by Noel Coward
Joe Glaser, whom I have taken a great shine to, never drinks, never smokes and adores his mother. My heart and reason go out to him because he at least took the trouble to fly over to London and see me at the Cafe and give me a concrete offer. If it all ends in smoke I don't think it will be his fault. I believe him to be honest according to his neon lights.
195 I saw Noël start yet another new career, as a cabaret entertainer at London's Cafe de Paris. An after-show cocktail for Noël, Larry Olivier (left), Vivien Leigh, and Cole Lesley (far right). The two ladies seem to be comparing the curtain material each is using for a dress.
Now that Violet was no longer there, Goldenhurst at Christmas would have been a place of ghosts. Noël opted for Jamaica and stayed there or thereabouts for the next several months, content to let events unfold around him.
Future Indefinite, his second volume of autobiography, which deals with the war years, was published to good reviews. Then, in January, came an offer from CBS television. He would be paid $450,000 for three 90-minute live TV specials. If the Jamaican birds and lizards had heard him warbling “I Like America,” it would not have been in the least surprising.
As the Las Vegas date grew closer Noël ran into a snag. Accompanist Norman Hackforth was refused a work permit, but once again, Marlene came to Noël's rescue and recommended a young man called Peter Matz. On May 15 Noël met the replacement in New York, and on that day Peter Matz reinvented Noël Coward, Cabaret Performer. Looking over Noël's existing arrangements, Matz was dubious. “You're not going to use these, are you?” Noël, who had fully intended to do just that, was quick enough to pick up the implication that the arrangements were hopelessly old-fashioned by American standards. “No, dear boy, I want you to redo them entirely.”
Sheraton Astor Hotel
Times Square
New York, NY
Thursday, May 21st 1955
Darling Toley,
In that breathless hush when everything is packed upside down and Marlene is on her way to pick me up, I seize my ball plume to write to yew. All has gone well. There is a slight disappointment over Las Vegas on account of it being $30,000 a week instead of $35,000 but actually it was my mistake and not my Joe's so, I have risen above it. The second disappointment is that Bill Paley [CBS's chief executive] is very very much frightened of Present Laughter and implores me to do Blithe Spirit to start with anyhow. Actually his arguments against P.L. are fairly valid, the principal one being that Blithers is dead safe and it would be much better to start off clean with no angry letters from repressed sex mad Mormons. He has agreed to wait until he sees the altered P.L. script but personally I think he's probably right and it's better to do an absolute sure fire one.
Taking a break from his Las Vegas stint, Noël {center right) visits Humphrey Bogart {far left) and chats with Van Johnson.
Marlene bright as a bee but informed me casually that everyone's voice conked out in Vegas on account of the dryness and the altitude! Goody Goody!
I caught a hideous cold on the plane from Miami and took some tablets called Super Anahist (which sounds like Ziegfield's [sic] mistress) and it cured it at once with no ill effects at all. A miracle! I have bought eight thousand bottles.
Columbia is recording several of my Vegas performances, so that we can take our pick.
Love love love to all
Maitre.
Later in the month he was staying with Clifton Webb and wrote to Lornie:
1005 North Rexford Drive
Beverly Hills
May 29th 1955
The new pianist, Peter Matz, is going to be all right, I think. He has worked with Kay [Thompson] for over a year, and with Mae West, is a good musician and a hard worker but of course it has meant toil and sweat, breaking him in. We work together every morning for nearly three hours and have now got to the stage where I could open on Tuesday if I had to, which is a comfort. He is a nice boy, joli laid with a crew haircut and good manners and when he does laugh he laughs very very quietly, if you know what I mean. I am in really splendid voice due a great deal, I think, to the man Mary [Martin] sent me to in New York [Alfred Dixon] who told me to make the O-est O in the world with my mouth and then roar like a bull-moose whenever I feel like it, which frightens everybody dreadfully. Just wait till Little Lad gets on to it, the studio will sound like a stud farm with the two of us mooing away.
After engine trouble, flying through a sandstorm and making an emergency landing at El Paso, Coley finally got here at three in the morning and has been in a whirl with Rita Hayworth and Joan Fontaine ever since. We are divinely comfortable here at Clifton's house, the staff are sweet and we have delicious television lunches, eating our salads while we press little buttons which are served on a side plate and switch from station to station. We fly to Las Vegas on Wednesday and I shan't be sorry to get there and get dug in as the weather here is exactly like any November afternoon in North Finch-ley California sunshine, my foot. Claudette [Colbert] gave a dinner for me, well meant but on the dull side and the Cottens gave one the next night which was better, with an all star cast and Judy G[arland] sang and I sang and Dick Haymes sang, the latter very slowly indeed. Then yesterday was the great shindig given by the owner of the Desert Inn in my honour, which took place in his very gracious home and very lovely garden. The swimming pool was covered with thousands of roses and gardenias which went round and round till we all felt giddy, four gentlemen in blue strolled about playing violins, every star in Hollywood was there and I was photographed nearly 400 times. I took a great shine to Zsa Zsa Gabor … Coley spent a long time talking to a lonely lady in black, then got a shock when her skirt opened to the top of her hip and she turned out to be the cigarette girl.
I will cable you, of course, immediately after the opening on the 7th and then write again and tell you all and send the cuttings.
XXX
MASTER
Looking back on the experience, Noël wrote:
Wilbur Clark's
DESERT INN
Las Vegas, Nevada
June 8th
Darling Darling Lornie,
This will have to be a communal letter for you and Little Lad and Doycie [Joyce Carey] and Blackie [Gladys Calthrop] and all on account of there are five million telegrams, gifts, etc., to be thanked for. It was so wonderful, hearing your voice last night and it really was a fabulous occasion from every point of view. The dinner show, which we expected would be rather hard going, was, on the contrary absolutely terrific and the audience started off by applauding every single number in the Medley and from then on every number I did went better than it's ever gone. In fact there wasn't one that was even moderate. The high spot, as usual, was “Let's Do It” at the end, for which I have written an extra chorus full of local allusions all of which tore the place up. My programme was as follows:—Medley, Uncle Harry, Piccola Marina (a riot), Loch Lomond, World Weary, Nina, then off and back again with Mad Dogs, Worthington, Let's Do It and Party's Over Now.
The supper show, of course, was quite indescribable, the entire front row of tables was occupied by my chums, most of whom had been flown from Hollywood in a specially chartered plane by Frank Sinatra. There were the Nivens, Judy Garland and her husband, Joan Fontaine and hers, the Joe Cottens, the Humphrey Bogarts, Rosemary Clooney, Jane Powell, Laurence Harvey, Zsa Zsa Gabor, Peter Glenville, etc., etc., etc. and I must honestly say I have never had such an ovation in my life and the whole place went raving mad. Also I have never known such warmth and generosity, Judy Garland was in tears and told me that she and Frank Sinatra decided that I was better than anyone they had ever seen and could give them lessons, which couldn't have been more comforting or more sweet. If any of you note a slight egocentric strain in this letter you will have to forgive it because it was rather a dangerous challenge and has turned out to be successful beyond my wildest dreams.
Noël “tears them up” at the Desert Inn.
Peter Matz, my pianist, is really brilliant. Not only did he play wonde
rfully for me but owing to Carlton Hayes, the conductor, being taken ill, he conducted the whole show as well, in addition to which he has re-orchestrated every number and all those curiously dull arrangements dreamed up by Norman and Marr Mackie have now been thrown in the ash-can. All this he has accomplished in ten days, so Doddie [God] was certainly on my side. Then of course all the lighting equipment and sound equipment is perfect, I can whisper into the microphone if I want to, so I find no strain in singing.
The climate every day is between ioo and no but it's dry heat and I adore it and anyway the hotel is air-conditioned. Coley and I pig it in the most luxurious suite and I have rented a lovely automatic-drive Ford convertible which does everything but cut my toenails, and in which we whizz up and down The Strip stopping at the men's shops to buy a few dainties for which the hotel very sweetly pays. It's deductible, dear. Tomorrow Life magazine is taking me an hour's ride out into the desert to photograph me in deep evening dress in colour—Mad Dogs and Englishmen, you know! There has just been a fifteen minute radio tribute to me, made by all the stars who were there last night, really very sweet and touching and I am having a copy made for my darlings to hear for themselves. Thank you one and all for all sweet cables, and dearest dearest love and kisses. Oh dear, Oh dear, Oh dear!
xxxx
MASTER
September … and it was time to prepare for the first of the CBS specials, a musical evening reuniting him with Mary Martin and called Together with Music, To prepare for it Peter Matz came down to Jamaica to work with Noël on the new numbers, with Mary and Richard Halliday to follow a few days later.
To Lornie:
Blue Harbour
September 12 th
We had a very good journey out and got to New York a little bit late, which didn't matter as our plane for Jamaica was also a little late taking off. The boys [Charles Russell and Lance Hamilton—Noël's U.S. agents] were there all right, cheerful and efficient as ever, having got all the things we asked for, including a lovely tape recorder which has been a great help already. They seem to have done good preparatory work on the show and brought the plans for the set, which look very exciting, 68 feet in depth and with the series of curtains which will part and roll themselves up into pillars as Mary and I advance for our entrance …
I immediately started work on Tuesday morning and had written two songs before the day was out! So now I have “Ninety Minutes is a Long Long Time” (which Mary and I are going to do outside our dressing room doors, wearing wrappers), then our entrance proper, “Together With Music,” “Louisa Was Terribly Lonely,” and also I have tidied up “What's Going to Happen to the Tots,” so that it is now very topical and much funnier. Pete arrived yesterday and is enthusiastic about all four; Mary and [her husband] Dick arrive tomorrow, so our lovely peaceful week is over and I propose to stuff my ears with Q-tips from tomorrow onwards.
Back in July, Mary Martin had written to express her excitement at the prospect: “We love every word we read, every picture we see of you—and every glowing word that reaches us. So maybe we're ready to face the TV together!! … On September nth I will be ready to come to you in Jamaica to work, work, work on music! Really ache to, want to.”
And work they did. As with Pacific 1860 a decade earlier, the fly in the professional ointment was Halliday Once again he tried to impose himself and his views on the production, and one evening, in his cups, he went too far and found both Noël and Mary turning on him.
Unfortunately, as he had done so often with Jack—against his better judgment—Noël tried to forgive and forget. Halliday stayed involved with the production.
The broadcast aired on October 22, and a day or two later Noël wrote:
Darling Mary,
Well, I really do believe we pulled it off!
I can now admit—to you only—that, as the witching hour approached, I wondered if I had been entirely wise to call our opening number “Ninety Minutes is a Long, Long Time”. Had we been doing the show in London, a veritable phalanx of my least favourite critics would have undoubtedly used the line to lead their so-called reviews!
1956. Noël and Mary Martin join voices in the live CBS-TV production Together with Music. Their opening number was called “90 Minutes Is a Long, Long Time.” Their audience disagreed.
But if what I have been hearing and reading is to be believed, we not only got away with it but we positively raised the roof.
I still feel—probably because I'm a virtual virgin in these matters—that television is a funny old medium. No real audience to play to and oi! oi!—always keep half an eye on where the camera's pointing. And yet, once we got into it, I felt the old thrill and I'm pretty sure you did, too.
It was a bit of fun, wasn't it? One of these days we really must be “Together Again with Music!!” Ready when you are, Miss M.
All love,
Noël
To French businesswoman Ginette Spanier and her husband, Paul:
Blue Harbour
8th November 1955
My darling Japanese Samovars,
I came back here, flushed with triumph, as I said to Larry and Vivien, my TV success made Las Vegas look like a bad matinee at the Dundee Rep. I was really quite startled; telegrams started to arrive while the show was still on, from all over America, and from the moment it was over I was buttonholed wherever I went, the telephone never stopped ringing and I didn't have a moment to go to the loo. One night at Twenty-One I was serenaded by the entire Yale Glee Club who came up to my table and belted “Anchors Aweigh” while I was trying to have a quiet dinner with Edna Ferber.
•
THE SECOND OF the three CBS shows, then, was to be Blithe Spirit, due to be broadcast live in January, but before that there were other important matters to take care of.
The first was a change of residence. When Noël's financial adviser told him that he was overdrawn by nineteen thousand pounds, quite apart from paying over 19/—[19 shillings] in “supertax” for every pound he earned, Noël could see that, no matter how successful he was in the future, he was looking at an impoverished old age. He could no longer afford to be a U.K. “resident,” yet to go “offshore” meant selling Goldenhurst and Gerald Road and generally liquidating any assets that tied him financially to England.
By the end of 1955 he had settled on Bermuda, a British possession but also a tax haven. Early the following year he found Spithead Lodge and made the physical and emotional move—once again stirring up the wrath of the British press in very much the same way he had in the early years of the war.
He wrote to Joyce Carey:
I could not obviously have done this while Mum was alive but even then, and all my life, I have got out of England as quickly as I could as often as I could. I think on the whole that I have not done badly by England and I also think that England has not done very well by me. The general public love me and are, I feel, proud of me but this does not apply to the press, the politicians and even the present darling Royal Family—or, if they are, they haven't made it apparent.
His move prompted letters from many of his friends. To many of them, the thought of Noël in Bermuda seemed, to say the least, a little recherche.
Nancy Mitford—someone Noël had come to refer to as “Pen Pal” and with whom he was now corresponding regularly—sent him an illustrated advance brochure for an institution called the College of Authors and Authors’ Country Club at Goring Castle, writing:
“Here you see me burning your compromising letters to the despair of posterity.” Nancy Mitford (1904-197 3), Noël's “penpal” of the 1950s.
Darling Noël,
Here you are—here's our old age provided for. You won't even have to bring your own fog with you. Those who haven't paid their income tax will be given that room marked X in the tower. I'll be in the one below … What I want to enquire is when you will be moving in, so as to make plans accordingly.
I'm very happy here in Torcello. It pours with freezing rain so I feel quite at home. Workin
g all day, nothing else to do. Loved seeing you, wish it was oftener.
Love,
Nancy
Mitford had recently published her highly successful series of tongue-in-cheek essays on “U” and “Non-U” behavior, which purported to define socially acceptable (Upper Class) mores and manners. Noël could not resist teasing her about it in his reply:
July the whatever it is 1956.
Darling Pen-Buddy,
Your Authors’ Club letter made me laugh like a drain, as Lady Blessington used to say. Oh Dear, what a comfort it is going to be to us all except that I warn you here and now that I shall grumble continuously about the climate. I am sending this to Rue Monsieur on account of you might have left Torcello and come winging your way back to Paris France with your manuscript under your arm and a dreadful smug gleam in your eye. I would like to be able to tell you proudly that I have written thousands of witty words since I saw you and that my novel is finished and a new play started. Unfortunately, however, it WOULD NOT BE TRUE. What is true is that I haven't written a bloody word except a short note in the third person saying that Mr. Noël Coward would be delighted to attend the Admiralty Fete and draw tickets for the Raffle. What I have been doing is what is laughingly known as “Settling In”. Oh Ma Fois and Miserkorde Quelle Brouhaha! I do not know if Brouhaha is really feminine or I would have brought it up before, but I shall give it the benefit of the doubt. The house is enchanting and my own little private cottage a veritable reve because it goes straight down into the limpidest sea. You really will have to force your frail body (in the best sense) on to a plane and come and stay and we can sit in the lounge, which is very tastefully furnished, and have a spiffing old natter about books because as you may or may not know, I am just mad about books and you being so brainy and all, that you might give me a few ideas which, I may say, would be bitterly resented … I must now stop and go back to my tasks one of which is to frost a rather rubbery angel cake which I made yesterday. So ta ta for the present and drop us a p.c. when you have a sec.