The Letters of Noel Coward

by Noel Coward

  You know me well enough to know that when I stammered about it being pretty exciting to be English, I meant every naive word. We're a strange race and we persist in getting a lot of things wrong but we do have our hearts in the right place—and that's what matters.

  When I looked down at the stage—and when I'd got over worrying about what else might go wrong with the mechanics—a great many things went through my mind and you were in so many of them.

  I could see you on that stage at the Phoenix standing there in that damned deceptive moonlight night after night and I would make my entrance, never knowing which Gertie I would find on any particular evening. You do know, my darling, that you are a chameleon—an elegant one but still a chameleon. You never play a part the same way two nights running but it certainly keeps whoever you're playing with—in this case your author—on his tippy tip toes. And I must also admit—it's pretty exciting to be playing opposite Miss Gertrud Dagmar Lawrence-Klasen and I can't wait until the next time. And I can just hear you saying—“ Well, darling, that's up to you.”

  I also found myself thinking back to that first time we played together. Do you remember Liverpool, Manchester and that tedious German play Basil was so keen on? And when we two budding thes-pians stuffed ourselves with peppermints and the curtain rose on the sight of two little angels being spectacularly sick! I do believe, my darling, we can do better than that and I shall endeavour to see that we do without too much further ado—and no error.

  God bless you and keep you, Mother Macree!

  •

  REFLECTING ON HER in the mid-1930s—just before Tonight at 8:30 — Noël mused on her complexity:

  I see her now, ages away from her ringlets and black velvet military cap, sometimes a simple, wide-eyed child, sometimes a glamorous femme du monde, at some moments a rather boisterous “good sort,” at others a weary, disillusioned woman battered by life but gallant to the last. There are many other grades also between these extremes. She appropriated beauty to herself quite early, along with all the tricks and mannerisms that go with it. In adolescence she was barely pretty. Now, without apparent effort, she gives the impression of sheer loveliness. Her grace in movement is exquisite, and her voice charming. To disentangle Gertie herself from this mutability is baffling, rather like delving for your grandmother's gold locket at the bottom of an overflowing jewel-case.

  It's a little misleading to say that Noël and Gertie played together only three times. Their next joint venture, the 1936 Tonight at 8:30, was, in reality, nine one-act plays—ten, if one counts Star Chamber, which played only once at a matinee. In each they played pairs of entirely different characters, a theatrical tour deforce that, significantly, has never since been emulated by another couple. Almost certainly a wise decision, since to do so would invite comparison with performances that have passed into legend and can now never be adequately assessed.

  One of the plays was Hands Across the Sea, a thinly veiled parody of the superficial social life of the Mountbattens. It's impossible to know at this point in which direction Gertie erred in her portrayal of Lady Maureen “Piggie” Gilpin (Edwina Mountbatten), but it was sufficient to cause Noël in February 1936 to cable Jack—who was even then planning the subsequent American production:

  Golden days at Goldenhurst. LEFT TO RIGHT: BeaLillie, Bobbie Andrews, Gertie, and Noël.

  EVERYTHING LOVELY STOP CRACKING ROW WITH GERTIE OVER

  HANDS ACROSS THE SEA LASTING SEVEN MINUTES STOP HER

  PERFORMANCE EXQUISITE EVER SINCE.

  In March:

  VERY SORRY FIND MY ENGAGEMENTS WILL NOT PERMIT ME

  APPEAR UNDER YOUR BANNER IN AMERICA UNLESS I GET A

  FURTHER 58 PERCENT OF THE GROSS FOR ARDUOUS TASK

  RESTRAINING MISS LAWRENCE FROM BEING GROCK BEATRICE

  LILLIE THEDA BARA MARY PICKFORD AND BERT LAHR ALL AT

  ONCE.

  The Mountbattens, incidentally, saw the play and never realized that they were its subjects. As late as 1968 Mountbatten is writing to Noël:

  Broadlands

  Romsey

  Hampshire

  15th October 1968

  My dear Noël,

  On going through my library I have just come across a copy inscribed by you of your plays Tonight at 8:30.

  Looking through them I suddenly remembered that you had told Edwina and me that Hands Across the Sea was a skit on ourselves, and on reading it this seems only too probable.

  Can you confirm that it was written with malice aforethought, or did it just turn into a Naval couple because you had so many Naval friends? Did you play Commander Gilpin and did Gertie play Lady Maureen, “Piggie”?

  •

  THERE IS EVIDENCE inhis notebooks that Noël at least contemplated another play {Tidewater) for himself and Gertie both in the late 1930s and probably soon after Tonight at 8:30, since his tentative casting notes include a number of the actors who had appeared with them in that. It would also seem that he was contemplating a play-within-a-play or “dream sequence” format, since all the principal characters double as historical characters of the Mary, Queen of Scots, period. Noël would have played Cedric Massingham (and Bothwell), while Gertie was to have been Loretta Gray (and Mary Stuart).

  •

  NOëL AND GERTIE were never to appear together again on the Broadway or West End stage. When Tonight was revived in 1947, Noël stood in for an indisposed Graham Payn for one matinee in San Francisco. That was their nostalgic coda. Graham's understudy “was a very very small Jewish gentleman who could neither act, dance, nor sing,” so at the following day's matinee, “I popped on at an hour's notice and there was a great fuss and fume. I really did it for Gertie's sake. I couldn't let her act with that horror again.”

  Their careers proceeded in successful parallel.

  Gertie spent most of her time in America, and on July 4, 1940, she married Richard Aldrich, a scion of one of America's many prestigious families and owner of the Cape Playhouse in Maine. The new “Mrs. A” would devote a good deal of her professional time to the playhouse in the years ahead.

  On her wedding day a predictable Coward cable arrived:

  DEAR MRS A HOORAY HOORAY AT LAST YOU ARE DEFLOWERED

  STOP ON THIS AS ANY OTHER DAY I LOVE YOU STOP NOëL

  COWARD.

  To which Gertie replied:

  DEAR MR. C YOU KNOW ME MY PARTS I OVERACT ‘EM STOP AS

  FOR THE FLOWERS I'VE SEARCHED FOR HOURS STOP DOROTHY

  [her maid] MUST HAVE PACKED ‘EM.

  Soon after, producer Moss Hart was negotiating with Lawrence to play the lead in the avant-garde Kurt Weill—Ira Gershwin musical Lady in the Dark, Once again this lady dithered, and it was Noël who firmly steered her toward doing something he knew would reestablish her Broadway reputation. On the opening night he sent her another cable:

  HOPE YOU GET A WARM HAND ON YOUR OPENING.

  The show was a critical and commercial success—though not with everyone. On October 25, 1941, Lynn Fontanne wrote to Noël:

  I also saw Gertie and I hate to seem such a sour puss, but because you know that I am really not, I shall confess that it was the longest and worst acted part that I have ever seen in my life. Alfred did not go with me but was waiting in the car when I came out. He asked me what it was like and all I could think of was, “But, Alfred, she stinks,“ It's not one of my expressions, but I could think of nothing else. I was really very amazed, as I had heard you tell about these performances which she throws from time to time and realized that I had never quite believed you. But I do, darling, oh how I do now. Apparently this is not a once in a while performance either, as I hear she is pretty much the same all the time. I wasn't very crazy about the whole show, to be exact. What is happening to me? Am I getting to be an old bitch? I do hope not. Her “Jenny” song was wonderful but after all, there's the whole show to be gone through!

  Despite Lynn's forebodings, Lady in the Dark was successful enough to warrant a subsequent national tour, although
wartime conditions were not likely to be what a star was accustomed to.

  American Theatre Wing

  War Service, Inc.

  September 14th 1942

  Dearest old Dearest,

  I am now packing away the Summer Poison Ivy Cures ready to embark upon quote an extensive tour unquote. The enclosed few modest press clippings will explain how restful the tour will seem after my holiday on Cape Cod….

  Dearest, old Mossyface Hart seems pretty sure that our tour with the “Lady” will escape all difficulties and thus survive until June 1943—but there have been many warnings to road shows that there will be no heating and confiscations at a moment's notice of freight cars—so it seems to me that any preferences, if any, will go to the smaller companies and such big ones as ours (with nine baggage cars) may have to be abandoned. Anyway, whether or no, I am not signing up for anything to follow the “Lady” and you know of course why.

  I have not been free to get back home since “Susan” [Susan and God, the 1937 play about which she joked, apropos Noël and Gertie, “I suppose everybody thinks you're playing God?”], and so the moment this is over, it's me for home. I want to know what are your plans. Or if you are coming here for a visit, let's do it here for a limited time and then go home together?? Oh, Angel, do let's.

  I would like us to finance it ourselves 50-50 and be back again once more hand in hand at curtain calls. You know what would be really fun for a change? A really smart, chic, comedy mystery drama!!

  You haven't ever written one, have you? Everybody loves a good mystery story and you could write a cert. Darling, please do it. It could start at the home of a rich woman who instructs and lends her home for a first aid class and the “victim” would be a really dead person, or something like that??

  Do it, darling, let me be the victim, and let me show how much “repose” I have nowadays!!!

  All my love

  Gert

  When Gertie's autobiography, A Star Danced, was published in 1945, Noël wrote:

  G. darling,

  I am overwhelmed. I never doubted your loyalty and your friendship, but to get such a proof of it, in so delightfully filial a manner, is more than my nerves can stand … I am afraid it is extremely difficult for me to tell you to what extent I have been touched by your views and comments on those (alas) bygone days and your efforts at making me happy have hit a bulls eye.

  Lots of love

  GUV

  Gertie wrote, “I have not been home in almost seven years and am longing to get back for some war service …” She shared the dilemma that affected Lynn Fontanne and other British-born stars. Their lives and careers were in the United States, but a large part of their hearts were back in their homeland at war.

  In the end, things were sorted out and mid-May 1944 found Gertie touring England before leading one of the first ENSA troupes to follow the Normandy landings.

  A year later she has managed to write her autobiography, squeeze in a trip to Australia, and stop off in Hawaii on the way home to entertain the troops, who were lucky enough to see the Elvira in Blithe Spirit whom Noël had always had in mind but was never to see himself—or even know about until the production was history.

  August 3rd 1945

  Dearest Nole,

  I must explain my reasons for agreeing to do Blythe Spirit [sic] in the Hawaiian Islands. I had just come in from the most grueling trip “down under” and was tired and rather disheartened. I knew (from experience) that the men now wanted plays. They had had such companies as Charles Butterworth in 3's a Family—Boris Karloff in Arsenic and Moss Hart in The Man Who Came to Dinner. They were yelling for Private hives but the U.S.O. wouldn't pass it for troop consumption. Skylark was not good enough—Susan & God would never have passed the Chaplains on account of the title or the topic and I could hardly do a potted version of the Lady and 8:30 needed too many sets and versatile actors.

  Yet the men wanted a play from me, and Maurice Evans had Blythe Spirit [sic] already in preparation with Milly Natwick on her way to play her original part. So John Hoysradt [Hoyt] and I decided to stay over for 4 weeks and we gave great joy to 30,000 men in that short time. I sent you the pictures, so you saw how I looked and it mattered not one bit to me whether the part had been played elsewhere by the Virgin Mary—it was a Coward play—I did a good job. I know I did. John was excellent, Milly, of course, was terrific and we had kept faith with the men in the services.

  My plans are indefinite. I want to come home and am discussing the various ways and means with various people. It's just a case of whether to bring a new play or do the Lady—or come home and get a play and then take it to America afterwards. But my one aim is to re-identify myself with my own people, so if you have any ideas shoot them along to me.

  Bless you, and please try to realize that I now know the labour pains of giving birth to a book and sympathize with you more than ever. One thing is certain, nobody can suggest…that the book was “ghosted”—it would have been a slicker job had it been; so it's my baby, and the second may bear a more marked resemblance!!

  My love

  GERT

  Once home, she undertook a revival of Pygmalion,

  March 28th 1946—New York

  Darling,

  Such a lovely surprise getting your letter—truly—my old “ticker stopped short, never to go again” when I saw that fine, reformatory handwriting!!

  I am anxiously awaiting word from London about being given an assignment to write a weekly column from here; there is much of interest with G.I. Brides and the U.N.O., etc.

  The play continues with standees at every performance and we shall carry on until June 15 th, thus we shall (or is it “will”?) have broken all house records on tour and in N.Y and the record for the length of the run of any production of Pygmalion, [They played 179 performances.]

  Cedric [Hardwicke] has done a magnificent job on me, and I am convinced that you would be very proud of “Eliza Doolittle.” The figures last week showed us with a total of 27,000 dollars, as against Antigone doing 12,000 including Cornell and Cedric!!

  She continues to nag him about writing something for the two of them:

  So you are writing a book—don't you think it would be more fun to write a jolly decent play for us both again?….

  Cedric is returning to London in June to make a picture and so he would be there to direct Pygmalion and play “Doolittle” as well. Perhaps by that time you will have gotten an idea, and we could do the play in London first and then over here for a limited season as we did Private hives. It's damn well time you came back, they need you in New York.

  I had supper with Mossy last night—he is working on a new play which he will read to me when finished—but one nod from you and I would say, “I hear my master's voice”.

  Darling, did you hear the story of the man who took his trained bear to see the movie of The Lost Weekend} When asked “What's the idea?” by the theatre manager—the man explained—“ Well, he loved the book”!!

  Give my love to Mum and Lornie et al, and prepare yourself for a great big hug, soon

  GERT

  Darling, do write again and tell me where you are sitting, writing, by what sea and what about.

  She was constantly being given new plays for her consideration, but their past was ever present.

  July 1, 1947

  Dearest Noël,

  Wherever I go (and we covered a lot of wherever with Pygmalion including Mexico City) all I hear is “Why don't you and Noël Coward get together again in a new play?” Or Please revive Tonight At 8:3 o!!! So many people who saw those plays want to see them again and it would seem that millions didn't see them feel furiously frustrated. Personally I do not cherish the thought of doing them again without you, any more than I would have done with Private Lives. BUT—it was revived in London most successfully without either of us, and Tallulah is going to bring it to Broadway this Autumn. So my sentiments seem rather misplaced. However, if Private Lives clicks over here, i
t will be my own fault, but it stands to reason that someone will get the bright idea of reviving 8:30 and we shall only have ourselves to blame.

  I am reading and turning down play after play, each one has some merit or is just stupid. Also after L.I.T.D. [Lady in the Dark] and Pygmalion I am pretty hard to please.

  Not knowing your plans or commitments, I wondered if we could have a little flutter together and revive 8:30 for a limited run here, or in London or both, as we did before? I want to come home, Noël, but if you want to do it here first and end up in London, it would be OK by me.

  Please cable me “Yes” or “No,” as I shall hold off everything else until I hear from you.

  Much love

  GERT

  Noël was not happy at the thought of repeating himself in this way and made it clear. It was only when Fanny Holtzmann, Gertie's agent-cum-lawyer, pointed out that Gertie badly needed the money that such a tour would be likely to produce that he reluctantly agreed that six of the nine plays could be revived for an American provincial tour, with Graham Payn playing Noël's original roles.

  The tour itself was modestly successful. Nonetheless, Noël's firm advice to all concerned was that under no circumstances should the production attempt a Broadway run. But, once again, the combined pleas of the ladies concerned managed to persuade him. His better judgment was sadly confirmed, and the show closed precipitately on Broadway.

  The whole episode left him totally disenchanted with the Holtzmanns [Fanny and her brother]. They were “maddening throughout, screaming for hours down the telephone and never uttering a word of truth for two consecutive minutes,” he wrote to Lornie. But even when it seemed to be over, it wasn't quite over.

  To Lornie:

  March 30th 1948

  We were flung into a frenzy yesterday by a wire from Gertie saying could she come and stay for a week! Fortunately it was a funny telegram signed Hernia, so I am pretending that I don't know who it is from and am paying no attention at all. I am quite certain that the whole thing is a scheme of Fanny's. Fanny, my darling, is a lethal, boring, intriguing bitch and is determined that my life henceforward should be entirely devoted to writing plays for Gertie and directing her in everything. I have never yet written anything for Gertie that was not fraught with hideous complications. Please remind me not to write anything FOR anyone particularly ever ever again. This is all very well from Fanny's point of view on account of Gertie being her responsibility and she is anxious to pass the buck and make us all one great happy family with a firm Jewish organization in the background. I am, as you know, very fond of Gertie and she certainly behaved beautifully over all the Eight-Thirty business, but the thought of being alone in a house with her even for a week would drive me barmy. I take this opportunity of saying unequivocally and without any thought of compromise that I hate and loathe Fanny Holtzmann very very much indeed and, although I am perfectly willing to allow her to handle my American tax problems for the next year or so, THAT IS ALL AND THERE ISN'T ANY MORE. You can communicate this light resolve of mine to Dingo [Sir Dingwall Bate-son, Noël's London lawyer] and tell him from me to be as tough as hell and leave me every loophole to escape from the clutches of that dreadful family. If it hadn't been for Little Lad [Graham Payn] and Gertie and everything I should never have got into their clutches in the first place. It doesn't really matter as long as they are kept in their place!!