by Noel Coward
Now I have scarlet hair, a thick moustache and a Glasgow accent—not very attractive.
Love,
ALEC
February 4th 1960
I'm told we are a big success in New York with Havana and that notices have been appreciably better and, of course, a triumph for you. I'm rather puzzled that Ernie Kovacs hasn't been appreciated more. Since starting this letter I hear that the picture has broken all records in both cinemas in N.Y. for its first week.
I'm thoroughly enjoying my present epic [directed by Ronald Neame], though I may be slitting my throat professionally at the same time. Johnnie Mills and I have both been called, recently, Box Office poison by Mr. Davis of the Rank Org. To solve billing problems we are thinking of being billed as POISON and POISON in TUNES OF GLORY. Or perhaps, more enigmatically, POISON and IVY in etc.
Noël had written earlier:
[?] August 1959
My dear Graham,
Now that our professional paths have at long last and irrevocably crossed, I feel a tiny celebration is in order. As you know, I have recently finished playing the role of Hawthorne in Our Man in Havana—an experience I must admit I thoroughly enjoyed. Not only was the part beautifully written in your finest Italian hand but it gave me the opportunity to evoke all the hapless, bumbling bureaucrats I stumbled over in the war years. You must have suffered the same fate yourself or even you could not conjure them up from the vasty deep.
Portrait of a man waiting to steal a film.
I very much fear that you and I got off to a sticky start all those years ago. You clearly thought my attitude to life was a little souffle-ish and I must confess I found yours occasionally al dente—but enough of this culinary argot. (You must forgive me but I have just discovered the joys of cooking—even if my nearest and dearest don't always share my enthusiasm for my own creations!)
Whether one agrees with some of your themes, you are without doubt one of the finest writers in the language we both share. You are also—rather more to my surprise and pleasure—one of the most entertaining companions, as I discovered when you and Catherine visited us in Jamaica …
So, my dear Graham, if He should give us a few more years— always supposing there is a He and you would know more about this than I—let us spend them separately and together, thumbing our respective noses at those who most deserve it.
Yrs. Ever
HAWTHORNE
CHAPTER 28
WINGS … AND SAILS
(1960-1961)
Waiting in the Wings,
Older than God,
On we plod,
Waiting, waiting, waiting in the Wings.
“WAITING IN THE WINGS,” FROM WAITING IN THE WINGS (1961)
Why do the wrong people travel, travel, travel,
When the right people stay back home?
What explains this mass mania
To leave Pennsylvania
And clack around like flocks of geese,
Demanding dry martinis on the Isles of Greece?
“WHY DO THE WRONG PEOPLE TRAVEL?” FROM SAIL AWAY (1961)
FOR NOëL, Waiting in the Wings was written from the heart. It took him back to his childhood visits with Violet to Edwardian musical comedy and those picture-postcard beauties: Lily Elsie, Violet Loraine, Gertie Millar.
But what happened when Time's winged chariot—no respecter of persons or legends—finally caught up with them? They would live in the memory of those who had seen and worshipped them, but they, too, would have their exits. In recent months alone he had lost an early idol, Madge Titheradge, and, well before her time, Kay Kendall. Perhaps the most shocking, because it was so unexpected, was the sudden death of Edwina Mountbatten, in February of that year. The Grim Reaper had to be kept in his place, and Waiting in the Wings was a statement of defiance.
Although Noël's legendary fictional ladies were literally “waiting in the wings” for their personal show to ring down the curtain in a retirement home he christened The Wings, they were determined to enjoy every moment they remained onstage.
As he often did, when he wanted a second opinion he valued, he sent the manuscript to Edna Ferber.
August 28th 1959
Montreux Palace
Montreux
Noël dear, Waiting In the Wings is a lovely, touching, and amusing play. I don't in the least think you were being pretentious when you said you wanted to set down this play as Chekhov did his plays— without tricks and without the observance of trite usage. Here they are, these women, life has finished with them, they have nothing to expect except the final performance. But I suppose that only high tragedy and low comedy can settle for those terms.
Dear boy, after I had talked with you on the telephone I thought that my suggestions were banal. The quick reconciliation between Lotta and May coming too early … The son rich rather than shabby-genteel … Another opportunity for May or Lotta, and failure … The possible appearance of a gushing gorgeous Nethersole … A young Doreen who is stage-struck … All these seemed not right. I know you rejected them at once. But I feel that this play is so good, its background and meaning and characters so dimensional and true and fresh that I want it to have one sustaining motive, a marching inevitability that isn't only death. Maybe it's Deirdre or Cora, the complainer, who might have a final go at it, and fail. It's Lotta who knows that practically every one of the girls living in The Wings has had a wonderful whirl of life, really, hundreds of times more amusing and chancey and exhilarating than all the many millions of everyday wife-and-mother women. The world owes them nothing, really, any more than it does me.
I'd like one big purple moment for them just the same. Still, I remember having seen the Russians in New York—this must have been literally decades ago—I think it was the company called the Moscow Arts Theatre in The Lower Depths, Certainly, I didn't know a syllable of Russian. The scene was a cellar or something. They stood or sat around and talked and talked. I don't recall that any terrific scene hit you between the eyes. But I do know that Lawrence Stallings and I came out of the theatre on that New York winter afternoon (it was a matinee) red-eyed from weeping.
So I'm prolly wrong and you're right.
I love you.
FERB
The play could so easily have been depressing—and, to be fair, there were those who found it so.
Ivy St. Helier, Noël's Manon from Bitter Sweet, was his first choice for Maud, but she wrote: “I beg of you not to be cross with me, but I find the subject depresses me and upsets me so much; I have an idea that you will understand how I feel and under those circumstances I would not be of any value to you as Maud … My love to you always.”
Helen Hayes also failed to see herself in the role Noël had in mind for her: “Lotta is not for me, alas. I'd do better as one of the aged soubrettes or Diedre! Lotta, it seems to me, would be a natural for Edith Evans or Kit [Katharine Cornell] or Lynn. Dammit, it makes me furious that you never write leading roles for the likes of me!”
But for anyone who, like Noël, remembered, the play was a celebration of the spirit that made the theater the Theater.
Binkie Beaumont decided that he did not want to produce it and, as Noël discovered later, tried to dissuade leading “senior” actresses, such as Edith Evans and Gladys Cooper, from appearing in it. He told Noël that they “hated” the play, when all too often it transpired that they had not even been shown the script. It was the nadir of Noël and Binkie's personal and professional relationship.
1961. Margaret (“Peggy”) Webster would direct Waiting in the Wings, while her companion, novelist Pamela Frankau, would acidly observe the backstage show.
Noël decided he wanted Margaret Webster to direct. He wrote to her that he was “convinced you will do play beautifully and truly glad you want to … wide open for discussions and suggestions. I see it as a Chekhovian lark.”
Hotel Wellington
7th Ave. & 55th St.
New York
February 7th 1960
I am most honoured that you—&/or they—think I could direct it, and I think so too!! At least, I really ought to be able to, or I should go home and take twelve lessons and wear an “L” [learner driver's] plate. Will you be around when it is done? I do hope you would.
I ought to be more coy about this, I guess. But I would love to do it and I'll try not to burst into tears very often … I should think we'll have to make a Dante-esque trip from L'Inferno to II Paradiso for the casting. (A Kafka-Coward play in this, with a cast consisting entirely of harps and dust-bins and two pianos in the pit.)
In a letter on the twenty-first Webster asks Noël to share with her his preliminary casting ideas. Already she has a few of her own:
I make only one stipulation—PLEASE NOT MARTITA [Hunt] AS ANYTHING!! She would wreck The Wings in no time flat! … The “straight lead” will be the trouble as always. How about Gwen [Ffrangcon-Davies]? She is that old, bless her, but will she be? One notion, which just may not have occurred to you—I'm sure all the rest have: I met Norah Blaney fairly recently … and she is a little duck! Don't know if she could “do” Maudie (lines, lines, lines??) but might be persuaded from retirement about 10 p.m. as Topsy. [In fact, Blaney played Maud.]
Anyway, if and when you have time, give me some of your notions and I will reciprocate with suitable thought taken. Am increasingly sure the cast and direction must be sharp—I mean for the comedy. The touching quality of the script cannot help coming through of itself, unless we are all terrible. It has everything in it but “O Come, all ye faithful” and there is an obvious cue for that!
Well into rehearsals, Webster discovers that directing a stage full of elderly ladies and gentlemen poses a set of problems over and above the usual.
55 Christchurch Hill
N.W.3.
July 25th
Dear Master,
My problem is complicated by the fact that no-one, but no-one (except Sybil [Thorndike], Lewis [Casson], Marie [Lohr] and Nora Nick [Nicholson]) ever has the smallest recollection as to where they went last time. Very occasionally they fasten triumphantly on a move, or occupation, that belongs to a quite different scene. Otherwise they float about with expressions of agonized apprehension until the moment when they know I shall say to them “NO, dear, that was where you picked up the glass and went to the piano—remember?” Maidie [Andrews] and Norah B. haven't a clue throughout; and of course Mary C [Clare] isn't really with us at all. These, however, are minor troubles, understandable because it IS a very confusing play, with so many scenes following a pattern that is the same-only-different, and further befogged by having been changed around after the first time it was set. It adds up to some rather unequal cookery. The duologue scenes are a bit over-cooked, the general scenes still haven't begun to brown. You will find, I think, an almost total lack of tempo, except in spasms. It will come with security. I hope.
Mary Clare is a serious worry [She was the original Jane Marryot in Cavalcade]—and I think also a serious tragedy. She is like one of those pieces of dead coal that you find in the grate the next morning. But she is also, sometimes, quite pixie! Not having uttered one of her own lines for two hours, she will suddenly come up with a splendid sentence belonging to someone else and pipe up from left field in a firm, bright voice, leaving the real speaker stupefied. Lewis has undertaken to help her; and they sit in corners going over the lines in voices of increasing volume until no-one else can hear themselves think. I am going over every one of her lines today, allocating each of the important ones to someone else! I have also arranged—and she is charmed with this—that in each scene she shall carry a brightly coloured paper-back thriller, inside which shall be—guess what! Edith Day is perfectly divine with her and steers her around all she can. Nevertheless it's a worry. BUT she brings on with her a sort of amiable ruined wreckage feeling which is a more authentic proof of The Wings than anything else that happens.
The new end works miracles. You were a wonder-boy to do it so quickly and so beautifully. It's very good for both Sybil and Marie and also for Topsy herself. I haven't staged the very end quite right and I'm not sure why. I shall find out or you will tell me. The set may help—no, it won't! Its worst disadvantage is that the hall-entrance has now retreated into a corner and I have to run a shuttle service to get people into the scene. The Topsy entrance is made extremely difficult in consequence. But there's something else I've missed somewhere. I shall need your help on the concert-party scene also! And, of course, your judgement and “eye” throughout. Sybil is quite beautiful; literally and figuratively. I think of what some critic said of [David] Garrick: “He usually perceives the finest attitudes of things.” Lewis made a couple of IDIOTIC suggestions yesterday, bless him, about the last scene. I pray she will not be shaken by them. I don't think so. Marie tends to be very slow and lacking variety. I am trying to coax her into this. She's very amiable—I shall be to blame if she doesn't eventually play it very well.
We shall not have been long enough in a theatre by the time you come to have achieved much perspective; and it will be our first day with the set. So I don't know how well you will be able to see the play. I am inclined to think it IS—as I hoped—coming out far less “sad” than most of its readers supposed; though it will be—should be— floods of tears by N. Coward in the places designated. We must beware of tea-pot jokes, even before the audience tells us. I truly think it is very well cast; and the shortcomings will be the director's—curable by the author, because this is a willing creature. It has really been quite enjoyable so far! Graham is a great comfort, on and off the stage, and everyone is “too kind”. Maybe we need some Magesterial vinegar. If so, we'll get it.
Yours in fortitude,
PEGGY
All in all, though, she felt encouraged. “It has ceased to be a play, it has become a group of lives.”
•
WITH BINKIE OUT of the picture and other mainstream managements singularly disinterested, the project seemed to be saved by the newly formed personal and professional partnership of Michael Redgrave and American producer Fred Sadoff.
It was a less than ideal combination. Sadoff was inclined to be doctrinaire, and Redgrave, indecisive. Neither was truly experienced in this area of the theater, but since they were now “management,” as the weeks went by the decibel level of their advice increased and was often contradictory and confusing to all concerned.
Things came to a head one evening over dinner at the Brompton Grill (June 15, 1960). Novelist Pamela Frankau, Margaret Webster's partner, was there to witness it and later wrote a piece of verse in the best (pastiche) tradition of Rudyard Kipling and Robert Service, those chroniclers of British Empire and derring-do:
An informal production meeting at Chalet Coward. Noël, Graham (and friend), and Wings producers, American Fred Sadoff and Michael Redgrave.
THE BALLAD OF THE BROMPTON GRILL
BY
PAMELA KIPLING SERVICE
Know ye the Chelsea Embankment, when the evening sunshine thins
On the gently slipping river? Well, that's where my story begins
With laughter and talk and music and a sequence of double gins,
(Set fair you'd say, with the Master's play and Webster's plan of the set?
Well, shut your damn silly trap, lad, you haven't heard anything yet),
Sadoff the sloe-eyed slave-boy, nipped out of the room for a pee
Or that's what the Master and Webster thought, though I didn't quite agree.
He left his drink on the piano top; who finished it? Frankly, me.
And then it was time to be going. The Master put on his hat
An elegant little number, green as the eyes of a cat.
And we ran to the Rolls that was waiting, outside the Chelsea flat.
All of us gay and good humoured; no baby waving its rattle
Could match us four in cosiness as we rode out—to battle.
Certainly we were hungry, possibly we were high
But the threat of a d
arkening cloud came up across my psychic sky
“Could we do with another drink?” I asked, and the Master answered “Aye”,
Pass me that box of Band-aids, lad, my wounds are bleeding still
As I fear they may be for many a day from the fight at the Brompton Grill,
You know the place?… You don't, lad? Well, if you're feeling exploratory
Go West from Harrods or Frasers and you'll find it facing the Oratory
At least you'll see where it used to be; the windows are boarded still
With a trace of dried blood on the lintel, lad, from the fight at the Brompton Grill.
“Four double dry martinis!” The Master's voice was low,
Clipped and keen and courteous, the voice that waiters know,
(Andhe brought them in under an hour, lad, which only goes to show)
I will not mention the melon. I shall not speak of the steak
Nor sing the praise of the sauce Bearnaise, for the storm was about to break.
Over the sheen of the strawberries, the shadow was coming near
When Sadoff, the sloe-eyed slave-boy, said “Michael will join us here.”
Never a word spoke Webster. The Master gave no sign
Though I felt the point of his elbow pressing the point of mine
And we loosened our swords in their scabbards, lad, and dressed our battle line.
Then out of the night, with his pipe in his mouth and the look of a priggish preacher
(That he'doverdone in A Touch of the Sun, playing that damned school teacher)