by Noel Coward
To return, therefore to Nude With Violin, Is it shrewd business for you as the London management to try and get all you can get? Answer. Certainly, if you can count on me and my management being bloody fools enough to let you get away with it. But is it, dear Bink, quite as good business as it sounds when dealing with someone like me? The answer to this is very definitely—No. I resent being made a monkey of and I also resent, very deeply, being taken for granted, which brings me to the most important point of this letter—the clou, as we say in France. This clou is our own personal relationship. To me this is far more important than any contractual obligations in the world and I suspect, in your deep heart, that it is to you, too. Ideally I know our personal feelings and our business dealings should be kept in separate compartments but it is no good ideally speaking. In our case the two are inextricably mixed. If you have any legal or contractual right to demand two per cent of the gross and a share of the subsidiary rights, you shall, of course, have them. Even so, I would doubt the wisdom of your demand in the existing circumstances. Please think carefully over all this. I am uneasy in my mind and in my heart as well.
Fondest love.
He might well have recalled Marlene's verdict on Binkie: “Noël still remains the only homosexual you can trust.”
Nude opened on November 14.
404 East 55 th Street
November 25th 1957
Darling Darling Lorniebubs,
I know you understand about me not having written before because things really have been violently hectic. However, now all is calmer. In spite of the three bad notices for the play, I have made a really triumphant personal success and we played last week to just under $32,000 which, considering the capacity of the Belasco, is just over $33,000, is jolly good. We have an $80,000 advance, so whatever happens the backers will get their money back. The public fall about in the aisles and it goes like a bomb.
Binkie came on Saturday night and seemed genuinely highly delighted, as well he might, as he's getting 1% to which he's entirely unentitled. I am fairly angry with him in my inside heart, he could have helped so much over Little Lad and hasn't lifted a finger. Also I think he behaved very badly to the Boys [Charles Russell and Lance Hamilton] over the production, trying to grab all he could and then never had the decency to send them a wire on the first night, which would have meant a great deal to them. I am being as sweet to him as always and I don't think he suspects, as yet, that there are some little rumblings of discontent going on in my inside. This will probably dawn on him later, when I write a new comedy for the London Theatre and he discovers that H.M. Tennent will not be allowed to present the play unless I get 12% as author and 2% as director and retain all other rights! And if he doesn't care for this, the play will be presented by Lance Hamilton and Charles Russell. The cast here really is excellent and very sweet as well, which makes a very happy and efficient ship.
Really there is nothing to grumble about except the edge being taken off the initial success by the three leading critics. Fortunately I have all the leading columnists on my side including Elsa Maxwell who, I must say, really did us proud by flying onto TV the night after we opened and quoting all the best lines and raving and roaring. I am quite definitely the Belle of the Ball and everybody is being quite exhaustingly sweet to me.
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXMASTER
Three days later, he wrote to Gladys:
Noël takes over the role of the suave Sebastien but with only moderate success. It was his farewell Broadway performance. The young American reporter, Clinton Preminger, Jr., was played by William Traylor, with whom Noël allegedly had a late-life fling.
Oh dear, I did hope for better from Mr. Kerr of the Tribune—Brooks Atkinson is well known to be gaga anyway—but it's no use, and it has only lately dawned on me that perhaps they are all so allergic to comedy on account of being utterly without a grain of humour themselves. Just try to think of one critic with a sense of humour or fun and, of course, there isn't such a thing. Also, of course, in Nude I do make fun of absolutely everything, including critics—no wonder they don't care for it. The rest of the papers and especially the out of town ones have been much less beastly, but there is no getting away from the fact that the Times and Tribune are powerful, so we are playing to slightly under capacity. However, the audiences adore it and raise the roof each night, so that's all right.
I personally am thoroughly enjoying every moment and I wish, I wish you could see me at it in my crew-cut wig and all. The cast is jolly sweet, so we are all happy as bees, and the only real trouble we had was over Sally Cooper. She played it exactly like a wardress, and exuded a curiously malevolent quality which seriously affected the family scenes, and in the end she had to go. This, of course, was all awful, with Gladys [Cooper] cabling from the coast, and so I let her go without finishing her week and played with the understudy for three performances, the latter a lady who uses her arms and hands a great deal more than even I do, so that from the front we looked as though we were doing a particularly arduous course in semaphore.
Apart from this, all has been plain sailing, and on the whole, great fun.
So Binkie got his i percent—which was probably what he realistically hoped for when asking for 2 percent—but at the cost of Noël's friendship and trust.
It turned out to be 1 percent of not very much, because the U.S. production was a distinct disappointment, despite Noël's early upbeat reports. New York audiences were apathetic about the play and found its subject matter unappealing. Week by week the auditorium took on the appearance of a man with a receding hairline, as only the seats in the middle of the rows were occupied. He found the experience distinctly humiliating and decided on a radical solution. On January 14 he wrote to Lorn from New York:
Nude is only just doing all right. We are out on our own now with no more theatre parties and only a medium advance, so I intend to hurry up with Present Laughter and pop it on here alternately with Nude for the last two weeks. This, in addition to pepping up the business, will give me the chance to get PL. nice and smooth for our opening in San Francisco. The news that I am doing this broke last night and this morning Jack telephoned and said “Well, I've heard of people using New Haven for a try-out before but New York, never.” So far I am very pleased with the cast, Mona [Washbourne] is going to be excellent as Monica and Joycie better than ever as Liz. The unknown quantity so far is Eva Gabor as Joanna—she doesn't get here till Thursday, but everyone says she is a dear to work with and will certainly look lovely.
Present Laughter came to his rescue once again, and the succeeding tour to San Francisco and Los Angeles enabled him to end the engagement to appreciative audiences.
It turned out to be his farewell to the American stage.
CHAPTER 26
A DIFFERENT SKY …
AND A LOOK AT LULU
(1958-1959)
Noël takes possession of his new Swiss home.
A different sky,
New worlds to gaze upon,
The strange enchantment of an unfamiliar shore,
One more goodbye,
One more illusion gone,
Just cut your losses
And begin once more.
“SAIL AWAY,” FROM SAIL AWAY (196 1)
BACK IN JAMAICA, Noël took the time to review his life. What did he want to do and where did he want to do it? Bermuda, he had decided by now, was definitely not for him. Even in his first year there he had confided to Lorn, “Bermuda is all right, it's lovely in the summer, as indeed are several other places but home is where the heart is and this is where mine is—Jamaica.” Two years later he wasn't even sure of that any longer. “Firefly is still lovely but the island shows more definite signs of being ruined every time I come. I know I have had the best of it … I am thinking less and less about here and more and more about Geneva. I think I need that home badly.”
He had already taken a quick trip round the Caribbean but found nothing that attracted him more than Jamaica.
/> To Jack:
I have had a hectic ten days and have explored exhaustively Tobago and Grenada and would rather have a dear little truck run over my head than live in either of them. They are too small and everybody knows everybody else's business and, although they are very beautiful, I certainly found nothing lovelier than the view of Port Maria bay that I am looking at at this moment.
Perhaps Europe was the answer: “My brain works more clearly out of a warm climate.”
He spent most of that summer on the Riviera with Edward Molyneux, at Molyneux's house in Biot, and with Maugham in Cap Ferrat, pondering his different options. To prove that his brain was indeed working clearly, he also found the time to adapt an old farce by Georges Feydeau (1862—1921), Occupe-toi d'Amelie, as Look After Lulu,
By the time he returned to Bermuda in September, his mind was made up. Europe, certainly, but France was too expensive. “You will be interested to hear,” he wrote to Lorn on October 30, “that from January 1st onwards I shall be a resident of Geneva. Won't that be nice? And I shall be able to get as many roubles and yen and escuardos and pesetas as I need.”
Chalet Coward, Les Avants, Switzerland. Noël briefly flirted with the idea of calling it “Shilly Chalet,” but the locals solved the problem for him. “Chalet Covar” it was and is.
In January 1959, he and Coley took off on a determined Swiss house hunt, but it was not to be in Geneva that they found Shangri-la. Symbolically their quest ended in the little village of Les Avants, high in the mountains behind Montreux. The price was right, but there was much to be done to turn the place into Chalet Coward. Coley took charge of that. In late June he reported that the Petries (the previous owners) had “made a very good, very clean getaway and I took over in brilliant sunshine.”
The decision had now been made: Jamaica and Les Avants. Creative life could go on.
•
AND GO ON it certainly did.
There was Lulu—intended for Shirley MacLaine, then Carol Channing, with Vivien Leigh sulking in the wings feeling that she should have been offered the Broadway part, which finally went to a then unknown called Tammy Grimes, whom Noël had happened to see in cabaret.
There was also an embryonic new musical with the working title of Later Than Spring, which was to be the further adventures of that born-again hedonist widow Mrs. Wentworth Brewster (heroine of his song “The Bar on the Piccola Marina”).
There was a new play about a home for retired actresses that was nagging to be written. He called it Waiting in the Wings.
And ever present was “the novel,” Pomp and Circumstance, a Samolan-set trifle that had been evolving so long it rivaled the gestation period of a small elephant. “My novel is so light,” he wrote to his U.S. publisher, Doubleday, “that you will have difficulty capturing it between hard covers.”
The sitting room of Chalet Coward, as sketched by designer/choreographer/director Joe Layton.
And, as if that weren't enough, he was also writing the scenario and the music for his one and only ballet, London Morning—for Anton Dolin's London Festival Ballet.
Back in March (Noël told Lornie):
I had to do a two hour Television debate {Small World] with Ed Mur-row and James Thurber in New York and Siobahn McKenna [sic] in Dublin! It is a fascinating programme and I had promised to do it. Thurber was dull, McKenna excellent and I was fairly chipper when I got going … I cannot understand this white man's magic but it certainly is remarkable that three people can chat to each other and be seen and heard doing it with a distance of thousands of miles between them. Siobahn at one point got a little hot under the collar about the British but I silenced her by saying that my father had always said that veal was unreliable and that this was how I felt about the Irish except that they had more charm. Actually, it was quite fun.
On that same visit to New York, Look After Lulu had opened at the Henry Miller Theatre. Noël reported to Lornie:
Cyril [Ritchard] has done an excellent production of Lulu, excellent visually and full of movement but, as usual, he had done his best to swamp the lines. This I have remedied to a certain extent, but on the whole, although it has a certain style, it is, I fear, basically common, although less so than I expected. Everything went smoothly and there were no dramas. Cecil [Beaton, who had designed the production] laboured beautifully and his contribution is superb.
Neither Tammy nor Roddy [MacDowall] quite came off. She made a definite success but didn't set the town on fire. He is a fine actor but lacks star quality. The success was Polly Rowles as Claire and David Hurst, a divine actor … George Baker who looks fine and plays it clearly and well. Binkie said he made Roddy look like an understudy. This is a slight exaggeration. He is a stronger Teddy [Edward] Woodward sort of actor and oh dear, he has HEIGHT. What a difference that makes! I am glad he got away with it because apparently Cyril was fairly odious to him at rehearsals and George hates his guts for ever and a day.
The first night performance was good and looked like a hit but the dear critics went to town. They dealt it severe blows but it is not quite done for, which in New York is surprising. I have no doubt of it whatsoever for London. I think temperamental, drunk or sober or barmy, we need Vivien or at least a big star. This experiment didn't quite come off. However, it is pressing on for the moment.
The show ran for only thirty-nine performances. Nonetheless, Noël made one new lifelong friend in the production, who would subsequently prove to be important in the Coward canon: Tammy Grimes.
April 16th 1962
I am sitting here looking at your photograph in Boston after one of those Bostonian matinees and I just thought “Dearest Noël” (to myself I said)—he got me into all this being a “star” business and then I thought Time—that word time is so precious and there's so much I have to learn and then I thought “I shall write to this beautiful, kind and oh-so-witty sir and tell him that I love him very much.”
TG
•
QUITE APART from his own efforts, others were anxious to adapt his material.
Cicely Courtneidge (1893—1980) had long been a beloved actress/ comedienne on the English stage. Noël had appeared with her under the direction of her father, producer Robert Courtneidge, in the 1915 The Light Blues, She now worked exclusively with her husband, Jack Hulbert (1892—1978), and had a suggestion to make.
Noël wrote to Lorn:
Cis Courtneidge has written a sweet letter saying that she wants to do a musical of Hay Fever for herself and Jack. This I really do think is a good idea and I've written and told her so. I've also told her that I cannot undertake it myself, as I am up to my eyes for months to come but have suggested Sandy Wilson. [Wilson had made his name and won Noël's approval with the 1953 The Boy Friend.} This is just to keep you au courant, as Lynn Fontanne always says. Personally I always say “Fuck,” because I find it more soothing.
The project never came to anything.
And for some time Evelyn Laye had been nagging Noël into letting her do the same thing with The Marquise, At one point, out of sheer exhaustion, he gave in, but when the ill-conceived and doomed enterprise had dragged its way around the English provinces for a while, he called a firm halt. No, they most certainly could not bring it into town.
Ritz Hotel
Piccadilly, W. 1.
29th July 1959
Dearest Boo,
Thank you for your very sweet letter and I am terribly glad you whisked out some of the tricks … Which brings me with a rush to the unpleasant part of this letter.
Honestly, darling, I do not want you to do a musical of The Marquise, or indeed a musical of any sort because really and truly and as a loving old friend I must tell you that your voice is not up to it. This may sound crude and cruel but I think you know me well enough to know it is not intended to be—merely to be constructive and helpful. Your looks are enchanting and you are developing into a delightful comedienne (apart from those tricks), but we must face the fact that singing voices fade with the
years. I know that you did not intend to sing much in The Marquise, but the whole point of a musical of that sort should be that the leading lady sings the principal melodies and The Marquise in particular requires more operetta treatment than musical comedy treatment and even though you might get away with a couple of point numbers and play it charmingly, I still feel that “Eloise” should be sung.
I have been thinking this over very carefully and been wondering how to explain to you what I felt and I truly feel that from now onwards you should play high comedy without music. Please forgive me, dear, if this letter has hurt your feelings in any way but I am too fond of you to evade issues.
My fondest love to you, as always,
Noël
He now found himself facing another of his theatrical betes noires—the theatrical husband. After her divorce from Sonnie Hale, Laye had married actor Frank Lawton. Lawton had never really made the grade professionally but decided his mission was to be his wife's standard-bearer. He wrote an impassioned letter of complaint in which he claimed Noël had said “some cruel things which neither of us can ever forget.”
Noël wrote to Lornie:
Really, I can't believe Frankie's letter. I expect she made a false scene, wept, and made him write it. He's an idiotic, talentless, henpecked little worm anyway. I think the only thing to do is ignore it but, if you do happen to see either of them, for God's sake make it clear that it was not a cruel letter but, in fact, a very gentle and kind one, which was a bloody sight more than they deserved after vulgarizing The Marquise as they did. Actually, if they neither of them speak to me again, I couldn't care less; they're both dull and can neither of them act. If she really thinks that letter cruel, she's a conceited cunt but alas, the world is full of conceited cunts …