by Noel Coward
Your devoted “Fernando de Lamas”
Marlene continued to unburden herself:
Dec. ‘56
My Love,
I waited till today to answer your letter. It deserved an answer much sooner. Besides I am not sure if I did not write something since. I have been in such an unreal world all these four weeks here that I don't really remember much. I have tried everything and I mean everything to forget the hurt, but nothing works. No avenues of escape for me. The lameness is all over me and in me and therefore I cannot shake myself into normal living. The center of my circling is no more and I zigzag through empty space like a mechanical trick design. The only desire I feel is to obliterate myself—not necessarily die—that would give too much trouble to Maria [her daughter] and Rudy [Rudolf Sieber, her husband] but to lose the automatic signs of existing daily without creating attention, without giving away the motive. But even this desire I cannot fulfill. It would all be too complicated and dramatic and impossible. Drink makes me sick, dope I am sure would too. Well, where do we go from here? Time. Give me time. I hate to bother you with this—but if you don't hear from me that is bad, too.
MARLENE
In June of that year he had confided to his Diary his concern that “Mar-lene, with her intense preoccupation with herself and her love affairs, is also showing signs of wear and tear. How foolish to think that one can ever slam the door in the face of age. Much wiser to be polite and gracious and ask him in to lunch in advance.”
It was a subject Noël could joke about but Marlene's humor tended toward the more Teutonically literal. When he once tried one of his favorite lines on her and said that all he required of his friends these days was that they survive through lunch, she gave him a puzzled look; “Why lunch, sweetheart?”
In 1965 he could write:
The canny old Kraut remains one of my most cherished friends … However, I intend to talk to her briskly about her predisposition to whining ad nauseam about her ageing process, as though she were the first gorgeous lady undone by Father Time. And I would dearly like to teach her something about humour, as in sense of humour. Unreachable, I suspect.
Preoccupied she certainly was but that didn't mean she had no time to consider her friend's needs. She was perfectly well aware that for the last decade Noël had been putting on his own brave face as, time and again, the critics wrote him off as yesterday's man. She wrote to strengthen his resolve and it must have been most welcome.
The only time Noël and Marlene ever appeared in a film together was in Mike Todd's 1956 all-star extravaganza Around the World in 80 Days, even though they didn't share a scene. Then, on March 23, 1958, Todd died in an air crash.
993 Park Avenue
March 24th 1958
Sweetheart,
I spent another day in a sorry-for-myself mood, (because I am sincerely sorry for Mike Todd). He would be quite astonished to hear that. I think he never dreamed that he could mean so much to me. The French have an expression which we don't have, maybe because such relationships don't exist—Amitie amoureuse. That's what it was exactly. I have often tried to explain the meaning. Men can have it (without any physical feelings involved) for each other and it is really friendship without carelessness in words and actions—of friends who apply lover's [sic] tactics—or—maybe you can say it so much better, so what am I trying to do?
Come to think of it, it is more a matter of choice—to be friends and not lovers.
Liz [Taylor, Todd's widow] went to the funeral with “a party of six.” Her doctor, her dressmaker, hairdresser, etc. The intimate “family circle” the family wanted! And Mike would have been furious that I wasn't invited. So I sit here and read the papers how hysterical she was and I think of the time Jimmy Dean died and she went hysterical and behaved like a bereaved wife right in front of our Michael [Wilding]—and then when Monty Clift had the accident leaving her house, again she went hysterical and behaved the same way. Now it is real and I wonder if she can tell the difference?
Enough of that. I should concentrate to write so that you can read it. I haven't unpacked my typewriter yet and it is night and I was too lazy to unpack packages. The apartment is beautiful—at the moment I say for what—for whom? The bastard is doing a slow fade in my mind. The heart I am not so sure of.
I don't like him any more but I guess I still love him.
But you I love
M
Noël was not without his share of emotional problems at the time. He had brought his production of Nude with Violin to New York, where he played the leading role of Sebastien himself. To his chagrin, attendances began to fall away, obliging him to alternate the play with an old favorite, Present Laughter, before setting off on a short West Coast tour.
But that sort of thing he had learned to take in stride. What he never learned how to handle was what he called “that Old Black Magic.” “This,” he told his Diary, “is stimulating, disturbing, enjoyable, depressing, gay, tormenting, delightful, silly and sensible … I can already see all the old hoops being prepared for me to go through.” The late-in-life and somewhat reluctant ringmaster was a young actor in the play, William Traylor.
Like Marlene, Noël now had his own “gilded cage”:
Firefly Hill
Port Maria
Jamaica B.W.I
April 7th 1958
Darling,
The last matinee of Nude just after I had heard about Mike's death was sheer hell. Every line seemed to apply. “Until death smudged out the twinkle in his eye” … “He contrived to enjoy life to the full” etc., etc. I nearly went mad.
The Gilded Cage finale was played with decent reticence and was fairly upsetting, a sadness I may say not unmixed with relief. It [his young lover] called me up very tenderly in New Orleans where I broke the journey for one night, since when I haven't heard a bloody word. It has been a rather violent experience, really. I hope I have profited from it but I am definitely glad that it's over. There will probably be a rechauffage from time to time but it will never be quite the same.
I love you very much,
Gilded Cage II
After the booking finished, they never met again, although there was occasional correspondence.
Only one letter survives (dated January 20, 1960). In it his “friend” rambles repetitively, as he tries to decide what it is he wants to say.
He's delayed writing far too long and made several false starts and, now that he has actually put pen to paper, all that he can think of—like Proust—is remembrance of times past and other titles of the same kind, snatches of poetry, and so on.
His career, he feels, is going nowhere fast. In fact, the last year has been the worst professionally that could possibly be imagined. Nonetheless (he assures Noël), he still has “that blind faith thing.”
In terms of his mental health, well, he's managed to keep things together. He's sane, and he's proud of that. But then, reading what he's written so far, it seems to him that what he's saying is about “as lucid as this ink.” Put it another way, he thinks that on the whole he can now be more objective and keep his depression at bay.
Sorry if it all sounds like a “Psychology 1” course for beginners! But let's not go into all that any further, since he clearly can't convey what he wants to say. By now he's sure Noël can understand why he hasn't written before. He's just not very good at it but perhaps he'll get better as he goes on …
As he writes, it seems like time remembered—another title!—and it's “a rare pleasure to remember.” His life would not be worthwhile if he could not occasionally “turn back the clock all the way.”
Noël could report to Cole Lesley:
I arrived to find a highly sentimental and romantic letter from my friend which was very very sweet and only a very little of which I really believed. However, I telephoned him and he was rather flustered and not, I fear progressing very far with his career, and it was all most gentile and I felt no pangs at all which is a GOOD thing on account of me being si
ck of feeling pangs about anyone or anything.
To Joyce Carey:
[He] is much improved and is acting in an off Broadway artistic symbolic drama with a cast of four and an audience of thirteen. He really gave quite a good performance but the play was a trifle too poetic for me and had lines like—“ The evening is putting on her diapers”!
•
THE FOLLOWING YEAR Marlene was delighted when Noël's musical (now called) The Girl Who Came to Supper previewed on September 28 at Boston's Colonial Theatre and gave every indication of being a smash hit for Noël.
1962. Three Christmas belles— Marti Stevens, Marlene, and Kay Thompson—decorate Chalet Coward.
933 Park Avenue
October 2nd 1963
Dearest,
In order to explain the very special joy I have I must tell you that it is much greater than the usual joy we always have when you write something.
Your bravado about not caring about the critics always hurt me. My own criticism [of Noël] hurt me more.
I remember talking to you once in my apartment reminding you of the great things you had done—telling you what I thought of your creations then and of old. It wasn't quite right then—you put your name to things I didn't think good enough. I searched for the reason everywhere.
Even in your personal way of living. You fought me, naturally, but I knew you felt just like I did.
“Crying all the way to the bank” attitude is fine for the lesser talents. Not right for you in my book. I worried.
Then, in Montreux—I lifted my head. But I held back—wishful thinking was not to influence me. Then, there was your voice in the street in Boston. The room, the music, the lyrics—and I knew that you were home.
I still crossed my fingers. Other elements out of your control were present. But then I put my arms around Joe [Layton]—couldn't tell him all then either—but my worries were gone. My worries for you, personally were gone when I put my arms around you after I heard the line: “When the kids have got you down!” Something had broken open in you—I knew that then.
Then I waited. You had beaten into me that bit about: “I always have bad reviews!” I never liked it. I want you to have your cake— and eat it.
Full houses, great reviews, money and glory! And inner joy about your own ability, dependability and achievement—I wanted for you. That is why I am so extra specially happy.
My love for you has nothing to do with this happiness.
Marlene
She never ceased to see herself as an unofficial gardienne of Noël's work.
Savoy Hotel
London
November 30th 1972
Dearest Love,
Saw [the revival production of] Private hives on my first free night. God—how far away from what you wrote! It reminded me of a [TV] show, All in the Family, the biggest hit in the U.S. Everybody was yelling and hamming it up. But the audience ate it up.
New York, January 1973 … and Noël's last first night, as Marlene accompanies him to the revue Oh, Coward! Asked if he's enjoyed it, Noël replies, “One does not laugh at one's own jokes—but I went out humming the tunes.”
Maggie [Smith] looks worn and sad. There is something wrong— don't know what! [Her marriage to her co-star, Robert Stephens, was breaking up.] He has lightened his hair (reddish) and lost all his sex-appeal. I told him, naturally! Can't keep my mouth shut, because I know nobody tells. She plays it like a mixture of Bea Lillie, Carol Burnett, Coco Chanel (the real one) and somebody I know but cannot find the name. They are eating up the scenery. Such a Circus! But maybe you wanted that to “modernize” it. [Stephens was soon replaced by the less volatile John Standing, and Smith calmed down—relatively speaking.]
I liked you and Gertie better (MUCH). But I adored [James] Vil-liers [as Victor]. He is a very very good actor. I had never seen him. To hold his own in that mad surrounding is a great achievement.
Much love as always for always,
MARLENE
Sadly, there was not to be too much more “always.”
In January of the following year Noël made his last trip to New York and paid his last visit to a theater. The show was a gala performance of the revue Oh, Coward!, and the lady on his arm was Marlene.
Had he enjoyed the show? he was asked: “One does not laugh at one's own jokes,” he replied, then added: “I went out humming the tunes.”
CHAPTER 14
TONIGHT AT 8:10
(1935-1937)
As NOëL WROTE the individual one-act plays that would make up
Tonight at 8:30, he sent them to his old friends the Lunts for their opinion: Noël composing at Goldenhurst. (Note the Griming Gibbons wood carving that he took from home to home over the years.)
Philadelphia
September 15 th 1935
Darling,
I have read them all and am very excited. They are quite extraordinary. The Astonished Heart. What a lovely title! I recognize our psychiatrist. He was born in Genesee, do you remember? Oh, it's awfully good. It is amazing how gradually he becomes unbalanced. It gives one a strange feeling of drowning. I love the almost Proustian psychology of jealousy.
Red Peppers is very fine and very funny. Their utter third-rateness is so awfully pathetic. You know exactly why (aside from the pitiful business of their act) they have never been and never could be successful.
Hands Across the Sea is marvellous. So distressingly photographic; a whirling nightmare of chit-chat. It was quite clear to me all the way through that they were the wrong people (in case you are afraid it mightn't get over). What part shall you play in that? I suppose Peter.
Fumed Oak has enough material for three acts. It's wonderful. But it seems dreadfully extravagant to use all these rich plots for one-acters. Won't Gertie hate playing that unsympathetic wife? I love his remaining absolutely speechless during the first scene. It's a sure-fire trick, darling, and very exciting. I love the old mother in that.
To get to my favorite (and, of course, you already know it is the best), Shadow Play. Oh, darling, it is so extraordinary! I think I like it best of anything you've ever written. It is curious how that strange form of writing swings one vibrantly out into space, right out of the world somewhere in the stratosphere. It will undoubtedly be an enormous success—the whole thing.
The first play, We Were Dancing, aside from some very funny lines, which you can always write, I don't like at all, and I don't suppose you do either. I can tell you where I think it seems bad, and that is at the beginning when you, as an audience, should believe that these people have fallen in love,and it only seems very silly. I don't apologize for not liking it, because I am certain that when you read it again you will hate it and very probably replace it, and I hope you do.
Oh, how I wish we could see some of the rehearsals. But, of course, you will do it here some time and then we shall see it. Love, love, love and good luck, my little sweet.
Yours ever,
LYNN
It was only when she'd seen all nine plays that she realized the sheer scope of what Noël was attempting:
We are very excited about your third bill and have no doubt whatsoever of its success. I have a hunch that changing bills like that and doing so many different things does not do the thing you had expected of it, i.e., that giving so much variety would lighten the work. I have a feeling that the job of work in the theatre of three hours hard every night is only intensified by the fact that the plays are each different and so involving further tension. And, of course, extra rehearsals, which means you are never out of the theatre. An awful lot of work to bite off in one season, Duckie! But, perhaps the entertainment part will come when you have them all and can toss them off in another season … such as the New York one. Or am I wrong?
1936. Noël in his dressing room before the curtain goes up for Tonight at 8:30.
Gertie and Noël in Shadow Play.
Alec Woollcott wrote:
Bomoseen
Vermont
October 8th 1935
I am enchanted with all I hear about your one-act plays—snatches of information about them drift in from such witnesses as Lynn and Alfred and Ruth Gordon. Sybil [Colefax] wrote me a great deal about them and whereas I could read only a few words of her comment, they seemed to indicate that she had been favourably impressed.
October saw the beginning of a three-month tour of Tonight at 8:30, and it was clear—as it had been five years earlier—that the theatergoing public were anxious to resume their relationship with Noël and Gertie.
Once the tour was under way Noël sent regular progress reports back to Violet:
October 13th
Midland Hotel, Manchester
It's a riotous success and we're playing to bigger business than has ever been known in Manchester … We're all dead but very happy. We opened the second bill last night (“Hands Across the Sea,” “Fumed Oak” and “Shadow Play”) and it was an even greater success than the first.
November 2nd
Great Northern Station Hotel, Leeds
I've finished the seventh play (“Family Album”)—a Victorian dainty with music and I'm now racking my brains to think of two more to make up the third bill!
Our success really is fantastic—we were sold out here completely two weeks before we arrived. It takes ages after each performance to get out of the stage door and we have to have special police to control the crowds!
From Glasgow he replied to Woollcott:
Kings Theatre
Glasgow
November 4th 1935
Darling, beastly Acky-wee,
Your horrid little note arrived just as I was about to ravish my Manchester public but now that they are safely ravished I can write … you will be bleakly interested to hear that the short play idea is so far a triumphant success. We are now playing two bills of three plays each and by the time we get to London three bills of three plays each.