Coward, Noël (Peirce) 1899-1973 (Hernia Whittlebot)

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COWARD, Noël (Peirce) 1899-1973
(Hernia Whittlebot)

PERSONAL:

Born December 16, 1899, in Teddingtonon-Thames, Middlesex, England; died of a heart attack, March 26, 1973, in Blue Harbour, Jamaica; son of Arthur Sabin (a clerk in a music publishing house and a piano salesman) and Violet Agnes (Veitch) Coward. Education: Attended Chapel Royal School, Clapham.

CAREER:

Playwright, author, composer, songwriter, actor, singer, director, producer, and nightclub entertainer. Stage appearances included as Prince Mussel in The Goldfish (debut), 1911; Cannard in The Great Name, 1911; William in Where the Rainbow Ends, 1911; dancer in An Autumn Idyll, 1911; angel of light in Hannele, 1913; Tommy in War in the Air, 1913; a Boy in A Little Fowl Play, 1913; Slightly in Peter Pan, 1913; Charley Wykeham in Charley's Aunt, 1916; Basil Pyecroft in The Light Blues, 1916; Jack Morrison in The Happy Family, 1916; Ripley Guildford in The Saving Grace, 1917; Courtney Borner in Scandal, 1918; Ralph in The Knight of the Burning Pestle, 1919; Clay Collins in Polly with a Past, 1921; Lewis Dodd in The Constant Nymph, 1926; Clark Storey in The Second Man, 1928; Captain Stanhope in Journey's End, c. 1930; King Magnus in The Apple Cart, 1953; and narrator of Carnival of the Animals, 1956. Film roles include Hearts of the World, 1918; The Scoundrel, 1935; Around the World in Eighty Days, 1956; Our Man in Havana, 1960; Surprise Package, 1960; Paris When It Sizzles, 1964; Bunny Lake Is Missing, 1965; Boom!, 1968; and The Italian Job, 1968. Producer of films, including Blithe Spirit, United Artists, 1945, and This Happy Breed, Universal, 1946. President of Actors' Orphanage, 1934-56. Military service: British Army, Artists' Rifles, 1918; entertained troops during World War II.

MEMBER:

Royal Society of Literature (fellow).

AWARDS, HONORS:

New York Drama Critics Circle Award for Best Foreign Play, 1942, for Blithe Spirit; Special Academy Award of Merit for Outstanding Production Achievement, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, 1942, for In Which We Serve; Antoinette Perry ("Tony") Award nomination for best book of a musical, 1964, for The Girl Who Came to Supper; Special Tony Award, 1970; knighted, 1970; D.Litt., University of Sussex, 1972; memorialized in Westminster Abbey, 1984; Tony Award for Best Revival of a Play, 2002, for Private Lives.

WRITINGS:

PUBLISHED PLAYS

I'll Leave It to You (first produced in London, England 1920), S. French (London, England), 1920.

The Young Idea (first produced in London, England, 1923), S. French (London, England), 1924.

The Rat Trap, Benn (London, England), 1924.

The Vortex (first produced in London, England, 1924; produced on Broadway [and director], 1925), Harper (New York, NY), 1925.

Fallen Angels (first produced in London, England, 1925; produced in New York, NY, 1956), Benn (London, England), 1925, S. French (New York, NY), 1958.

Hay Fever (first produced in London, England, 1925; produced in New York, NY, 1925), Harper (New York, NY), 1925, revised edition, S. French (New York, NY), 1927, with an introduction by the author, Heinemann (London, England), 1965, reprinted, Methuen Drama (London, England), 2002.

Easy Virtue (first produced in London, England, 1926), Benn (London, England), 1926.

This Was a Man (first produced in London, England), Harper (New York, NY), 1926.

The Marquise (first produced in London, England, 1927; produced in New York, NY, 1927), Benn (London, England), 1927.

Home Chat (first produced in London, England, 1927), M. Secker (London, England), 1927.

Sirocco (first produced in London, England, 1927), M. Secker (London, England), 1927.

(And composer and lyricist) Charles B. Cochran's Revue (first produced in London, England, 1931), Chappell, 1928.

(And composer) This Year of Grace (revue; first produced in New York, NY, 1928; also see below), published in Second Play Parade, Heinemann (London, England), 1939.

(And director) Bitter Sweet (operetta; first produced in London, England, 1929; produced on Broadway [and director], 1931; also see below), Heinemann (London, England), 1930, Doubleday (New York, NY), 1931.

Private Lives (first produced in London, England, 1930), Doubleday (New York, NY), 1968.

Post-Mortem, Doubleday (New York, NY), 1931.

(And director) Cavalcade (first produced in London, England, 1931), Heinemann (London, England), 1932, Doubleday (New York, NY), 1933.

(And director, composer, and lyricist) Words and Music (revue; first produced in London, England, 1932; also see below), published in Second Play Parade, Heinemann (London, England), 1939.

(And producer, with Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne) Design for Living (first produced in New York, NY, 1933), Doubleday (New York, NY), 1933.

Conversation Piece (first produced in London, England, 1934; produced on Broadway [and director], 1934), Doubleday (New York, NY), 1934.

(And director) Point Valaine (first produced in New York, NY, 1935), Doubleday (New York, NY), 1935.

(And director) Tonight at Eight-Thirty (series of plays consisting of The Astonished Heart, Family Album, Fumed Oak, Hands across the Sea, Red Peppers, Shadow Play, Still Life, Ways and Means, and We Were Dancing; first six plays first produced in London, England, 1936; entire series produced in New York, NY, 1936; also see below), Doubleday (New York, NY), 1936.

The Astonished Heart (part of Tonight at Eight-Thirty series), published together and in separate editions, S. French (New York, NY), 1938.

(And composer and lyricist) Operette (first produced in London, England, 1938), Heinemann (London, England), 1938.

Blithe Spirit (first produced in London, England, 1941; produced on Broadway, 1941), Doubleday (New York, NY), 1941, Methuen Drama (London, England), 2002.

(And director) Relative Values (first produced in London, England, 1951), Heinemann (London, England), 1942.

(And director) Present Laughter (first produced in England, 1942; produced in London, England, 1943), Heinemann (London, England), 1943, Doubleday (New York, NY), 1947.

(And director) This Happy Breed (first produced in London, England, 1943), Heinemann (London, England), 1943, Doubleday (New York, NY), 1947.

Peace in Our Time, Heinemann (London, England), 1947, Doubleday (New York, NY), 1948.

(And director) Quadrille (first produced in London, England, 1952; produced in New York, NY, 1954), Heinemann (London, England), 1952, Doubleday (New York, NY), 1955.

(And composer and lyricist) After the Ball (operetta based on Oscar Wilde's Lady Windermere's Fan; first produced in London, England, 1954), Chappell, 1954.

South Sea Bubble (first produced in London, England, 1956), Heinemann (London, England), 1956.

(And director, with John Gielgud) Nude with Violin (first produced on Broadway, 1957), Heinemann (London, England), 1957, Doubleday (New York, NY), 1958, revised acting edition, S. French (London, England), 1958.

Look after Lulu (based on Georges Feydeau's Occupetoi d'Amelie; first produced in London, England, 1959; produced in New York, NY, 1959), Heinemann (London, England), 1959.

Waiting in the Wings (first produced in London, England, 1960), Heinemann (London, England), 1960, Doubleday (New York, NY), 1961.

(And composer, lyricist, and director) Sail Away (libretto; first produced on Broadway, 1961), Bonard Productions, 1961.

Suite in Three Keys (includes A Song at Twilight, Shadows of the Evening, and Come into the Garden, Maud; first produced in London, England, 1966; also see below), Heinemann (London, England), 1966, Doubleday (New York, NY), 1967.

Shadows of the Evening, S. French (London, England), 1967.

Come into the Garden, Maud, S. French (London, England), 1967.

A Song at Twilight, S. French (London, England), 1967.

Cowardy Custard (revue; produced in New York, NY, 1972), published as Cowardy Custard: The World of Noël Coward, Heinemann (London, England), 1973.

Oh Coward! (revue; produced in New York, NY, 1972), Doubleday (New York, NY), 1974.

Semi-monde (originally titled Ritz Bar), Methuen (London, England), 2001.

UNPUBLISHED PLAYS

(And composer and lyricist, with Ronald Jeans) London Calling, first produced in London, England, 1923.

(With others) Charlot's Revue, first produced in London, England, 1924.

(And composer, with others) On with the Dance! (revue), first produced in London, England, 1925.

Biography, first produced in London, England, 1934.

(Composer, lyricist, and director) Set to Music (revue), first produced in New York, NY, 1939.

Sigh No More (revue), first produced in London, England, 1945.

(And director) Pacific 1860 (musical), first produced in London, England, 1946.

(And director) Ace of Clubs (musical), first produced in London, England, 1950.

(And director) Island Fling, first produced, 1951.

(Author of scenario and score) London Morning (ballet), 1959.

(Composer and lyricist) The Girl Who Came to Supper (based on The Sleeping Prince by Terence M. Rattigan), first produced in New York, NY, 1963.

(And director) High Spirits (musical adaptation of Coward's Blithe Spirit), first produced in New York, NY, 1964.

Mr. and Mrs. (musical; based on Still Life and Fumed Oak), produced in London, England, 1968.

And Now Noël Coward (revue; later retitled Noël Coward's Sweet Potato, produced in New York, NY, 1968.

(Contributor of material) Carol Channing with Ten Stout-hearted Men (revue), first produced in London, England, 1970.

Long Island Sound, first produced Off-Broadway, 2002.

OMNIBUS VOLUMES

Three Plays: The Rat Trap, The Vortex [and] Fallen Angels (also contains Coward's reply to his critics), Benn (London, England), 1925.

The Plays of Noël Coward, first series (contains Sirocco, Home Chat, and The Queen Was in the Parlour), Doubleday (New York, NY), 1928.

Bitter Sweet, and Other Plays (contains Bitter Sweet, Easy Virtue, and Hay Fever), notes by W. Somerset Maugham, Doubleday (New York, NY), 1929.

Collected Sketches and Lyrics, Hutchinson (London, England), 1931, Doubleday (New York, NY), 1932.

Play Parade (contains Design for Living, Cavalcade, Private Lives, Bitter Sweet, Post-Mortem, The Vortex, and Hay Fever), Doubleday (New York, NY), 1933, revised edition, Heinemann (London, England), 1949.

Tonight at Eight-Thirty, three volumes, Doubleday (New York, NY), 1936.

Second Play Parade (contains This Year of Grace Words and Music Operette, and Conversation Piece), Heinemann (London, England), 1939, 2nd edition published as Play Parade, Volume II, with addition of Fallen Angels and Easy Virtue, 1950.

Curtain Calls (includes Tonight at Eight-Thirty, Ways and Means, Still Life, Family Album, Conversation Piece, Easy Virtue, Point Valaine, and This Was a Man), Doubleday (New York, NY), 1940.

Play Parade, Volume III (contains The Queen Was in the Parlour, I'll Leave It to You, The Young Idea,Sirocco, The Rat Trap, This Was a Man, Home Chat, and The Marquise), Heinemann (London, England), 1950.

Play Parade, Volume IV (contains Tonight at Eight-Thirty, Present Laughter, and This Happy Breed), Heinemann (London, England), 1952.

Play Parade, Volume V, Heinemann (London, England), 1958.

Play Parade, Volume VI, Heinemann (London, England), 1962.

Three Plays by Noël Coward: Blithe Spirit, Hay Fever, [and] Private Lives, with an introduction by Edward Albee, Dell (New York, NY), 1965, reprinted with an introduction by Philip Hoare, Vintage (New York, NY), 1999.

SCREENPLAYS

(Author of dialogue and lyrics) Bitter Sweet, United Artists, 1933.

(And producer, actor, composer, and codirector) In Which We Serve, United Artists, 1942.

(And producer) Brief Encounter (adaptation of Still Life and Fumed Oak), Universal, 1946 (screenplay published in Three British Screen Plays, edited by Roger Manvell, Methuen (London, England), 1950).

(Contributor) The Astonished Heart, Universal, 1950.

Also contributor of material to Meet Me Tonight, a film adaptation of Tonight at Eight-Thirty, 1952; and to Together with Music, a television play produced by Ford Star Jubilee, CBS-TV, 1955.

FICTION

To Step Aside (seven short stories), Doubleday (New York, NY), 1939.

Star Quality (six short stories; also see below), Doubleday (New York, NY), 1951, with an introduction by Sheridan Morley, Methuen (London, England), 2002.

Short Stories, Short Plays, and Songs, Dell (New York, NY), 1955.

Pomp and Circumstance (novel), Doubleday (New York, NY), 1960.

Collected Short Stories, Heinemann (London, England), 1962, new edition published as The Collected Short Stories of Noël Coward, 1969.

Seven Stories, Doubleday (New York, NY), 1963.

Pretty Polly Barlow, and Other Stories, Heinemann (London, England), 1964, published as Pretty Polly, and Other Stories, Doubleday (New York, NY), 1965.

Bon Voyage and Other Stories, Heinemann (London, England), 1967, published as Bon Voyage, Doubleday (New York, NY), 1968.

The Collected Stories of Noël Coward, Dutton (New York, NY), 1983.

OTHER

(Compiler) Terribly Intimate Portraits, Boni & Liveright (New York, NY), 1922.

A Withered Nosegay (imaginary biographies), Christophers, 1922.

(Under pseudonym Hernia Whittlebot; real name cited as editor) Chelsea Buns (poems), Hutchinson (London, England), 1925.

(Editor) Spangled Unicorn (anthology), Hutchinson (London, England), 1932, Doubleday (New York, NY), 1933.

Present Indicative (autobiography; also see below), Doubleday (New York, NY), 1937.

Australia Visited, 1940 (broadcast series), Heinemann (London, England), 1941.

Middle East Diary, Doubleday (New York, NY), 1944.

Noël Coward Song Book, Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 1953.

Future Indefinite (autobiography; sequel to Present Indicative; also see below), Doubleday (New York, NY), 1954.

(Editor) Frederick Thomas Bason, Last Bassoon, Parrish, 1960.

(Translator) J. Dramese, Les Folies du Music-hall, Blond, 1962.

The Lyrics of Noël Coward, Heinemann (London, England), 1965, Doubleday (New York, NY), 1967.

Not Yet the Dodo and Other Verses, Heinemann (London, England), 1967, Doubleday (New York, NY), 1968.

Dick Richards, compiler, The Wit of Noël Coward, Frewin, 1968.

(Author of introduction) Michael Arlen, The London Venture, Cassell (London, England), 1968.

(Author of foreword) Raymond Mander and Joe Mitchenson, Musical Comedy: A Story in Pictures, P. Davies, 1969, Taplinger, 1970.

(Author of text) John Hadfield, editor, A Last Encore (pictures), Little, Brown (Boston, MA), 1973.

Collected Verse of Noël Coward, edited by Graham Payn and Martin Tickner, Routledge, Chapman & Hall (London, England), 1985.

Autobiography, Volume 1: Present Indicative, Volume 2: Past Conditional, Volume 3: Future Indicative, Methuen (London, England), 1986.

(Author of introduction) The Penguin Complete Saki, Penguin (London, England), 1988.

The Sayings of Noël Coward, edited by Philip Hoare, Duckworth (London, England), 1997.

Noël Coward: The Complete Illustrated Lyrics, edited and annotated by Barry Day, Overlook Press (Woodstock, NY), 1998.

Recordings by Coward include Noël and Gertie (based on Private Lives), RCA Victor, 1954, and Noël Coward's Theatre, Argo Eclipse, 1973. Noël Coward Dialogues and Noël Coward Reading His Poems were recorded by Caedmon.

ADAPTATIONS:

Coward's plays adapted for film include Private Lives, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, 1931; Bitter Sweet, British & Dominion, 1933; Design for Living, Paramount, 1933; Cavalcade, Twentieth Century-Fox, 1933; Tonight Is Ours (based on the play The Queen Was in the Parlour), Paramount, 1933; Bitter Sweet, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, 1940; We Were Dancing (based on Tonight at Eight-Thirty), Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, 1942; This Happy Breed, Universal, 1944; Brief Encounter (based on the play Still Life), Cineguild, 1945; Blithe Spirit, United Artists, 1945, television production, Compass Productions, 1966; The Astonished Heart, Universal, 1950; Tonight at Eight-Thirty (based on Ways and Means, Red Peppers, and Fumed Oak), British Film Makers, 1953; A Matter of Innocence (based on short story "Pretty Polly Barlow"), Universal, 1968; and "Star Quality" (television film; based on short stories), Masterpiece Theatre, Public Broadcasting System, 1987.

SIDELIGHTS:

"No one of this or any age," declared Alan Jay Lerner in his The Musical Theatre: A Celebration, "has ever been crowned with adulation and acclaim as Noël Coward." Born on December 16, 1899, in the middle-class London suburb of Teddington-on-Thames, Coward began his lengthy career in the theater as a child actor. By the time he died in 1973, Coward was world-famous, not only as an actor, but also as a playwright, director, producer, composer, lyricist, screenwriter, nightclub entertainer, novelist, memoirist, and poet. He numbered among his close friends some of the greatest talents of the twentieth-century stage, including Fred and Adele Astaire, John Gielgud, Gertrude Lawrence, Beatrice Lilly, Alfred Lunt and Lynne Fontanne, and Laurence Olivier.

Coward developed into a precocious child with a talent for acting and singing. By 1909, he and his mother together had decided that his future lay in the theatre. "One day … a little advertisement appeared in the Daily Mirror," Coward recorded in Present Indicative, his first volume of autobiography. "Mother read it aloud to me while I was having breakfast. 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 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."

After winning the coveted role in The Goldfish, Coward's acting career expanded rapidly. In 1913 he toured the north of England in a play called Hannele, in which he played first an angel, then a schoolboy. It was during this tour that he first met Gertrude Lawrence, another child actor. She "gave me an orange," Coward recorded in Present Indicative, "and told me a few mildly dirty stories, and I loved her from then onwards." Lawrence became one of the most renowned actresses of the twentieth century, often appearing with Coward in his plays and revues. She also had starring roles in many famous Broadway productions, including Oh, Kay (1926), Lady in the Dark (1941), and Rodgers and Hammerstein's The King and I (1951).

Coward gradually grew out of children's roles and moved to young-adult parts. He played a supporting character in J. M. Barrie's Peter Pan in 1913-15, and toured as Charles Wykeham in Charley's Aunt in 1916. By 1917, Coward was playing an adult role in The Saving Grace, a comedy directed by Charles Hawtrey, one of the best naturalistic actors of the time. "My part was reasonably large," Coward wrote in Present Indicative, "and I 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."

Coward's participation in the British Army during World War I was, in his own words, "brief and inglorious." In January, 1918, he received a notice from the Army requiring him to report for a medical examination. While in training for a position with the Artists' Rifles regiment, he fell and suffered a concussion that put him in the hospital for six weeks. Recurring severe headaches later caused him to be readmitted to the hospital where he was placed in a ward for epileptics.

After his discharge, Coward returned to the theater. He had developed an interest in playwriting in tandem with his acting, and in 1920 Gilbert Miller, an American producer friend, asked him to write a play from Miller's original concept for Charles Hawtrey. The finished play, I'll Leave It to You, was performed at a matinee in Manchester, and met with much applause.

The moderate success of I'll Leave It to You launched Coward's career as a playwright. Over the next few years he wrote a great deal but was not able to get his work performed, partly because he was not well known. In 1923 he contributed songs and playlets to London Calling!, a revue show consisting of unrelated playlets and songs. The show is chiefly remembered today for the song Parisian Pierrot, performed by Gertrude Lawrence, which became a Coward favorite. Contemporary audiences also noted one of Coward's playlets, The Swiss Family Whittlebot, which was "an accurate if uncharitable send-up of a family of contemporary poets called Hernia, Gob and Sago," explained Sheridan Morley in A Talent to Amuse: A Biography of Noël Coward. Critics thought the Whittlebots were parodies of the Sitwells—Edith, Osbert, and Sacheverell—one of England's premier literary families. Coward later used the name "Hernia Whittlebot" on a volume of poetry and read some of this esteemed woman's "poetry" on the radio.

In 1924 Coward's first great critical and financial success, The Vortex, was produced. It tells the story of a drug-addicted son's obsession with his nymphomaniacal mother, and it was considered extremely risque. Crowds flocked to see it, bringing Coward the prosperity that had eluded him for so long.

The success of The Vortex caused a great demand for Coward's plays. The year 1925 marked the debut of Fallen Angels, a three-act comedy that both shocked and entertained theater-goers with its portrayal of two middle-aged women slowly getting drunk while awaiting the arrival of a mutual lover. Hay Fever, produced the same year, tells the story of four obnoxious members of an artistic family who invite company to their estate for the weekend and then proceed to revile each other's guests. Other works produced in the mid-to-late 1920s included the revues On with the Dance! and This Year of Grace—which introduced "A Room with a View," one of Coward's most popular numbers—and the plays Easy Virtue, The Queen Was in the Parlour, This Was a Man, and Home Chat. The constant pressure exerted on Coward by the demand for his work—he performed in starring roles in his own plays—caused him to suffer a nervous breakdown in 1926. He began to travel, mostly by ship, to regain his health, and soon developed a passion for voyaging and ships that lasted the rest of his life.

In 1929, believing that the British theater was ready for a romantic revival, Coward wrote and directed Bitter Sweet, which became one of his most successful works. Unlike the earlier London Calling!, Bitter Sweet has a plot: it tells the story—in flashback—of young, strong-willed Londoner Sarah Millick, who in 1875 deserts her fiancée and runs off to Vienna with her music teacher, Carl Linden. Tragically, Carl is killed in a duel only five years later. Sarah, however, lives on to become an opera star and eventually marries the marquis of Shayne. Bitter Sweet features some of Coward's best-loved songs, including "If Love Were All" and "I'll See You Again." The playwright later claimed that the tune for "I'll See You Again" "dropped into my head, whole and complete" during a taxi ride in New York.

Coward repeated the success of Bitter Sweet on the New York stage late in 1929. With the American production well underway, he began to travel again, but he could not escape the theater entirely. While awaiting the arrival of a friend in a Tokyo hotel, he literally dreamed up what would become his most successful play, Private Lives. Somewhat later on the same trip, while motoring from Hanoi to Saigon in what is now Vietnam, Coward composed his most famous song: "Mad Dogs and Englishmen," a satiric paean to British imperialism in the tropics.

The London production of Private Lives went into rehearsal in July, 1930. It featured Coward himself as Elyot Chase, with Lawrence as Amanda Prynne, and Laurence Olivier as Victor, the supporting male role. The plot depicts several encounters between Elyot and Amanda; once married, they have divorced and remarried. They slowly discover that they are still very much in love, even though outwardly they can't stand each other. "Private Lives," wrote Morley, "almost certainly represents Coward's greatest claim to theatrical permanence; though it is the lightest of light comedies it has about it a symmetry and durability that have assured it near-constant production in one language or another from [its] first tour to the present day. It is in many ways a perfect light comedy, arguably the best to have come out of England in the first half of the twentieth century." In 1931 Private Lives moved to New York, where it played to capacity crowds.

Many of the leading roles in Coward's works were written for the author to perform himself, and he often wrote other roles with actor friends in mind. In 1933 he appeared on Broadway with American actor friends Alfred Lunt and Lynne Fontanne in the comedy Design for Living. This play tells the story of three artistic people—Leo, a playwright, Otto, a painter, and Gilda, an interior decorator—each devoted to the other two, who decide that they must live together in order to be truly happy. "As if to ward off the accusations of immorality that he knew would come," Morley wrote, "Coward makes it clear that his characters are artists … living in a world of their own that has little in common with, and cannot be invaded by, ordinary mortals.… Above all else, this vehicle for three players, all known intimately to the author and all cast by him long before the actual play was written, is simply about three people who happen to love each other very much."

Coward continued to produce, direct, write, compose, and star in his own plays, revues, operettas and musicals throughout the 1930s. During the 1935-36 theater season he appeared with Lawrence in a series of one-act plays collectively titled Tonight at Eight-Thirty. "To both Coward and Gertrude Lawrence the plays offered countless opportunities for virtuoso solos and duets which they clutched with both hands," remarked Morley, "but for Coward as author and director and composer and lyricist as well as actor it was beyond doubt the best showcase for his varied talents that he [had] ever managed to build."

Coward wrote Blithe Spirit, the play that became the fourth longest-running production in the history of the English theater, during a six-day stay in a holiday resort in North Wales in 1941. The story of an author henpecked by his second wife, and Madame Arcati, the eccentric medium who raises his first wife's spirit, the play was greeted enthusiastically by wartime audiences. "Not for the first time in his career," stated Morley, "… Noël had written a play which was exactly what the theatre-going public wanted at precisely the moment they wanted it most."

After Great Britain became involved in World War II, Coward was enlisted to act as an unofficial ambassador to the United States, Europe, and Australia. Soon, inspired by love of the sea and admiration for the Royal Navy, he conceived the idea for a film loosely based on the career of Lord Admiral Mountbatten called In Which We Serve. The film traces the history of HMS Torrin from its commissioning until its sinking in battle. Although some government censors questioned the effect a movie about the sinking of a friendly ship would have on Allied morale, Coward, supported by Mountbatten and King George VI, released it in 1942. "I must admit to a personal apathy now regarding the war," Coward noted in his diary soon after the film's completion. "I have tried from the beginning to work constructively for the war effort and now, having been driven back to my own metier, the theatre, I cannot work myself up about it any more. This may be sheer escapism, but if I can make people laugh, etc., maybe I am not doing so very badly.… This is my job really, and will remain so through all wars and revolutions and carnage." The picture proved extremely popular and became one of Great Britain's most successful pieces of propaganda. Coward advanced his own popularity through the many morale-boosting tours he made to Allied troops in combat zones all over the world.

By the mid-1950s Coward had added a new dimension to his varied career: that of a cabaret entertainer. In June, 1955, he opened at the Desert Inn in Las Vegas, and played consistently to capacity crowds. "I have made one of the most sensational successes of my career and to pretend that I am not absolutely delighted would be idiotic," Coward wrote in his diary. "I have had screaming rave notices and the news has flashed round the world. I am told continually, verbally and in print, that I am the greatest attraction that Las Vegas has ever had and that I am the greatest performer in the world, etc., etc. It is all very, very exciting and generous, and when I look back at the grudging dreariness of the English newspaper gentlemen announcing, when I first opened at the Cafe de Paris, that I massacred my own songs, I really feel that I don't want to appear at home much more."

Theater audiences used to the social criticism of Harold Pinter and Kenneth Tynan found new relevance in Coward's witty comedies of the 1920s when they were successfully revived in the 1960s. At the same time, the new decade plagued the playwright, for it was a time of revolution in the theatre, as well as of rejection of entertainment for its own sake. Nonetheless, the "Coward Renaissance" continued through the sixties with productions of his plays all over the world, a number of distinguished film and television appearances and honors such as few theatre artists enjoyed. Coward himself was revered as one of the greatest playwrights of the twentieth century. "I remember one of the last parties given for him in London in the early seventies to celebrate the successful revival of Private Lives," Lerner reminisced. "The full roster of the giants of the British theatre were on hand, as well as a few fortunate foreigners such as myself. Noël was not well, but upon inducement falteringly made his way to the piano, and with an uncertain touch and with a slight tremble in his voice sang two of his songs, and ended with 'If Love Were All.'" As Coward concluded the song, which ends with the lines 'But I believe that since my life began / The most I've had is just / A talent to amuse. / Heigh-o, if love were all,' the entire room burst into tears. The playwright was knighted in 1970, but perhaps his greatest accolade came in 1984, when a grateful British nation placed a memorial stone in Westminster Abbey reading "Noël Coward. Playwright, Actor, Composer. 16 December 1899-26 March 1973. Buried in Jamaica. A Talent to Amuse."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

BOOKS

Breit, Harvey, The Writer Observed, World Publishing, 1956.

Castle, Terry, Noël Coward and Radclyffe Hall: Kindred Spirits, Columbia University Press (New York, NY), 1996.

Contemporary Literary Criticism, Gale (Detroit, MI), Volume 1, 1973, Volume 9, 1978, Volume 29, 1984, Volume 51, 1989.

Coward, Noël, Present Indicative, Doubleday (New York, NY), 1937.

Coward, Noël, Future Indefinite, Doubleday (New York, NY), 1954.

Dictionary of Literary Biography, Volume 10: Modern British Dramatists, 1900-1945, Gale (Detroit, MI), 1982.

Hoare, Philip, Noël Coward: A Biography, Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 1995.

Lahr, John, Coward the Playwright, Methuen (London, England), 1983.

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