The Letters of Noel Coward

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The Letters of Noel Coward Page 55

by Noel Coward


  Together … with Chaplin. The squabbles of Pacific 1860 behind her, Mary Martin seems to be enjoying the company of Noël and Charlie Chaplin.

  Compared with Blithe Spirit's 6$j performances, it lasted just 158.

  CHAPTER 22

  THE FALLOW FORTIES

  (1947-1950)

  THE WEST END, it appeared, was not in the mood for a revue. In fact the format that once had been glamorous, topical, and relatively cheap to produce was in rapid decline, until it enjoyed a sort of revival on television in the 1960s.

  Nor did it find operetta any more to its taste, although it retained its affection for the more bravissimo Ivor Novello version. While Noël was struggling with Pacific 1860, Ivor was pulling in the crowds with the even more unlikely story of a romantic highwayman in Perchance to Dream, Was it possible that the common denominator in Noël's relative failures was—Noël? In the Diaries he asks himself the question repeatedly but always rhetorically.

  When in doubt, revive Present Laughter. Noël did just that, at London's Haymarket Theatre in 1947, with Moira Lister as the predatory Joanna Lyppiatt.

  No—to use another of his favorite phrases—”It was time to come out of another hole.” He would star in a revival of Present Laughter, If Coward the dramatist wasn't a draw right now, Coward the actor certainly would be.

  Then, at the back of his mind, he could feel that there was a serious play nagging to be written. It had been inspired by what he had witnessed during the war. It would be about the spirit of the British people, the way they had been let down by the promises of their leaders in those immediate prewar years and how their spirit would always ultimately triumph— even if they had actually lost the war. The idea was borrowed from one of Noël's favorite writers, “Saki” (H. H. Munro), who had written the post—World War I story When William Came based on the premise that England has been occupied by the Kaiser and his troops. Noël's version would be called—after Chamberlain's famous line—Peace in Our Time,

  While he was in the United States in the early part of 1947 Noël duly wrote it. And while the mood was upon him, he wrote another play that September—based on his short story “What Mad Pursuit.” He called it Long Island Sound,

  Peace in Our Time opened in July to muted respect. It soon became clear, though, that Noël had repeated the experience of Post-Mortem nearly twenty years earlier. True as its observations may have been, the British public, hanging on grimly in austerity that no longer had an ennobling cause to excuse it, had no wish to be reminded of what they had just gone through, and even less to contemplate how much worse it might well have been.

  When the show's probable fate became clear, Noël reflected to Lornie:

  I'm fairly depressed about Peace In Our Time not being the smasheroo we thought it was … I suppose the public really don't feel like seeing anything serious at the moment and I must say I can't blame the poor sods. All the same it is disheartening … The Lunts read P in our T and were crackers about it and so were Kit [Katharine Cornell] and [her husband] Guthrie [McClintic] and so am I and so are you and if it really is a failure, I think that England is a very silly island indeed, in spite of Clive and Drake and Trafalgar and Shakespeare and Olwen [Clemence Dane's companion].

  Despite an excellent cast, Peace in Our Time survived for only 167 performances.

  By this time, however, Noël had fulfilled his commitment to Present Laughter, twitched his mantle blue once more, and taken Graham off on his first visit to America.

  Then there was a rather self-conscious letter from Laurence Olivier. Since Private Lives in 1930, Olivier had been something of a protege for Noël. Eight years younger, he had always been somewhat in awe of the Master, even though his own career onstage and in films was by now stellar. He was now being offered a knighthood, and his letter was like that of an ex-pupil to his old headmaster:

  I have a feeling that you would have thought more highly of me if I'd turned the bloody thing down, and I must tell you that I had always determined to do so, should the occasion arise, and Puss [Vivien Leigh] had always said “of course you'd refuse it” and I have always nodded vigorously … but when it came along I found that I liked the idea tremendously and so did Puss, and sighing rather regretfully to find that I just wasn't in your class, old boy, of quite justifiably sticking out for an O.M. [Order of Merit—the highest honor], decided that it felt more pompous in ME to refuse than to accept— so there you are!

  What he did not mention was his anger that his friendly rival, Ralph Richardson, had already been knighted.

  In later years, as the honors began to pile up for Olivier, it became a running joke between him and Noël. When Larry reported that he really couldn't understand why Oxford University would insist on making him a Doctor of Letters, he was immediately on the receiving end of a typical Coward comeback: “Doctor of four letters, I presume?”

  By early August Noël was reporting from New York, where his “homecoming” was not entirely to his liking:

  To Lorn [August 5]

  The Baybay's wickedness over this apartment has surpassed everything. He had allowed—nay encouraged—the horrid little fuck-pig who rented it to have it all re-painted and re-furnished. He has a taste in furnishing that swings between a coloured tart and an old lady at Seaford with a parrot.

  I arrived to find a very unpleasant antique ridden love-nest filled with shells and rosaries and small angry Buddhas and prettiest of all, a sodding little table made out of a zither! The dark green bedroom was like an aquarium and all the pannelling painted over in grey paint so that it looks as tho it had contracted a mild case of leprosy. With shrill trumpeting and great rage I flew to Bloomingdales and I am now having the whole place re-done with new curtains and covers etc., etc., all of which I am cheerfully charging to the Great Wilson Debt. Apart from this deep-dyed villainy he has been a sweet and wriggling honey-bear and we had a lovely week-end at Fairfield with Natasha saying “Monstreux” constantly and diving in and out of the kitchen to find chicken bones for herself and her horrid dachshound.

  Laurence Olivier and Noël in earlier, happier days. They sailed together on the SS Normandie in 1937.

  Having got that off his chest, he turned to other news: “MCA keep on offering me wonderful film propositions at which I laugh and snap my fingers like a gay Spanish thing. This farting typewriter still jumps like a Springbok.”

  To Gladys later that month, after a visit to Katharine Cornell at Martha's Vineyard:

  It was wonderful at Kit's—really most particularly your dish—Kit cooking steaks and lobsters over an open fire while we all sat around sipping “Old Fashioneds”. After we'd left there we drove up into the heart of New England …

  We had a blissful week at Martha's Vineyard and I really painted a picture of the house without a cliff in sight but I did have a relapse and do a tropical number with palm trees. Oh bugger this thing, it's getting the jumps again, so this letter will look like as how I had hiccoups!

  We caught Gertie playing in Stock just outside Boston. She had elected to do the little dainty that Mary Ellis did about Mrs. FitzHerbert [wife of King George IV]. We all had supper and it was very gay and reminiscent and everyone said fuck and piss off and it was quite nostalgic. Gertie was quite good in the play although perhaps a bit piss elegant. The rest was horrid.

  There was a petulant postscript to the apartment debacle:

  The little sod that Dab let ruin this apartment got into a shrill rage when he found out that he was never going to be allowed to set his stinking, mincing little feet in it again, and we found that he had given orders for the telephone to be disconnected! La La but I trow there was a drumming of heels and I have had to charm a telephone gentleman into letting me have another one which these days is virtually impossible. I have also ordered a great deal of new crockery and furniture and charged it all to Dab, which may teach him to be more considerate of my possessions in future. He is now cowering in the country.

  From Martha's Vineyard thei
r itinerary took them west:

  We are going to Genesee via Chicago tomorrow. Alfred and Lynn are meeting us in Chicago and we are all going with gritted teeth to see Tallulah dirty up Private Lives, I understand, Tallulah does everything but stuff a kipper up her twot but is playing to smash capacity! I can't feel that it is going to be an entirely pleasant evening.

  1948. Tallulah Bankhead (1902—1968) revives Private Lives. Noël went to the Chicago tryout “with gritted teeth,” but found himself pleasantly surprised. He even let the production come to Broadway.

  In the event:

  September 9th

  We spent two hectic days with Tallulah in Chicago. I went to see her in Private Lives with my heart in my boots and was very pleasantly surprised. True, she did a few shrieks and growls here and there, which were not quite in the highest tradition of sophisticated comedy, but her vitality was amazing and, strange to say, she played the love scene quite beautifully. We went with Alfred and Lynn who also thought she was excellent and, as we arrived in the dressing-room afterwards, Lynn advanced, full of graciousness and said, “Tallulah, you were simply enchanting and—” whereupon Miss B cut her short and said “I don't give a fuck about you and Alfred. It's only Noël I am worrying about!” She said it in no way maliciously but merely as a statement of fact! Fortunately it was all such a gale of effusiveness and fun that nobody minded but I thought you would like to know it as an example of Dix-Huitieme courtesy and tact.

  After our week with the Lunts we came back and spent our two days with Tallu who, apart from getting pissed on the Sunday night and carrying on stinking, really couldn't have been sweeter. She insisted on our being her guests at the hotel, showered us with flowers and scent and wouldn't let us pay for a thing and, on top of everything insisted on giving me an enormous Augustus John painting which I collected on Sunday from her house in the country. It is a magnificent painting worth, I should think, about three thousand pounds! She explained that she wasn't mad about it herself and was going to give it to a museum but that she knew I collected pictures and would rather I had it than anyone else in the world. All this because I said she could go on playing P.L, for as long as she wanted and ultimately do a season in New York with it. As she is playing to smash capacity this was a reasonable gesture on my part. Altogether I was very touched by her in spite of her wild-ness. Incidentally she sent you all kinds of love. (Now this bloody typewriter has started jumping again and I've just had it mended— imagine!)

  He had already written his thank-you letter:

  [Undated—Wednesday]

  Darling Tallu,

  To write and thank you for the happy time you gave me is such an anti-climax. You were so gay and sweet and generous and your god damned vitality lights up all the world around you and I only hope they kept you away from the coast during the war on account of your magnetism triggering up any black out.

  I'm not going to say any more about the Augustus John until I've seen it when I will write immediately but I am going to say … (How wonderful not to be interrupted) … that I am deeply touched that you should give me such a lovely and wonderful present, but not any more touched than I was by suddenly receiving two bottles of scent and, at the same time, the knowledge that, with all the weight of the years on us, you loved me very much and I loved you very much.

  Thank you very much, darling, for all your sweetness and your insane generosity.

  Take care of yourself and for Christ's sake, don't be a silly bitch and ruin your health by ramming “reefers” up your jacksie and generally farting about and forgetting that if your particular light flickers and even fades a little, a lot of people will be left in the dark.

  My dear love to you.

  NOËL

  The gesture was subsequently diluted somewhat when she asked for the Augustus John painting to be returned. She had, she said, only meant it as a loan]

  An incensed Noël wrote to Lornie: “Tallulah, apart from being a conceited slut, is a black liar. She gave me the bloody picture and forced it on me because she wanted to play PL, in New York. There was never a question of a loan. Why in hell should I wish to be lent an Augustus John portrait of a pear drop? Send it back!”

  When, a year or two later, Jack Wilson was proposing to direct the lady, Noël told Lornie: “The play he has for Tallulah is based on a Henry James novel. It is very gentle and subtle and if Miss Bankhead can discipline herself to refrain from farting to get a laugh or bouncing ping-pong balls off her tits, it might be a success.”

  His letter to Lorn continued:

  Now I have to go and discuss drearily with Miss Lawrence the macabre possibility of her doing a revival of To-Night at What Have You, I shall continue—like the Perils of Pauline—to-morrow. In the mean time I must think of something to say to finish off this page.

  Buggerbuggerbuggerbugger. That is enough. I am very pretty—I am very pretty—I am very pretty. That is better.

  The production over which Noël was understandably dragging his feet was an idea of an as usually impecunious Gertie—aided and abetted by her lawyer/manager Fannie Holtzmann—reviving Tonight at 8:30. It would be a national tour of the United States and end up on Broadway.

  Tallulah and Noël in later, less happy days.

  Following his own dictum of “never cook your cabbage twice,” Noël wanted nothing to do with it. Well, the persuasive ladies suggested, what about Graham playing your parts?

  Since their arrival, Graham had been auditioning for parts without success, and since Noël's desire for Graham's success was greater than the sum of his reservations, he finally gave in. And when it became clear that a jealous Jack, who was supposed to direct, would put every possible rock in the path of the production, Noël decided the only course open to him was to stay in the United States longer than he had originally intended to guide the project's launch.

  Having kept a fatherly eye on the early part of the tour, he returned to England for Christmas, then came back to supervise the West Coast production before “bringing the show in.” Despite his previous concerns, the reception the show was receiving “on the road” lulled him into thinking he might have been overly pessimistic. On the train from Hollywood to New York he wrote Coley:

  Dearest Toley,

  Here we are exhausted but happy on our way back to New York. “We” consist of Little Lad, Gertie, Marlene and Katie H[epburn]. It's really quite fun and we're catching up with some sleep. Hollywood was gay but terribly wearing. I was the belle of the Thing and behaved ever so nicely and everyone outdid themselves to give parties and more parties and the whole thing was stinking with glamour. Our favourites were Irene Dunne, Clifton [Webb] and Gene Kelly but I must say everyone was really mighty sweet. Joan [Crawford] gave the largest … so we had a good time and watched the big shots disporting themselves. It was well done, good food and drink and the entertainment was really wonderful on account of Jack Benny, Tony Martin, Celeste Holm and Dinah Shore who all sang divinely and, as they did it as a gesture to me, I was very flattered and had to sing “Marvellous Party” out of sheer self-preservation and it topped the lot and that was jolly gratifying too.

  We had a nightmare visit to Tia Juana over the Mexican border in order to get Little Lad's quota number. He drove me and Fanny and Fanny's nephew Howard; Fanny never drew breath and went on buzzing and moaning in our ears like a mad black-water beetle— four hours there and four hours back—and it was unmitigated hell except that we got the bloody number. All the agents in Hollywood have been trying to cash in on me and Del Giudice went trumpeting about and giving my script of Long Island Sound to all the studios and I finally got very very angry indeed and decided that in no circumstances would I have anything to do with any of it. I don't care for the movie racket much in England but in Hollywood it is much much worse.

  Leonard Spigelgass who got fried that week-end at White Cliffs turned out to be a darling duck and gave a madly gay soiree with a whole lot of different faces. It was great fun, particularly a rather beauti
ful Czeck [sic] lady called Florence Marly who looked oddly like Peter Glenville but she spoke lovely French and Spanish and was rather sweet. Janet Gaynor and Adrian [Hollywood designer] gave a dainty dinner without really warning me that it was sixty miles away. It was nice when I got there except for Joan Fontaine's titties which kept falling about and a large rock python which was handed to me as a surprise. I didn't mind but everyone else was jolly frightened and Claudette [Colbert] had to spend the rest of the evening washing her hands in a sort of Lady Macbeth frenzy. Peggy Cummins appeared looking as though she had been carved out of opaque glass.

  Je ne crois pas vraiment that there is any more nouvelles except that we are all in a slight etat about opening next Friday. Little Lad is giving a jolly fine performance but has had to be slapped down for a slight but very perceptible tendency to overact! Figure-toi! Le petit violet—Quelle Bearnaise! Give my dear dear love to all and be a sweet Tolette and ecrire again and again and again. La la la la. Le Maitre.

  Noël watches a rehearsal of the Tonight at 8:3 o revival at New York's National Theatre. His instincts told him it would flop—and it did.

  Noël had it right the first time. The New York critics demolished Tonight at 8:30, It ran for just four painful weeks. “I'll make them swallow their damn notices yet,” he wrote to Lorn. “I fear we are a flop and I have always believed in putting geographical distance between myself and a flop.”

 

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