The Letters of Noel Coward

by Noel Coward

  Mind if I dream? Gertie in London in a fine shooting script of Glass Menagerie (God forbid! Typewriter slipped)—I mean in Private Lives, with a screenplay by the one and only Noël Coward, scenes shot in the South of France, etc., returning to New York February. If you had a film unit, I would recommend that it be done by your own organisation as there is a gold mine in such a film—not costly to produce—with a big-time major distribution set in advance—and frozen sterling available for production. Skip all this and just know that I had the idea and put it down at once.

  Take a good and happy holiday and don't work at all—unless you feel like it.

  Fondly,

  FANNY

  Not surprisingly, Noël did not rise to the bait.

  •

  GERTIE, MEANWHILE, was moving toward the big new hit she had been looking for. She bought the rights to Margaret Landon's 1944 novel, Anna and the King of Siam, and persuaded Rodgers and Hammerstein to turn it into a musical for her.

  Noël was initially approached to direct. No, thank you. Then would he co-star and play the king? Again, no, thank you. He was prepared to appear with Gertie only in a piece of his own, and that possibility was receding by the minute. The King and I, as the musical was to be called, was so budgeted that it would have to run for years rather than months to move into profit—which, of course, it did. Since Noël was never prepared to commit to long runs, this was another deciding factor. He did, however, make one valuable contribution to the show's success by suggesting the name of a young folk singer he'd heard at several parties: Yul Brynner.

  When the show opened at the St. James Theatre in New York on March 29, 1951, it was clear that Rodgers and Hammerstein and Lawrence had a gold-plated hit on their hands for as long as they cared to run it.

  When Gertie wrote to Noël in June she was clearly her old self again, pleased with her success and anxious to encourage her old chum in his new ventures:

  June 24th 1951

  My darling Noël,

  Such a beautiful photograph it is—and is framed and ‘anging in me room at the Court of Siam. Blessings on your frosty pow!!!

  We are all (those that are left in New York) delighted that H&C is being done in Dennis [the Cape Playhouse] and poor old Richard [Aldrich] is foorious that he won't be there to see it.

  However, you surely chose a grand girl for the part—Claudette [Colbert] is one of my most favourite people, and I hope you will persuade her to make the high dive to Broadway. The papers here quote her as saying she does not intend to do other than play it on Farmer Brown's Circuit and then return to H'wood….

  Colbert played at the Westport Country Playhouse under Jack Wilson's direction and then did just that. The play by now had been retitled Island Fling,

  Did you hear the story about the woman who took her tiny child to the plumbing department to discuss fixtures and fittings for her new house?

  She was talking to the manager and the child tugged at her skirt and whispered “Mummie.” The woman shook her off and said, “Be quiet, mummie is busy.” A while later the child pulled again at the woman and said, “Mummie, mummie.” The woman said, “Stop worrying, I shan't be long now, sit down quietly and behave yourself.” Later, having concluded her business, she and the manager looked for the child and found her sitting on a lavatory in the window!!

  All my love, darling

  “Mrs. Anna,” sir

  Despite the show's immediate success and the fact that it made a clean sweep of that year's Tony Awards—with Gertie winning as Best Actress— there was a fundamental problem from the very outset: Gertie's singing.

  She had never had a strong voice—a fact that was generally acknowledged—and Noël would often tease her about singing off key. He once told her, “If you would sing a little more out of tune, darling, you would find yourself singing in thirds, which would be a great improvement.”

  He had started to write Bitter Sweet with her in mind back in 1929 but soon realized that what he was composing was beyond her vocal range. This time, though, the problem was exacerbated by the fact that she had to carry the leading role, and although Richard Rodgers had carefully composed songs with her limitations in mind, it soon became obvious that her singing was deteriorating to an alarming degree. Gertie herself refused to face the fact. The problem, she insisted, was purely temporary.

  Dennis

  Cape Cod

  Mass.

  January 1952

  Darling Noël,

  Well, whadderyerno??

  After that short siege of vocal doldrums my voice suddenly returned, my spirits rose, and my hackles fairly bristled with vitality.

  Blimey, it got hot too, just before my holiday came, but 2 weeks have gone by and I have 4 more to go before I return to the salt mines!! [Celeste Holm substituted for her during the six weeks.]

  Radie H [Harris, the columnist] came back raving about you at the Cafe de Paris, and the papers here have it that you are to open at the Waldorf in the Empire Room in October. This may be just scuttlebut—nevertheless, I feel sure that it is not the best room for you. The Cotillion Room at the Sherry Netherlands has the smart Cafe de Paris crowd and the room is Serge Obelinski and delightfully intimate—added to which Mr. [Cecil] Beaton has a most wonderful flat up in the tower which they could give you during your engagement.

  If you have not signed your contract for the Waldorf, why not have someone contact Serge for you—I know he would go wild to get you!

  Meantime I saw Kitty Carlisle in Lady here last week and she was terrific, and especially exciting in the dramatic “story” part of the play. She promised to give you a big kiss for me, so give her a buzz for me, will yer, and Bonnie Prince Charming [Moss Hart] too, from his Blemish!!

  Give old Lornie and Gladys my love et al. I long to get home again to see them.

  ♥ Anna Leonowens

  A few days later she sends him a postscript with some cuttings about the show:

  “When The King and I opened last year, most of the critical acclaim was for a relative newcomer, Yul Brynner (the King). Seeing the show again makes it evident why Gertrude Lawrence is the star. Trouper that she is, Miss Lawrence has deepened and rounded out the role of Anna (the T of the show) while Brynner is now over-acting and has become so acrobatic that you expect him to do a headstand or take off on a trapeze at any moment.”

  I meant to put the enclosed into my last letter—it just came out before I left. So, it seems that there is not too much to worry about— I just struck a bad patch and you came and sat in it!!

  Oh, dear—and it's always you I want to please above ANYONE.

  ♥ Dagmar

  Her voice and her general health continued to deteriorate—to the point where Rodgers and Hammerstein turned to Noël for help. In his Diary for April 29, he writes:

  Lunched with Gertie…Advised her to leave The King and I for good. I did not say they were anxious to get rid of her because of her singing, but I think I convinced her that she ought to do a straight play. I also said I would be prepared to rewrite Island Fling for her. I am sure that, with some reconstruction, it would be a success with her playing it.

  Noël's friend and supposedly Gertie's sometime lover, Daphne du Maurier (1907—1989) was with Gertie in New York in those final days and had the task of describing them to Noël later.

  He was overly optimistic. Gertie had no intention of leaving the cast of The King and I. King George VI had just died and as she wrote to Lorn:

  February 19th 1952

  239 East 61 st Street

  New York 21, NY

  Everyone here very deeply distressed by the loss of our beloved King. Memorial services going on at all churches of all Faiths—all very comforting and homesick making. I long to get back. My fondest love to you all at No. 17 and elsewhere.

  “Getting back” would be as the star of the London production of The King and I, during the forthcoming coronation year of 1953, but it was not to be. On September 6, Noël's Diary reads:


  A day that started gaily and ended in misery. [He had gone to the races at Folkestone with Cole Lesley and Gladys.] Just as I was leaving, Coley told me that it was in the Stop Press that Gertie Lawrence was dead. I drove home feeling dreadful…Poor, darling old Gertie—a lifelong friend. With all her overacting and silliness I have never known her do a mean or an unkind thing. I am terribly, terribly unhappy to think that I shall never see her again.

  Not for a moment had he—or, indeed, anyone else close to her— realized just how ill she was. The only exception was her friend and sometime lover Daphne du Maurier, who had traveled to New York to spend time with her while she supposedly convalesced. Later du Maurier wrote apologetically to Noël:

  Menobilly—Sunday

  Dear Noël,

  I feel most bitterly to blame for not having got in touch with you about Gee [Gertie]. Thursday, I think it was, I sat beside the telephone wondering what to do—whether to try and find you on the telephone somewhere, but I knew your Play [Quadrille] was to open next week and that you might be with the company on tour, in the middle of rehearsing, etc.—and finally, I don't know what it was, a mixture of diffidence, of not wanting to seem alarmist, kept me from trying. And I was hoping every moment to have a more encouraging cable.

  The thing is, I heard from Fanny Holtzmann first some ten days ago, telling me that Gee had been rushed to hospital after the Saturday matinee in great pain, tests were taken, etc., and nothing found too badly wrong but the liver, which was badly inflamed, and rest, diet, etc., would put this right. Gee had asked Fanny to write and tell me, because she did not want me to get news of it in any other way, through papers, or anything. I cabled Fanny, and Gee, and wrote to both, and then a second letter came from Fanny, after a few days, saying Gee was still in great pain, every sort of doctor had been called in, but absolute secrecy was to be maintained (why, for God's sake?)—no one to be told—the letter very hysterical, Noël, terribly worked up, you know how Fanny can be—and I was going about in agony of mind, not knowing what to do. But here is my fault. Fanny said “no one to be told except perhaps Noël.” This is where I sat by the telephone, wondering whether to worry you, or not. Wrongly, as I see now, I decided against it. If you can forgive me, please do. Another cable, in answer to a previous one from me, came on Thursday. Doctors’ reports discouraging, etc., and more specialists to be called in.

  I wrote to Fanny and a tiny scrap (too late to reach her) to Gee, too. But I doubt if she was seeing any letters by then. Tommy [Daphne's husband] and I went out in the boat yesterday and then in the meantime came the last cable “Gertrude critically ill.” And finally—after the News had been on the 6 o'clock—a cable that would send Gee herself rocking with that really shaking heaven-sent laugh that happened when she was really amused: “Our beloved has left us and has gone to join the immortals.”

  Although I have been crying all night and all day, and still can't stop, I think the wording of that cable will always make me stop short and scream with laughter. Please, dear Noël, keep this letter confidential. God knows I wish no harm to poor old Fanny, who with all her spider's web tactics I believe to have been devoted to Gee (though she probably hurried her into her grave by sitting solidly with her in the hospital, by the bedside all last Sunday according to her letter) but it was good of her to take the trouble, between her bedside vigils, to cable and to write to me, therefore the shock of Gee's death, though God damn bloody awful, hasn't taken me unawares as I feel it has you. Please forgive me, once again for keeping silent.

  I had a happy letter written on the Sunday before she went back to the play grumbling at the weather but quite agog, really, to be going back to the factory, which as you know was her life, nothing else counted, except dream fantasies of being a countess from time to time, and eating sandwiches at one in the morning and having schoolgirl giggles and that wave of Cockney loyalty for waving a flag for the Queen, England and all that. She was looking forward to the coronation like a little girl of twelve (“Can we have front seats?”).

  I haven't felt so lost since Daddy [the actor Sir Gerald du Maurier] died. That's saying a good deal.

  With love,

  DAPHNE

  Menobilly September 10

  Dearest Noël,

  Here are the letters from Fanny, but the first I have not kept, the one that told me she was ill.

  What I shall never understand is why they didn't spot an abcess or a tumour at once, when our lay minds jump to riddled cancer the moment anyone has a pain anywhere. But I am hoping to hear again from the wretched old bitch Fanny in a day or so, saying if an autopsy was performed, and what it was. It should have been done, if only for the sake of anyone who has a chill on the liver in future and is told to diet! However, as I told you, I'm pretty sure something was wrong and had been for some time. That real exhaustion all last year could not have been just normal fatigue. The disinclination to do anything every Sunday but just lie on the chaise-longue, turban on the head, Nivea skin oil on the face, plaid rug over the knees, steam heat at full blast, enough to kill anyone, Angus the Scottie lying panting at her feet.

  I remember creeping in to see if she wanted anything and kissing her silly cock-eyed nose, and she opened one eye and said—“ I thought it was Angus.” “It was,” I said, and went. Why, oh why, should someone with the mind of somebody of ten, with whom one really had no thought in common, no topic of real conversation, no sort of outlook resembling one's own at all, who frequently lied, who never stopped doing the most infuriating things, yet have the power to so completely wrap herself around the heart that, because of her, one became bitched, buggered and bewildered? (My only outlet at the moment is foul language and useless blasphemy. Poor Tommy, no wonder he goes out sailing, rather puzzled and, I fear, a little hurt.)

  You remember that dreadful straining after the high notes latterly in The King and I so that one's belly ached in agony for her, and which proves again there must have been something wrong? I tried to tell her not to do it, but she put on her not listening face and talked about [the war in] Korea. The night before I left, this was March— and it will be my last memory of her, she had the eternal radio switched on, it went on through the night, and suddenly your Bitter Sweet song came over, the “I'll See You Again” song, and she began to sing it, from her pillow, in that lilting, sexless, choir-boy voice that was her true voice, very softly, and I told her that was what I meant, to sing always like that, never straining, never trying to put over “big stuff;” but she said I was being sentimental, and rushed off to some new teacher who was to make her sing like [Adelina] Patti, [Nellie] Melba, [Kirsten] Flagstadt, the Works. Which probably started up the cancer of all time until it bust.

  Love from

  DAPHNE

  Letters of condolence arrived for Noël in every post. From a mutual friend:

  September 9th 1952

  My dear Noël,

  That was a most loving and charming article you wrote on Gertie in The Times and, oddly enough, if you'd died first, bits of it are exactly what she would have written about you.

  Just before she left England she spent some days here when she had no need to be anything but just herself, and she talked a great deal about you.

  When you write a life of her, which surely you must one day, I will tell you what she said and the part you played.

  If a chameleon could be beautiful, then I would always think of it and Gertie as one, but in these days we spent here, she was telling her deep desires and wondering how she could fulfil them before it was too late. One evening she said, “You know, I'd be really happy here in England, if I could find a man who would love me, he'd have to have a nice little title (isn't the ‘little’ heavenly?), a place, not too big— and with it, security—I'm tired and I don't want to spend my old age working hard.”

  I mentioned that I thought she'd miss the being Gertrude Lawrence a bit, but “No—I'd be content with what I said—I'd stay at home and I'd want nothing else.”

  Bless he
r heart—would there be much else? And to go out of the front door, and become Lady Bountiful backed up by her too generous habits—would have satisfied her love of acting—and would have had the maximum—the best of both worlds, in fact, and why not? She felt cheated by life, and to her eternal credit, it never made her sour or spiteful.

  We shall sadly miss her, shan't we?

  From royal dressmaker Norman Hartnell:

  Lovel Dene

  Windsor Forest

  Berks.

  Sunday

  My dear Noël,

  How lovely she was—so sweet and so friendly. She was always so wonderful to me, but only now do I realize how much I have loved her and for so many years. I can scarcely write coherently—or think what to say—my throat aches and my eyes spill over with tears as I write, Noël.

  Through you in Tonight at 8:30 Gertie helped me to make my name. Do you remember a moonlight chiffon dress in “Shadow Play”? Or a black velvet in “Hearts and Flowers”? What a perfect person. Her face, her figure, her voice—and that tip-tilted nose— and her movements.

  I'll tell you something:—When I was fitting those clothes for H.M. the Queen (then Princess Elizabeth) for her ill-fated trip to Australia, we asked the Queen to walk a little. “Alas,” she said, “if only I could walk across a room like Gertrude Lawrence.”

  That's confidential, Noël—gela va sans dire—but I thought you would like to know.

  From your friend

  NORMAN HARTNELL.

  Even Fanny—like so many others—had gentle memories, if sometimes sad ones: “She had so little real happiness—all froth, living in a world of imagination, as when she bought, for example, a worn family album with photographs at Caledonia Market …”

  •