by Noel Coward
To watch her fling herself in and out of the pool, either in what looked like a black evening dress of the 1920s or, when she thought she was unperceived, no dress at all, was indeed wonderful and curiously majestic. We haven't yet got the painting studio tidied up, but it was all well worth it. She did a lot of “Don't tell me you haven't read your Scatchwick,” but I clamped down firmly on all discussions of Space Fiction on account of Space Fiction bores the fuck out of me and there's no two ways about it.
The boys all left yesterday; Binkie and John for Tobago and Terry for California via New York. Binkie was at his best and absolutely sweet, so was Terry, but really the sweetest of the lot was Johnny P[erry] who put himself out in every way he could to be of help, even to cooking a couple of meals and driving the car back and forth up and down the hill. He is a curious creature isn't he? I do think that on the whole he is much nicer than he used to be.
There is very little news really beyond the fact that I have decided to give myself a Sabbatical year and have refused all commitments and all offers. This gives me a wonderful feeling of freedom and I am writing verses with immense enjoyment because at the moment I do not feel like tackling a play or a book. The verses really are fairly good I think and it's certainly opening a few windows and enlarging my vocabulary. So I am feeling very happy.
Annie and Ian have arrived and are very sweet and that's all right. But what is not all right are all the other people who keep on arriving, all of whom have to be done something about if you will forgive the Henry Jamesian phrasing. And I wish I wish I wish that when people go on a holiday that they would not say “We must go to Jamaica and call on dear ole Nole.”
Binkie Beaumont (top), his companion John Perry (bottom), and Terence Rattigan (center). Articulate as they all were, they were rendered speechless when fellow guest Clemence Dane told the story of “the five John Thomases.”
In early 1956, during his annual pilgrimage to Jamaica, Noël wrote a play called Volcano, Set once again in Samolo (Jamaica), it was a thinly veiled version of real-life events. While he was carrying on his long-range affair with Ann Rothermere, Ian Fleming had not felt the need to curb his bachelor tendencies. At some point he had begun an affair with Blanche Blackwell, a local Jamaican and a friend of Noël's whose family had sold him the Firefly property.
In the play, Blanche is Adela Shelley (“a handsome woman in her mid-forties”). She is being pressed to have an affair with the local Lothario, Guy (Ian). Guy's wife, Melissa (Ann), arrives to assess her latest rival. To fill out the plot there are other guests with various romantic entanglements of their own, and the whole thing is set in the guesthouse Adela runs on the slopes of an extremely symbolic volcano that momentarily threatens to erupt and belatedly does.
Some months later, Noël sent Lorn the manuscript for her to critique, and she replied:
January 18th 1957
The first thing I want to write about is Volcano and how really thrilled I am that it is so frightfully good. It really is. There seems to me to be so much about it to praise and enjoy The taut economical writing, and the wonderful atmosphere and tension of the scenes on the mountain, the sharp clarity and truth of the characters. For good actors (and of course they are going to need good actors) they are a gift from Heaven. I do think you have drawn them brilliantly and, to me, with such a sure touch that one short sentence gives so much insight into the person. For instance in Act I scene 2 when Melissa refers to her “vast daughter” you know at once that she is concrete and vinegar inside about other women, even her own adolescent daughter. And Guy's moments of genuine tenderness convince me that they really are genuine and one of the secrets of his charm. The play and the people in it have certainly worked themselves out a treat and I couldn't be more delighted.
To Joyce:
I have a strong feeling that it is good because the idea dropped complete into the mind and I wrote it with very little trouble and a great deal of pleasure, rather like Blithers, It is called Volcano, Rather difficult to describe as it is fairly unlike anything I've done before, Brief E is the nearest, I suppose, but the situations are stronger and it is less mizzy. So now I am veree veree happee and can go off on Thursday for the rest of my island hopping with a coeur leger.
Only one aspect of the play concerned Joyce, insofar as it might provide a potentially embarrassing clue to the real-life “originals” of Noël's characters. On his first visit to Firefly Noël had been struck, in a negative way, by Ian's “hordes of ageing, fading shells.”
I am sending these two cuttings from The Sunday Times in case you think it matters such wide publicity having been given to Ian's shell collecting. I don't suppose it does but, if it is likely to, it's better to worry about it now than later.
I haven't heard from Binkie since I delivered the script on Monday but there has hardly been time and anyway he will be sure to write to you.
April 30th
To come to what is important, Volcano, I am extremely disappointed that Binkie, while being impressed by a lot of it, does not care for it a hundred per cent and has a good deal of criticism to make.
As I understand it, there is a feeling that Adela's continued friendship with Guido [Guy] plus her continued refusal to let him be her lover makes her an unsympathetic character. There is also this prevailing idea that the only people worth considering in serious plays are those who either live in squalor or, at the highest, do their own housework and take the washing to the launderette. The slightly more leisured classes are presumed to be acceptable to an audience when in farce or light comedy but not when their deeper emotions are involved. I think Binkie is truly unhappy about making criticisms but, of course, he is right to say what he thinks.
Noël finally wrote two versions of the play. In the first one—perhaps out of deference to Blanche—he had her refuse Guy's advances. Only in the revised version he prepared after Binkie's criticism did the dramatist take over from the friend and make it clear that the affair had taken place and was now definitely over.
Perhaps his personal feelings for the people concerned got between him and his characters, because the play never took off. A staged reading in 1989 and a provincial English production are the only occasions an audience has had to see the play performed.
•
TO NOëL'S DELIGHT, Nude settled in for a solid commercial London run. In May, Clifton Webb suggested that Noël should sell the film rights. Noël replied:
I would certainly like to sell Nude with Violin for pictures but there is still a chance that I might do it myself in NY and, until this is decided, I would like to leave it what is known as “in the air”. It is not a particularly dating play, so we could either or both of us play it, even if we are kept together by Scotch tape.
(I had my hair cut yesterday because I got so sick of all that feathery stuff getting into my eyes and I now look like Yul Brynner's Aunt).
On June 24, 1957, Gielgud left the cast. Noël wrote to Joyce:
1957. Wilding took over from John Gielgud as Sebastien in Nude, and it was soon clear that he did not understand the role. Said Noël: “Nothing can be done until he has played it for a couple of weeks, then I shall come down with my cohorts all gleaming and beat the fuck out of him.”
I expect you will have heard some repercussions about my being none too pleased when I heard that John was leaving on June 22 nd. It was all news to me, and great big stars leaving great big successes is another thing I don't care for. I hope stumps will be stirred this time and someone really good be found to replace him, but there it is and I won't go on about it.
The replacement turned out to be Michael Wilding, by now a well-known film star and a past husband of the serial bride Elizabeth Taylor.
Gielgud wrote his mea culpa letter:
Globe Theatre
Saturday, June 22nd
Dearest Noël,
I feel rather a slob to go out at this time when business is so splendid, and I am sorry to have saddled you with so much rehearsal, tho
ugh I know how very much better it is for all concerned that you should have been able to take over, to say nothing of the saving of work for me! I hope Michael will have a real success.
In fact, Wilding was not a success.
Mike opened on Monday night. He was fairly all right but mumbled dreadfully and was quivering with inside nerves. He moved well and with assurance but his speech is a serious problem. Nothing can be done until he has played it for a couple of weeks, then I shall come down with my cohorts all gleaming and beat the fuck out of him.
By November it was clear that Wilding had to be replaced. Attendance had peaked immediately after he took over the part, as a direct result of his film star status, but the boost was a temporary one, and Robert Helpmann became the third and last Sebastien.
Once again Gielgud wrote to Noël:
November nth, 1957
Dear Noël,
Today I had an excellent first rehearsal and was simply delighted not only with Bobby's [Robert Helpmann] industry and quickness but also, of course, with all the new touches and material which, with the addition of Bobby's vivacity, should revive the spirits and attack of the company, who are, not unnaturally, somewhat drooping with holding the scattered shreds of the play, as it sags under Michael's terrifying pathological deficiencies. What you must have suffered rehearsing him I can well imagine. Even in the ten days I worked [with him] he reduced me to a helpless welter of shame and impotence, especially when he sat down on the footlights, in imitation of Danny Kaye, with a cup of tea, and gave a spirited resume of his own inability to perform, with all the attendant reasons for it. Yet one cannot really dislike or blame him, though I came to the resentful conclusion that he is fundamentally lazy, and incapable of dealing with it in any way.
Bobby is going to be delightful—quite different to either of us— and has so much intelligence and enthusiasm that I know he will achieve a really original performance without undue labour—as he has been bright enough to lay such solid and firm foundations, and is already word perfect. His languages are poor, but I think he can pantomime them with sparkling looks and shrugs, as he already does (from you, no doubt) with the German.
The new scene with the American [journalist] is in your very best vein and you must have it put into the printed version.
As ever,
JOHN
Helpmann himself wrote when his first night was safely behind him:
November 29th 1957
I can't tell you what a panic I was in, but it all went marvelously well and I don't think I let you down. Encouraged by you, of course, I was outrageous. I practically had to be carried to the wings with the weight of my jewellery I am absolutely adoring playing it now that my nerves are subsiding a little.
He signed the letter “Margaret Erlynne,” the leading character from After the Ball, the last show he had done with Noël.
Noël replied in kind: “What a charming woman Lady Erlynne is. Love Noël”—clearly forgetting that Mrs. Erlynne was not a lady in any sense of the word.
•
THE SUMMER OF 1957 found Noël staying with Edward Molyneux in Biot. From there he wrote to Joyce:
We are having a really divine hoi. Edward is sweet and genial and the house is tin reve, exquisitely done and being most beautiful. There are several movie ladies and gentlemen about such as the Van Johnsons and Gary Coopers and last night we dined with George Schlee and Garbo on the Port at Villefranche. She was very gay and staggeringly beautiful if perhaps a tiny bit grubby and we were shown a chapel which Jean Cocteau has made, all murals, of Jesus doing the loaves and fishes lark with lots of naked young men with rather over developed cheeks and Jean Marais [Cocteau's longtime lover] expressions. Puzzling, I should think, for les Voirs Mystiques but most interesting.
Earlier in the year he had visited the Cayman Islands, where the company was rather less sophisticated.
The Caymans were rather fascinating, the people are sweet, though the natives are Baptists and madly inbred, so are inclined to gibber, but I didn't mind. There are only forty inhabitants of Cayman Brae—actually now only 37, because while I was there two deaf-mute brothers cut up their aunt into a sort of Shepherd's Pie and are now languishing in the gaol in Kingston.
•
NUDE WITH VIOLIN'S success decided Noël on playing in it himself for a Broadway run in the fall of that year—his first stage appearance there in twenty years. Plans were duly laid, and he wrote to Lorn to tell her that they had secured “the old Belasco,” one of his favorite theaters. “I am really very pleased. It is full of great traditions, like the Haymarket, and although a bit run to seed, wonderful to play in … The anticipatory excitement over the production is rising steadily and all seems set fair.”
It was over this production, though, that the first cracks in his long relationship with Binkie Beaumont began to appear. The London impresario suddenly demanded 2 percent of the gross from the Broadway production. Noël replied:
Dearest Bink,
This letter is difficult to write because it concerns the relationship of friendship to business and vice versa. It is particularly hard in our case to disentangle the one from the other, as we have been associates in both for so long. However, I am going to try because I have a strong feeling that, if I don't, things may go awry between us. Nobody admires your incisive business acumen more than I do, in addition to which, over our years, I have come to rely on your courage in criticism and your judgement of scripts and seldom found you wanting in either. But there is something in you, and I hope, in all of us, that is a good deal more important than sharply defined contractual obligations and it is this indefinable “something” which is causing me much concern and, to be perfectly honest, quite a lot of unhappiness. I have wanted to explain this to you before during some of our cosy, intimate dialogues, but somehow by the time I had got round to it we had both had too much gin and no good would have come of it.
In the first place let us look, as objectively as possible at my relationship with H. M. Tennent's. It seems to me in the light of remorseless sense rather than theatrical annoyance, that H.M.T. owes considerably more to me than I owe to it. As far as I can remember, and I hope I am correct in this, the firm has never lost money over any of my plays, and even if by any dastardly chance it had, it has certainly regained whatever it may have lost from such long runs as Design For Living, Blithe Spirit, Present Laughter, Relative Values, Quadrille and Nude With Violin, I think you must agree that it wouldn't have been too difficult for me to have persuaded other managements to present these plays. Therefore, the question of H.M.T. taking a big risk and providing a “shop window” for my work didn't really arise.
Which brings me with a fairly sickening thud to your demand for two per cent of the gross of the American production of Nude With Violin, This I salute as “shrewd business” but consider to be morally indefensible. In the first place H.M.T. have nothing whatever to do with the American production. Their contractual option to present the play in America was not taken up any more than it was with any of the other plays above mentioned. On your own wise advice I am putting it under my own management—i.e., Charles and Ham in association with Roger Stevens and the Playwrights’ Company. In consideration of the fact that I have only agreed to play in it myself for twelve weeks in New York, we have been straining every nerve to keep the budget as low as possible, so that the Playwrights’ Company, if the play is a success, will at least get their money back. For you to receive 2 percent of the gross will make this impossible. Also I can see no valid reason whatever why you should ask for it. Nor, in justice, can I see why you should have, or expect, any part of the American subsidiary rights. We are doing all the work on the production while you are three thousand miles away contributing nothing. The fact that you told Charles personally that those were your terms was nothing to do with the contract signed between H.M.T. and me. This, dearest Bink, comes smartly under the heading of “Pulling a fast one” and, while you are perfectly at liberty to pull fast o
nes with Herman Levin et aland even the wretched John C. Wilson, you are NOT going to be permitted to do it with me. Your sole contribution to the American production so far has been agreeing to let Joyce come over, which after all is a personal issue between you and her and me. Apart from this, far from helping the play in America, you seem to be doing a great deal to hinder it.
I would like to call to your mind a few salient features of our “business” association over the last few years.
1. I agreed to accept only five per cent author's royalty until the production had a thousand pounds in the kitty. Why? Because you asked me to and said the play couldn't go on if I didn't. Was this true? If so, why? Two more questions on this. Was this shrewd business on your part to demand it? Answer. Yes. Was it shrewd business on my part? Answer. No.
2. I came to Dublin at my own expense and redirected the play from beginning to end. This was necessary, as it had been lovingly wifdirected and also, in the case of David Home and Peter Sallis, seriously miscast. If I had NOT been available to do what I did, I doubt whether the play would have survived as it has.
3. Re After the Ball, I spent weeks in the provinces, at my own expense, re-directing and re-organizing the entire production. Had I not done so, it would, I fear, have been a dire failure instead of the moderate success it was. Question. Would it have been more businesslike of me to have clamoured for half John and Bobbie's [Help-mann] director's fees or at least have demanded expenses? Answer. According to business ethics—Yes. According to my ethics—No.