed by some of the mournful little Brooklyn boys lying there in tears amid the alien corn with nothing worse than a bullet wound in the leg or a fractured arm". After protests from both The New York Times and The Washington Post , the Foreign Office urged Coward not to visit the United States in January 1945. He did not return to America again during the war. In the aftermath of
8910-413: Was a talented boy, God knows, and, when washed and smarmed down a bit, passably attractive. There appeared to be no earthly reason why Miss Lila Field shouldn't jump at me, and we both believed that she would be a fool indeed to miss such a magnificent opportunity. The leading actor-manager Charles Hawtrey , whom the young Coward idolised and from whom he learned a great deal about the theatre, cast him in
9009-518: Was a witness at the Flemings' wedding, but his diaries record his exasperation with their constant bickering. Coward's political views were conservative, but not unswervingly so: he despised the government of Neville Chamberlain for its policy of appeasing Nazi Germany, and he differed sharply with Winston Churchill over the abdication crisis of 1936. Whereas Churchill supported Edward VIII 's wish to marry "his cutie", Wallis Simpson , Coward thought
9108-412: Was adapted for the cinema in 1942. The play depicts a married woman who falls in love with a divorced man at a dance on a South Pacific island. They plan to go to Australia, but in the cold light of morning, they realise that they have nothing in common and go their separate ways, In the late 1920s and early 1930s, Coward wrote a succession of hits, ranging from the operetta Bitter Sweet (1929) and
9207-418: Was expected of me. Part of the job." Time concluded, "Coward's greatest single gift has not been writing or composing, not acting or directing, but projecting a sense of personal style, a combination of cheek and chic, pose and poise." Coward's distinctive clipped diction arose from his childhood: his mother was deaf and Coward developed his staccato style of speaking to make it easier for her to hear what he
9306-475: Was in the care of the orphanage. He became Collinson's godfather and helped him to get started in show business. When Collinson was a successful director, he invited Coward to play a role in The Italian Job . Graham Payn also played a small role in the film. In 1926, Coward acquired Goldenhurst Farm , in Aldington, Kent , making it his home for most of the next thirty years, except when the military used it during
9405-517: Was really quite good in it, owing to the kindness and care of Hawtrey's direction. He took endless trouble with me ... and taught me during those two short weeks many technical points of comedy acting which I use to this day." In 1918, Coward was conscripted into the Artists Rifles but was assessed as unfit for active service because of a tubercular tendency, and he was discharged on health grounds after nine months. That year he appeared in
9504-425: Was saying; it also helped him eradicate a slight lisp. His nickname, "The Master", "started as a joke and became true", according to Coward. It was used of him from the 1920s onwards. Coward himself made light of it: when asked by a journalist why he was known as "The Master", he replied, "Oh, you know – Jack of all trades, master of none." He could, however, joke about his own immodesty: "My sense of my importance to
9603-557: Was the last musical he premiered in the West End; his last two musicals were first produced on Broadway. Sail Away (1961), set on a luxury cruise liner, was Coward's most successful post-war musical, with productions in America, Britain and Australia. The Girl Who Came to Supper , a musical adaptation of The Sleeping Prince (1963), ran for only three months. He directed the successful 1964 Broadway musical adaptation of Blithe Spirit , called High Spirits . Coward's late plays include
9702-476: Was to use his celebrity to influence American public and political opinion in favour of helping Britain. He was frustrated by British press criticism of his foreign travel while his countrymen suffered at home, but he was unable to reveal that he was acting on behalf of the Secret Service. In 1942 George VI wished to award Coward a knighthood for his efforts, but was dissuaded by Winston Churchill . Mindful of
9801-485: Was widely admired and loved for his generosity and kindness to those who fell on hard times. Stories are told of the unobtrusive way in which he relieved the needs or paid the debts of old theatrical acquaintances who had no claim on him. From 1934 until 1956, Coward was the president of the Actors Orphanage , which was supported by the theatrical industry. In that capacity, he befriended the young Peter Collinson , who
#387612