Noël Coward

Biography/bibliography in: "Contemporary Authors." New Revision Series, Vol. 132, pp. 107-114 (as David Cornwell). Farmington Hills, MI: Thomson Gale, 2005.

HRH Prince Prince Edward unveiled a statue of Coward at a gathering of the Broadway theatre community on Monday, 1 March 1999, at the Gershwin Theatre (221 West 51st St.). The ceremony was the first in a year-long series of events in New York celebrating the 100th anniversary of the birth of the British playwright, songwriter, and performer.

Inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1988.

He was knighted -- at last -- in 1970, and died in his beloved Jamaica on 26 March 1973. Since his death, his reputation has grown. There is never a point at which his plays are not being performed, or his songs being sung. A playwright, director, actor, songwriter, filmmaker, novelist, wit. . . was there nothing this man couldn't do? Born into a musical family he was soon treading the boards in various music hall shows where he met a young girl called Gertrude Lawrence, a friendship and working partnership that lasted until her death.

He was created a Knight Bachelor in the 1970 Queen's New Year Honours List for his services to drama.

Befriended the ten-year-old Peter Collinson, when he was the governor of the orphanage where Collinson lived. Collinson later directed him in The Italian Job (1969). He subsequently became Collinson's godfather.

Portrayed by Daniel Massey in Star! (1968), Francis Matthews in Ike: The War Years (1979), Julian Fellowes in Goldeneye (1989), Jim Mezon in Dieppe (1993), Pip Torrens in Agatha Christie's Marple: Marple: What Mrs. McGillicuddy Saw (2004), Pip Torrens in Ian Fleming: Bondmaker (2005), etc.

Turned down the role of the eponymous villain in the first James Bond film, Dr. No (1962).

By the 1960s, his reappraisal was complete -- "Dad's Renaissance", called it -- and his "Hay Fever" was the first work by a living author to be produced at the National Theatre.

He was director David Lean's original choice for the role of Col. Nicholson in The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957). The role was ultimately played by Alec Guinness, who won a Best Actor Oscar for his performance.

Upon completion in January of 1956 of Ford Star Jubilee: Blithe Spirit (1956), Coward he narrowed down prospective plays considered for his third CBS special. In Jamaica he sprang at his play "Present Laughter", cutting the script down for TV, planning for camera shots, angles and close-ups from the very beginning. CBS chief William Paley was anxious for him not to do "Present Laughter", instead proposing his 1942 London success "This Happy Breed". The play was written in 1939 but, because of the outbreak of World War II, was not staged until 1942, when it was performed on alternating nights with his play, "Present Laughter." The two plays later alternated with Coward's "Blithe Spirit." The title, a reference to the English people, is a phrase from John of Gaunt's monologue in Act II, Scene 1 of William Shakespeare's "Richard II". "This Happy Breed" had been made into a very successful 1944 British feature film (This Happy Breed (1944)) directed by David Lean. In early March, Ford Motor Co. announced in the press without warning that Coward's third television appearance was canceled because the ratings on "Together with Music" and "Blithe Spirit" had not been high enough. He flew to New York on 13 March 1956, arriving at 9:45 p.m. in a snowstorm. Meeting Paley the next morning at 11:00, he combined stately reticence with outraged dignity. Paley received him, and his agents "Russel and Ham", with twitching apprehension. After the meeting CBS issued a press release announcing Coward's next CBS appearance had been postponed until October, when he would CBS' new Days Of Wine & Roses - Cliff Robertson & Piper Laurie, "Playhouse 90" Original TV Version (1956) series with him starring in his play "This Happy Breed". Ford and the J. Walter Thompson Advertising Agency had made their announcement to the press without consulting CBS, but had not taken into account the fact that Coward's previous CBS appearances had been triumphant successes. As it turned out, the reason for Ford's anger against Coward was his ridiculing it in press interviews for trying to censor some of his risqué lyrics in "Together with Music" and also certain specific risqué dialogue lines in "Blithe Spirit"; TV audiences in the Midwest were considered eminently shockable and likely to express their outrage by refusing to buy Ford cars. Paley declared Ford's press release about ratings for Coward's television special ratings being inadequate to be untrue. By the end of March, all was changed again--Coward was now to do "This Happy Breed" on May 5th per the original network contract. To add to its discomfiture, Ford realized that it had nothing prepared for the May 5th broadcast schedule and that it was, as the saying went, "up the creek without a paddle".

In March of 1955, prior to Coward's appearance during the month of June at Wilbur Clark's Desert Inn Casino and Hotel, Joe Glasser arranged a deal for him to star in a Paramount film of Terence Rattigan's play "The Sleeping Prince" to film in Hollywood with Judy Holliday. A second Paramount film with Danny Kaye was also part of the film deal. MGM wanted him to play the Prince in the film version of Ferenc Molnar's play "The Swan." Twentieth-Century Fox offered Coward additional film deals, anything of his choice. The "Sleeping Prince" was eventually made in England with Laurence Olivier and Marilyn Monroe as The Prince and the Showgirl (1957).

In early May of 1955, while in New York prior to his Las Vegas concert engagement, he learned that his English piano accompanist, Norman Hackforth, had been refused a work permit to work in the US. Peter Matz, on his arrival in New York City in 1954 from his two-year sojourn in Paris, France, returned to New York to study music theory and piano. Matz gained a job as rehearsal pianist for Harold Arlen's Broadway musical "House of Flowers", based on the celebrated Truman Capote novella about love in a brothel in the West Indies, opening 30 December 1954 and running 165 performances. Matz provided the vocal and dance arrangements for the musical. His varied musical skills were obvious, as the job expanded to writing orchestrations and vocal arrangements for Arlen's next musical, "Jamaica", starring Lena Horne. It was Arlen who introduced Matz to Marlene Dietrich, who needed someone to help construct and accompany her cabaret concert act. Frantic, running out of prep time for the Las Vegas casino engagement, Coward confided to Dietrich about his long time collaborator-pianist's work permit denial by the State Department. Matz had been introduced to Coward by Marlene. She urged him to grab Matz at all costs. At Idlewild Airport (renamed John F. Kennedy Airport in 1963), after seeing Dietrich off, Coward was desperate to find a replacement for Hackforth. Coward called Matz from the airport and went to his apartment to audition him. The test came when Coward asked Matz to play the "Trolley Song". "I had no idea with his songs or the style of that English Music Hall comedy thing", Matz recalled. Coward asked, "Can you be in Los Angeles tomorrow?" Matz replied that he could, and rehearsals for Las Vegas started just three weeks before Coward was to open there. What followed at Clifton Webb's residence in Beverly Hills over the next ten days was that they worked on the Las Vegas material all day every day. Matz learned from Coward not only the songs but a whole new style of performance. "He made me learn, very forcefully, that this was about comedy. A couple of times he screamed, 'Don't play when I am making a joke', [and] I gradually learned that this was a whole other kind of music". Matz was writing the orchestral arrangements for 'Carlton Hayes''' band, a typical Las Vegas dance band with saxophones and many trumpets and trombones that needed finesse and much discretion if Coward's lyrics were to be clearly heard. The results were impressive: Coward wrote in his diaries that Matz's "orchestral arrangements and variations are incredible--vital and imaginative. Sometimes they go too far for my personal taste, but I cannot fail to be impressed by the expert knowledge of instrumentation. Peter Matz, at the age of 26, knows more about the range of various instruments and the potentialities of different combinations than anyone of any age I have ever met in England . . . very exciting and stimulating".

The Theatre Guild, on 28 July 1952, offered Coward the dubious task of doing the music, book and lyrics for "Pygmalion" with Mary Martin. He decided against the project, which four years later Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe turned into "My Fair Lady".

In July 1951 his pianist and accompanist Norman Hackforth encouraged him to appear in cabaret at London's Café de Paris for a four-week engagement opening on 29 October 1951. Beatrice Lillie--whom coward called "Beattie"--and his close friend Marlene Dietrich were already veteran performers on the Café de Paris cabaret. The cabaret concert engagement, honed during his wartime tour entertaining the troops, was a triumphant supreme success--"tore the place up. Glittering audience headed by Princess Margaret and the Duchess of Kent." The cabaret was packed every night, jammed full and wildly enthusiastic. Subsequent bookings because of his popularity became special cabaret appearances with his audience. Richard Rodgers' and Oscar Hammerstein II's musical "South Pacific" opened in the fall of 1951 at the Drury Lane with Mary Martin in her original role. She and Coward agreed to perform with an orchestra in a charity event at the Café cabaret on 13 January 1952. A second Café de Paris four-week engagement opened on 16 June 1952, closing 11 July 1952, "a glamorous farewell performance, rapturous reception--the place was crammed with stars: the Lunts, Claudette Colbert, Gene Kelly, Danny Kaye, etc.". On 26 May 1953 a third four-week concert engagement opened with Coward performing night. It was again a major success, with Coward controlling his nerves and his material. During the engagement he appeared on 11 June at 'Stars at Midnight at the Palladium" charity event, going on at 3:20 a.m., and off in nine minutes, singing "Uncle Harry," "Mad Dogs" and "Bad Times." During his cabaret late night 12:15 a.m. appearances, he was starring in George Bernard Shaw's "The Apple Cart." On Coronation Day, 9 June 1953, after the Café de Paris cabaret appearance, he faced two more shows at the Savoy Hotel, appearing the same night in the Savoy's cabaret. A fourth four-week Café cabaret engagement was scheduled opening 18 October 1954, closing 13 November 1954. During the engagement he appeared on 1 November for an Orphanage Charity Gala. During the engagement's last week, Joe Glasser, a New York theatrical agent, offered to arrange a season in Las Vegas in return for two concerts a night, with Coward picking up $35,000 a week playing to what he was later to call Nescafé Society. The offer proved irresistible.

Jules C. Stein was an American physician and businessman who co-founded Music Corporation of America (MCA). When Coward was visiting New York City in September 1947, Stein and his MCA associate Charles Miller made a fantastic proposition: if he would guarantee Paramount Pictures three commitments, either as an actor, author or director, they would pay him $500 a week for 23 years. He visualized British newspaper headlines back in England: "Coward signs up to American film company--another rat leaving the sinking ship". His instincts told him to refuse. He did and they were astounded. Coward valued his freedom more than the money they were going to pay him.

On Sunday April 29, 1945, news that Italian dictator Benito Mussolini had been captured by Italian partisans, executed, hung upside down from a street lamp and spat upon caused Coward to remark, "The Italians are a lovable race".

With the onset of World War II he redefined the spirit of the country in films such as This Happy Breed (1944), In Which We Serve (1942), Blithe Spirit (1945) and, perhaps most memorably, Brief Encounter (1945). In the postwar period, Coward, the aging Bright Young Thing, seemed outmoded by the Angry Young Men, but, like any modern pop star, he reinvented himself, this time as a hip cabaret singer: "Las Vegas, Flipping, Shouts "More!" as Noel Coward Wows 'Em in Cafe Turn" enthused Variety.

Sir Winston Churchill personally blocked an awarding of the Knight Bachelor of the Order of the British Empire to Coward, even though the playwright had spied for Britain during the war, according to never before seen letters. In 1942 Churchill urged King George VI to abandon his plans to bestow the honor on Coward, who was the King's personal friend.

He and Marlene Dietrich had become, and remained, close friends since their first conversation--by transatlantic telephone--in 1935.

His between-the-wars celebrity reached a peak in 1930 with "Private Lives," by which time he had become the highest earning author in the western world.

Noel Coward virtually invented the concept of Englishness for the 20th century. An astounding polymath - dramatist, actor, writer, composer, lyricist, painter, and wit -- he was defined by his Englishness as much as he defined it. He was indeed the first Brit pop star, the first ambassador of "cool Britannia. " Even before his 1924 drugs-and-sex scandal of The Vortex, his fans were hanging out of their scarves over the theater balcony, imitating their idol's dress and repeating each "Noelism" with glee.

A visit to New York in 1921 infused him with the pace of Broadway shows, and he injected its speed into staid British drama and music to create a high-octane rush for the jazz-mad, dance-crazy 1920s. Coward's style was imitated everywhere, as otherwise quite normal Englishmen donned dressing gowns, stuck cigarettes in long holders and called each other "dahling"; his revues propagated the message, with songs sentimental ("A Room With A View," "I'll See You Again") and satirical ("Mad Dogs and Englishmen," "Don't Put Your Daughter On the Stage, Mrs. Worthington").

Coward and Gertrude Lawrence each began their British theatrical professional careers as children at ten years of age. They became acquainted in their early London stage appearances. In 1908 Lawrence was cast by director Basil Dean for the Liverpool Repertory Theatre production of Gerhart Hauptmann's "Hannele", where she met Coward. In 1923 he developed his first musical review, "London Calling!" specifically for his "best friend" Lawrence. Coward wrote his 1931 play "Private Lives" specifically for her. She, with Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II while developing their musical "The King and I" asked Coward to perform the "King of Siam" role, but he refused. He subsequently told Mary Martin about the proposed role; she in turn suggested her former co-star in the Broadway musical "Lute Song", Yul Brynner, to Rodgers and Hammerstein. The rest, as they say, is history.

Born in suburban Teddington on 16 December 1899, Coward was on stage by the age of six, and writing his first drama ten years later.