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Overview
The book Noël Coward wanted, promised, threatened to write—and never did.
Including essays, interviews, diary entries, verse, his views on his fellow playwrights: "My Colleague Will," Shaw, Wilde, Chekhov, Barrie, Maugham, Eliot, Osborne, Albee, Beckett, Miller, Williams, Rattigan, Pinter, and Shaffer.
Coward on the critics—many of whom irritated him over the years but came to admire him: James Agate, Alexander Woollcott, Graham Greene, Kenneth Tynan among them.
And on the plays he wrote, among them: The Vortex; Hay Fever; Private Lives; Design For Living; Blithe Spirit.
Here is the Master on the producers who crossed his path: André Charlot, C. B. Cochran, Binkie Beaumont. And the actors in the Coward galaxy: John Gielgud, Laurence Olivier, Gertrude Lawrence, the Lunts, etc. . . .
His views on the art of acting: auditions, rehearsals, learning the lines, clarity of delivery, timing, control, range, stage fright, fans, theater audiences, revivals, comedy, "the Method," plays with a "message," taste, construction, "Star Quality," etc. . . .
And last, but Noël Coward least, his experience in, and thoughts on: revue, cabaret, television, and musical theater, Bitter Sweet, Conversation Piece, Pacific 1860, After the Ball, Ace of Clubs, Sail Away, The Girl Who Came to Supper, Words and Music, This Year of Grace, London Calling! . . . and much more.
Ingeniously, deftly compiled, edited, and annotated by Barry Day, Coward authority and editor of The Noёl Coward Reader and The Letters of Noёl Coward.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780525657958 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group |
| Publication date: | 11/02/2021 |
| Pages: | 480 |
| Sales rank: | 1,060,955 |
| Product dimensions: | 9.40(w) x 6.70(h) x 1.70(d) |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
1
Early Stages
“But I Heard the Curtain Going Up”
The Boy Actor
I can remember, I can remember.
The months of November and December
Were filled for me with peculiar joys
So different from those of other boys.
For other boys would be counting the days
Until end of term and holiday times
But I was acting in Christmas plays
While they were taken to pantomimes.
I didn’t envy their Eton suits,
Their children’s dances and Christmas trees.
My life had wonderful substitutes
For such conventional treats as these.
I didn’t envy their country larks,
Their organised games in panelled halls;
While they made snow-men in stately parks
I was counting the curtain calls.
I remember the auditions, the nerve-racking auditions:
Darkened auditorium and empty, dusty stage,
Little girls in ballet dresses practising “positions”
Gentlemen with pince-nez asking you your age.
Hopefulness and nervousness struggling within you,
Dreading that familiar phrase, “Thank you, dear, no more.”
Straining every muscle, every tendon, every sinew
To do your dance much better than you’d ever done before.
Think of your performance. Never mind the others.
Never mind the pianist, talent must prevail.
Never mind the baleful eyes of other children’s mothers
Glaring from the corners and willing you to fail.
I can remember. I can remember.
The months of November and December
Were more significant to me
Than other months could ever be
For they were the months of high romance
When destiny waited on tip-toe,
When every boy actor stood a chance
Of getting into a Christmas show,
Not for me the dubious heaven
Of being some prefect’s protégé!
Not for me the Second Eleven.
For me, two performances a day.
Ah, those first rehearsals! Only very few lines:
Rushing home to mother, learning them by heart.
“Enter Left through window”—Dots to mark the cue lines:
“Exit with others”—Still, it was a part.
Opening performance; legs a bit unsteady,
Dedicated tension, shivers down my spine,
Powder, grease and eye-black, sticks of make-up ready
Leichner number three and number five and number nine.
World of strange enchantment, magic for a small boy
Dreaming of the future, reaching for the crown,
Rigid in the dressing-room, listening for the call-boy
“Overture Beginners—Everybody Down!”
I can remember. I can remember.
The months of November and December,
Although climatically cold and damp,
Meant more to me than Aladdin’s lamp.
I see myself, having got a job,
Walking on wings along the Strand,
Uncertain whether to laugh or sob
And clutching tightly my mother’s hand,
I never cared who scored the goal
Or which side won the silver cup,
I never learned to bat or bowl
But I heard the curtain going up.
“I knew in my teens that the world was full of hatred, cruelty, vice, unrequited love, despair, destruction and murder. I also knew at the same time that it was filled with kindness, pleasure, joy, requited love, fun, excitement, generosity, laughter and friends. And through all my years I have never changed in my mind the balance of these absurd phenomena.”
Noël Coward was literally born to the sound of music.
At the turn of the century music in a domestic context meant the family gathered round the piano for a sing-song. Noël could sing those familiar songs and hymns word perfectly to the end of his life. But that early exposure certainly helped bring out the latent entertainer in him.
At the age of two he had to be forcibly removed from church for spontaneously dancing in the aisle to accompany the hymn being played. On another occasion he complained bitterly when his solo in the church choir earned no applause—merely the sight and sound of the congregation sinking creakily to its knees in prayer.
“I made my first public appearance at a prize-giving concert at the age of six. I was dressed in a white sailor suit and sang ‘Coo’ from The Country Girl, followed by a piping little song about the spring for which I accompanied myself on the piano. This feat brought down the house and I had to repeat it. I remember leaning over to Mother and Father in the front row and hissing exultantly—‘I’ve got to sing again.’ The evening ended in tears, however, because I was not given a prize. Mother tried vainly to explain to me that the prizes were for hard work during the term and not for vocal prowess, but I refused to be comforted, and was led away weeping.”
But you can’t keep a real “trouper” down and when the Cowards went to the seaside at Bognor for their traditional summer holiday, there was “Uncle George and His Merrie Men” concert party in their straw hats, colored blazers, and off-colored flannel trousers.
On the evening of the competition Noël donned his lucky sailor suit “and waited in a sort of pen with several aspirants,” noting with satisfaction that “those who appeared before me were inept and clumsy. When my turn came I sang ‘Come Along with Me to the Zoo, Dear’ and ‘Liza Ann’ from The Orchid. I also danced violently. The applause was highly gratifying . . . At the end of the performance Uncle George made a speech and presented me with the first prize, a large box of chocolates, which, when opened in our lodgings, proved to be three parts shavings.”
It was his first lesson that in the theatre the appearance of reality is all that matters.
“The reason I went on the stage was that I was set to go into the Chapel Royal choir, because I had a perfectly beautiful voice. I suppose the inherent acting in me headed its ugly rear, because I made Callas look like an amateur! And the poor organist fell back in horror. I gave it the expression. I did the whole crucifixion bit. And they turned me down because I was over-dramatic. And I was only nine and a half with an Eton collar going ‘There was no other good enough to pay the price of sin.’ I did the whole lot. So then Mother was very very cross and said the man was common and stupid anyway.”
By now the urge to perform led him to begin writing his own material. A little later the Cowards were driven by an acute shortage of money to rent their London flat and live in the country for a while . . .
“Some little girls lived nearby and I forced them to act a tragedy that I had written, but they were very silly and during the performance forgot their lines and sniggered, so I hit the eldest one on the head with a wooden spade, the whole affair thus ending in tears and a furious quarrel between the mothers involved.”
Nineteen nine now and he is concentrating on developing his singing voice . . .
“I occasionally sang anthems in churches but I hated doing this because the lack of applause depressed me.”
There was the annual church garden party at Teddington with its apparently endless concerts run by his Aunt Myrrha—which provided a job for the boy . . .
“This was when I shone. I always sang a serious ballad to begin with, my principal successes being ‘Through the Forest’ and ‘Cherry Blossom Time.’ The latter was invariably a great favourite, possibly owing to the redundance of its ‘Hey, Nonnys’ and ‘Ho, Nonnys’ and its winsomely pastoral sentiments. After this, I returned, smiling to the applause, and rendered a light musical comedy number with dance. It must have been surprising and I should have thought, nauseating, to see a little boy of nine in a white sailor suit flitting about a small wooden stage, employing with instinctive accuracy, the gestures and tricks of a professional soubrette, but they seemed to love it and encored me vociferously.”
For this he had his mother, Violet, to thank in large part, since she took him to the theatre (in the cheapest seats, naturally), where he could study the leading performers of the day and dutifully “borrow” elements of their routines. To the end of his life he continued to idolize the memory of stars like Lily Elsie in The Merry Widow and Gertie Millar in The Quaker Girl.
He was grateful to “those kindly old ladies in their garden party finery. After all . . . [he could confess when recalling this in the 1930s] . . . I act to them still at matinées and I have a sad suspicion that I don’t give them half as much pleasure now as I did then.”
He was also more realistic in retrospect about his youthful prowess . . .
“I am certain that, could my adult self have been present . . . he would have crept outside, at the first coy gurgle, and been mercifully sick outside . . . I was a brazen, odious little prodigy, over-pleased with myself and precocious to a degree . . . I was, I believe, one of the worst boy actors ever inflicted on the paying public.”
The breakthrough from amateur to professional came the following year, with an ad in the Daily Mirror.
Miss Lila Field was advertising for “a cast of wonder children” to appear in a play she had written called The Goldfish at London’s Little Theatre.
This caught Violet’s eye. “It stated that a talented boy of attractive appearance was required . . . 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 seemed to be no practical 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.”
So along they went to present Miss Field with her magnificent opportunity. “My heart sank when there was no piano . . . but I sang ‘Liza Ann’ and Mother la-la’d for the dance.”
Miss Field was suitably impressed and said she would hire Noël for the part of Prince Mussel. The fee would be a guinea and a half a week. This caused Mrs. Coward great distress. She said she couldn’t afford to pay that. Miss Field disabused her. The guinea and a half was what her little boy would RECEIVE! “Mother and I floated down the narrow staircase and into the street . . . I was now a professional actor.”
As Prince Mussel, the court jester, “I had a good song in the last act . . . I sang it with tremendous passion, and at the end tore off a top B flat with a Pagliacci sob in it. I was invariably encored, sometimes twice.”
He also received his first press review. The Daily Mirror—which had been complicit in the whole venture—declared that “Great success was scored by Master Noel Coward.”
A fellow member of the cast was the young Micheál MacLiammóir on whom Noël made a clear impression . . .
“He was ten years old and already in manner and bearing a young man. The face, of course, was that of a child but the eyes were already amused and slightly incredulous, the voice was as crisply rubato then as it is today, and when he spoke after a few boyish grins, it was to ask me how much work I had done.
“ ‘Work?,’ I said aghast. ‘Do you mean acting?’
“ ‘But you’ve had your audition, haven’t you?’
“ ‘Oh, yes, I’m engaged.’ And then—‘What are you going to be when you grow up?’
“ ‘An actor, of course. Why, what do you want to be?’ ”
Micky was not at all sure.
“ ‘You’d better make up your mind, you know. People should always be quite clear what they want to be.’ ”
The Goldfish was to swim back into Noël’s ken when he least expected it . . .
Thirty-seven years ago a children’s play The Goldfish by Lila Field was produced at the Little Theatre, John Street, Adelphi. The months leading up to that moment had been fraught with tension and excitement. Rehearsals, sometimes sporadic, had taken place in basements, dance halls, even in the private homes of members of the cast, with the furniture pushed back and tea served afterwards, together with little cakes, drop scones and, on one occasion, watercress sandwiches.
During the weeks immediately before production, when there was no longer any doubt that the play really was going to open, the excitement rose to fever pitch.
Anxious mothers, clutching their offspring’s shoes, shawl and “Dorothy” bags, lined the walls of rehearsal rooms, whispering sibilantly and now and then swaying slightly as the winds of rumour eddied round them.
“Miss Field said that Gladys’s solo was to be cut.” “Miss Field had said that Nora’s bust was really too big and that she must come out of the ballet.” “Miss Field said . . .” Everything, life and death and the stars in their courses depended upon what Miss Field said. Occasionally there was an outburst of hysteria—faces were slapped, tears were shed. Mothers bowed icily to each other and sat tight-lipped, staring with disdain at the cavortings of their rival’s progeny who, serenely unaware of these primeval undertones, were enjoying themselves tip top.
Finally the great day dawned.
The curtain rose, I think at 2:00 pm but it may have been 2:30. However, it definitely did rise, disclosing a pretty garden scene, crowded with bright and eager children, all hell bent on a future, if not immediate stardom, and all under fourteen, with the exception of one, who shall be forever nameless—for we suspected then and I still suspect was nineteen if she was a day.
The opening chorus was led by a radiant fair little girl and a plumpish, very assured little boy in a white knickerbocker suit. The girl was described in the programme as “Little June Tripp” and the boy was “Master Noel Coward.” They sang with extreme abandon “School, School, Goodbye to School.”
Fifteen years later on that same stage “Master Noel Coward,” now grown to man’s estate, was playing with equal abandon a drug addict in his own play The Vortex. Twenty-two years later still with thinning hair but fortunately with most of his own teeth, he is playing at a different theatre a middle-aged, immoral, egomaniac with even more abandon [Present Laughter].
After a matinée of this rather shocking spectacle into Master Coward’s orbit come Miss Lila Field, accompanied by her sister Bertha, and in a moment thirty-seven years drop away and the past and the present become as one. To begin with neither Lila nor Bertha have had the grace to change at all.
There is the same warm vitality, the same charming voices talking nineteen to the dozen, enthusiastically shouting each other down.
The Goldfish has been rewritten and is to be reissued in book form and possibly re-produced at Chichester. Would Master Noël Coward be a dear and write a foreword? Mr. Noël Coward, beguiled and charmed as ever and with much gratitude in his heart, says “Yes” immediately, for the very good reason that he would have been bitterly hurt if anyone else in the world had been asked to do so. This is the brief foreword . . .
The Goldfish is a play for children to be acted by children. It was written and has been rewritten by a lady forever young in heart. I have just finished reading this latest version of the play and for me to view it dispassionately is obviously out of the question. I cannot tell you if it is good, bad or indifferent, because every line of it is twined firmly round my Theatre roots.