A new world, serious, and rather frightened, took its place, a world that looked on Mr Coward’s flippancy with suspicion. But Mr Coward was not dismayed. The first world fell at Mr Coward’s feet: the second he has had deliberately to conquer.
Sunday Times, 14 September 1952
THE post-war years were as turbulent as those they succeeded. The election of a Labour government exemplified the changing nature of British life, and notions of class were challenged as ‘the era of the working man’ dawned, the death knell for the world between the wars which Coward represented. This was a period of stress for him; it seemed that early success had trapped him under the sediment of his youthful triumphs, from which it was hard to emerge. Inspiration was not as forthcoming as it had been for the enfant terrible, now a middle-aged stalwart of the status quo. A playwright’s fortunes are all too visible, and the ensuing years challenged Coward’s conception of himself, as his audience began to move away from the values his plays represented. Perhaps it is true, as some said, that Coward had done his best work by the time he wrote Blithe Spirit in 1941, the rest of his career being one long ‘conjuring trick’. To those who watched from the wings, the illusion (seemingly done by mirrors and sleight-of-hand) was painfully achieved.
Coward often said that when he was happy professionally, his private life was sure to suffer; and vice versa. If this was true – and the failure of Sigh No More indicated a downturn in his theatrical fortunes – the Fates augured well for his new relationship.
Graham Philip Payn was born on 25 April 1918, at Pietermaritzburg in Natal, South Africa. His father, Philip Francis Payn, known as Frank, and his mother, Ellen Fleming Graham, known professionally as Sybil Graham, had met as children in South Africa. They married, only to divorce in 1926; Frank Payn, an electrical engineer, continued to support the family, but Graham saw little of him. His mother went to Germany to have her voice trained, and subsequently went into partnership with a tenor, Joel Myerson, to tour Australia. But the tour was cancelled and Myerson abandoned Sybil, who had to work as a barmaid to get back to South Africa. Meanwhile Graham was brought up by various relatives in Pietermaritzburg. It was not a happy childhood, as Payn recalls, ‘I was always with aunts and uncles who didn’t really want me. I was only with my mother briefly, and then she was more like a manager than someone giving me mother-love.’ But when he moved to Johannesburg, he discovered a certain aptitude for singing, and on his mother’s return in 1930 they agreed to go to England to try their luck. They found lodgings in Kilburn, where the local school authorities were remarkably understanding when his mother took him off on auditions, one of which was for Words and Music in 1932, when he first met Noel.
Payn had already made his London stage debut as Curly in Peter Pan in December 1931 and, having worked with Noel Coward, he began to get other work. He trained at the Italia Conti School and soon found parts which suited his talents; in August 1939 he was in Sitting Pretty at the Prince’s Theatre; in the spring of 1940 and of 1941, he scored a modest but notable success in Up and Doing at the Saville Theatre. Soon the British Theatre Yearbook would be calling him ‘our leading jeune premier’, who ‘sang and danced delightfully’. Payn could also boast of being an early television performer, appearing in BBC variety shows televised from Alexandra Palace. When war broke out, he enlisted, but was invalided out of the army with a hernia. He fell back on his theatrical talents to entertain the troops in revues; it was not an easy occupation; as he says, ‘Soldiers would immediately suspect me, and blow me kisses – but I hit ’em with “Alexander’s Ragtime Band”.’
Coward had kept track of Payn’s career since Words and Music, seeing such revues as Up and Doing, which featured ‘London Pride’, and had gone round to Graham’s dressing-room to compliment him on his performance. In April 1944 Payn was appearing in The Lilac Domino, and invited Coward and Lorn Loraine to the first night. They appeared during the second interval. ‘What has happened between then and now?’ demanded Noel, referring to the previous revue. ‘How could you have learned such awful habits? You were terrible!’ ‘I thought, “Fuck him”,’ recalls Payn, ‘and got on with the show. But he was right. I was doing all this “cheerful chappie” stuff, grinning stupidly with a glass of champagne and a girl on each arm.’
Prior to meeting Coward, Payn had not had a homosexual relationship. He had been engaged to a girl in Wimbledon, and affairs with chorus girls had proved unsatisfactory. ‘After the third abortion – and they cost £75 in those days – I decided I’d had enough.’ His mother encouraged the friendship with Coward: ‘She didn’t mind about the homosexual stuff at all’, partly because of her theatre background, partly (one suspects) because she saw it as a route to the top for her son. But for Graham, it was real affection: ‘I hadn’t had that love from my parents, so when Noel gave me it I appreciated it more.’ Coward was avuncular – Noel called himself ‘Daddy’, and Payn, ‘Little Lad’. He saw in Graham a version of his youthful self, and sought to encourage his new friend’s theatrical ambition.
At first, the homosexual world in which Coward moved seemed strange. There were jealousies and old scores to settle; Noel’s ex-boyfriends disliked Payn, partly because he was not a ‘proper’ homosexual, and was suspected of gold-digging; they spread rumours about his being married. In truth, Coward and Payn had an open relationship from the start, which contributed to their deeper loyalty as friends and the longevity of their partnership. ‘Noel and I played around – he had his swingabouts, and I had mine’, Payn observes, though all subsequent relationships were with men. What was different was that Graham refused to recognise jealousy, so that the old tortures Coward had experienced with Jack Wilson and others fell away. ‘All his other chums had made him jealous, they knew how to make him jealous – Jack Wilson, Louis Hayward, that awful character actor, Alan Webb.’
It is easy to see Payn’s appeal: a handsome face with a firm jaw and high cheekbones; a fresh appearance, with dark curly hair and a good figure, slim without being slight; a soft voice and an acquiescent manner. He had little of the obvious femininity paraded by Noel’s more flamboyant homosexual friends, and was a presentable companion with a particular glamour. William Marchant noticed this when he met the two lovers backstage at South Pacific: ‘With hair as shiny as wet coal, a winning smile and ruddy complexion, he brought something of the outdoors into the overheated dressing room. He kissed [Mary] Martin as if it were the fadeout of a particularly romantic film.’
Yet some doubted whether the affair would last. ‘Nobody ever lasted more than three months with him’, says Lister. ‘Lornie and I used to dread when the last week or two was coming because it would all die down, and there’d be a space before somebody else would come along. It went on and on like that, year after year. Until Graham Payn . . .’ Pat Frere saw it as a ‘coup de foudre . . . Everyone [was] rather surprised . . . he didn’t seem quite Noel’s genre. But . . . it worked wonderfully – Graham and Coley and Noel, a happy triangle – absolutely extraordinary.’ Dickie Fellowes-Gordon maintained that ‘the great grand passion didn’t last too long. After that they just became two slaves, Graham and Coley. Wherever Noel went, they went too, as kind of attendants. But in the beginning he was absolutely [stricken] – I’ve never seen anything like it. The Jack Wilson thing was nothing compared to that.’
Unlike Wilson, when Payn was introduced to Coward’s intimate friends, he was accepted easily; Cole Lesley, who had spent most of the war stationed near Oxford, accepted the newcomer with apparent equanimity. ‘He was quick and intelligent,’ Lesley wrote, ‘although his IQ as such was not spectacularly high.’ There was no braggadocio about Noel’s new love, and there was true love between them. Coward told Vivian Matalon ‘that he wrote “Matelot” [from Sigh No More] for Graham Payn, and he played [it] to him . . . He finished playing the song, and Graham burst into tears and said “I love you” and Noel said “And that was the point where I fell in love with Graham.”
*
The new spirit of romance in Coward’s life was reflected in his latest project. If In Which We Serve was his tribute to the the war efforts of the armed services, Brief Encounter (based on ‘Still Life’ from Tonight at 8.30) was his homage to the phlegmatic qualities of the British which Noel perceived the war to have defended. It was a middle-class version of the world he had examined in This Happy Breed, and a rearguard action against encroaching change.
Brief Encounter dealt with a near-scandalous theme for its time; indeed, Cineguild were apprehensive about the film being passed by the British Board of Film Censors. The story reflected problems faced by couples often separated for long periods during wartime, and Brief Encounter was ‘the first film which dealt with middle-aged love outside the confines of marriage’, wrote the film historian James Robertson. ‘Duties and responsibilities to others ultimately triumph over sexual desire and emotion, but had the ending been otherwise, the BBFC might not have been so tolerant . . .’ As with earlier Coward works, the film escaped censorship because of its moral resolution; it was passed uncut in September 1945.
To be able to make the film at all required some convoluted deals. MGM had acquired all the rights to Tonight at 8.30 in 1938, which they stockpiled. The producer Sydney Box persuaded MGM to sell him the rights, and thereafter sold them, singly, to the Rank Organisation, obliging Cineguild to pay Rank £60,000 for the right to perform a piece which their screenwriter had already written. The film would cost £270,000 (of which £1000 went to Celia Johnson, and £500 to her costar, Trevor Howard) – no mean budget at the time.
The scenario was written by Havelock-Allan, Neame and Lean, who claimed the film’s success was due to ‘luck, but you won’t have any luck if you haven’t got a good script. Luckily, Noel proved to be very good at adapting his plays to the screen. We all worked with him, of course, [but] the dialogue was always his.’ Havelock-Allan recalls that ‘by the time we got to shooting, Noel was in India . . . so we would cable him, to say “Look, we’ve decided to send them rowing. We need a little more dialogue . . . “He cabled back saying “I’m sending you a minute and forty seconds. If you really mean a minute, take out the following words . . . “We mapped out what [the couple] should do, and occasionally said to him, “Should they do this?” Curiously enough, he wanted them to go to a cinema so that they could say when they came out, “It was a terribly bad film. It nearly always is.” ’1
Brief Encounter is unimaginable without Celia Johnson as Laura. Her ‘ordinary’ features – huge eyes and sculptured bone structure – and essential Englishness represent the romantic spirit of the film; apparent serenity, sentiment without mawkishness. Similarly, Trevor Howard’s plain good looks and diffident manner give an edge of realism to Alec. The Cineguild team had seen Howard in Rattigan’s French Without Tears; the rushes for The Way to the Stars (made in the same studios) convinced them that Howard was perfect for the part. But it is not only the lead roles which make the film work. Joyce Carey, as Myrtle, manager of the station buffet, is described as ‘reasonably jaunty except on those occasions when a strong sense of refinement gets the better of her’. One of the crew watched Carey pour tea daintily into the buffet cups. ‘Not like that’, he told her, showing her the professional ‘caff’ method, swooshing the beverage across the cups without stopping. Carey’s extraordinary Cockney-cum-genteel accent is a comic joy of the film. ‘I don’t know to what breed you refer’, she says to her fiancé on the subject of dogs; and famously cries, ‘There go me Banburys’, as her cakes are knocked to the buffet floor.
The symmetry of Brief Encounter’s plot, beginning and ending at the station,2 reflects the orderliness of its setting (in which anarchy threatens). We are ostensibly in the Midlands, but the accents, surroundings and characters are indisputably Home Counties. All the details of suburban England are present: the Boots lending library, the Kardomah Café, the cinema matinees – Betjeman country, overlaid with Coward’s fantasy romance and demanding mores: duty and discipline, the pull of emotion and one’s place in the scheme of things. Laura’s brief encounter is an escape from suburbia, just as Coward’s escape from his suburban origins was a considerable dynamic in his life and work. He was equivocal about his origins. To acknowledge their humbleness indicated how far he had come, but he found the values they represented claustrophobic and hypocritical. In Brief Encounter, he subtly blames British inhibitions for the doomed affair. ‘Do you know, I believe we should all behave quite differently if we lived in a warm, sunny climate all the time’, says Laura. ‘We shouldn’t be so withdrawn and shy and difficult.’
The film is suffused with restrained emotion, an atmosphere underlined by the soundtrack, from the grand passion of Rachmaninov’s second piano concerto to a plaintive barrel organ playing ‘Let the Great Big World Keep Turning’, evoking once again Coward’s dictum from Private Lives, ‘Strange how potent cheap music can be.’ Even when uttered for the first time, the phrase must have sounded familiar. Laura’s narration – her confession to her husband – is wistful and disembodied. ‘The thing I like best about Brief Encounter’, Noel commented later, ‘is that the love scene is played against the words . . . He’s a doctor and talks about preventative medicine and the different diseases one gets, and all the time he’s looking at her. And then she says, “you suddenly look much younger” – which cuts right through and forces them back to ordinary dialogue.’
Initially, public reaction to the film was worrying. David Lean showed it in Rochester (while making Great Expectations on location), where a rough crowd laughed at the love scenes, and groaned ‘Isn’t ‘e ever goin’ to ‘ave it orf with ‘er?’ But it received excellent notices when it opened at the New Gallery on 26 November 1945. Trevor Howard was unaccountably not invited, and had to go as his agent’s guest; Noel failed to recognise his leading man, and had to be introduced to him by Celia Johnson. However, Howard was made into an instant star by the film, and Brief Encounter went on to win the Prix Internationale de Critique at Cannes in 1946, as well as an Oscar nomination.3 Fifty years later, it is seldom off cinema or television screens.
*
As peace settled uneasily over the country, Coward surveyed the war and its effect on his life. When Novello (whose spirit was supposedly broken by his imprisonment for flouting petrol restrictions) told Coward ‘how he evaded fire-watching and flew to the shelter whenever danger threatened’, the incident sparked off deep-seated feelings in Coward. Novello and Bobbie Andrews ‘and their selfish, pathetic triviality’ revived his emotional witness to war, his hospital visits, his ‘service’ with the navy. ‘I must hang on to those moments or I shall not have survived the war.’
It was difficult to be optimistic. Goldenhurst was empty and neglected and Britain seemed to feel the same way, with Churchill having resigned and the Labour Party (whom Noel called ‘a shoddy lot of careerists’) in power. All his efforts during the war seemed as nothing, although he was amused to hear his name had been found in the ‘Black Book’ issued in Germany in readiness for invasion in 1940. Rebecca West was listed, as were Churchill and the high and mighty of British politics and society. ‘My dear,’ wrote West, ‘the people we should have been seen dead with!’ The feeling of futility prompted Coward to debate remaining in Britain; but for the moment, he lost himself in work on Sigh No More. Rehearsals went bumpily, brightened by the occasional flash of inspiration; Coward took to his bed early ‘with a new idea for a song for Graham . . . called “Matelot” ’. Hinting at a return to pre-war form, the revue had some good Coward numbers, particularly ‘I Wonder What Happened to Him?’, a skit on colonial rule in India with near-to-the-knuckle lyrics:
D’you remember young Phipps
Who had very large hips
And whose waist was excessively slim?
Well, it seems that some doctor in Grosvenor Square
Gave him hormone injections for growing his hair
And he grew something here, and he grew something there.
I wonder what happened to her – him?
Sigh No More opened in Manchester on 11 July. Seeing the show three weeks later, Coward was depressed; Cyril Ritchard and Madge Elliott were spoiling it with ‘raucous vulgarity’. They were duly told off, and hasty improvements made for the London opening on 22 August, when Grenfell and Payn were hits, and the notices were ‘good for box-office but patronising for me’, Noel noted. The critical reaction was indicative of Coward’s profile in the new, post-war period. The Times was disconcerted by its lack of a definite style, and in the British Theatre Yearbook, Peter Noble wrote that the revue ‘lacked wit, contained not one clever sketch, was wholly pre-war and quite unreal, had at least one scene which was in questionable taste, lacked cohesion and was overlong’. Noble asked, ‘has the playwright reached a turning point?’ He acknowledged Coward as an institution, but attacked his work of recent years, particularly on political grounds. This Happy Breed lacked ‘any perception as to the real lives of the common people . . . Mr Coward does not understand the working class and . . . in any case, he dislikes them intensely.’ Noble referred to Sigh No More’s ‘The Burchells of Battersea Rise’:
We may find if we swallow the Socialist bait
That a simple head cold is controlled by the State,
Though we know Winston Churchill is wise
And we’d love him to win the election again,
If he’s forced to say ‘Yes’
To the Beaverbrook press
There’ll be loud animal cries
From the Burchells of Battersea Rise.
Coward stood ‘for all the things which the war has brought to an end. What will he do in the new world which we are now trying to build from the ruins of the old?’
Sigh No More’s fate made Noble’s point. It began to lose money, and Beaumont told Coward that unless he took a cut in his royalties the show would have to come off. Noel agreed, and the show ran for 213 performances. This was common practice, especially by a businessman of Beaumont’s shrewdness, but it looked remarkably like blackmail.
*
Coward’s relationship with Graham Payn was not without its initial upsets. Hermione Baddeley, who had been appearing with Payn at the Saville Theatre before Sigh No More, met him in Shaftesbury Avenue; he was in tears; Coward had ‘thrown him out’, and he was sure the romance was over. It was not, and when Sigh No More opened, Payn gave Coward a tardy first-night present of a gold cigarette-holder over lunch at the Bon Viveur. Soon Payn moved into Gerald Road and to Coward’s new seaside house, to establish a post-war domesticity which defined Noel’s ‘family life’ from then on.
Coward had leased White Cliffs at St Margaret’s Bay on the south-easternmost coast of Kent, close to Dover. It was set on a sea ledge below overhanging chalk cliffs and faced the Channel, a welcome breath of sea air after the rationed stuffiness of London. The building was unremarkable, but Noel, assisted by Gladys Calthrop (who had bought a house nearby), turned it into a Coward ménage, immediately recognisable by the tin Wings of Time affixed to the outside wall. There was also a pair of terraced cottages abutting White Cliffs, into which Noel persuaded his mother and Aunt Vida to move (although Vida disliked the place, Violet loved it).
Graham Payn arrived with a bottle of champagne to toast the new residence. ‘An evening of enchantment,’ Coward wrote, ‘I know this is going to be a happy house.’ The early autumn was warm, and they sunbathed and walked on the downlands above the house; the sky – no longer a conduit for ‘doodle-bugs’ and death – was clear. Ships slipped by, strung at night with coloured lights, although the calm could be rudely stirred by sudden storms and high seas almost breaking over the house. Coward, Payn and Lesley spent peaceful days at White Cliffs that autumn, doing up the house, driving into Dover for provisions, and walking the cliffs. Coward began to write verse again, and thought up the plot for a new operetta.
Samolo, retitled Pacific 1860, was a lavish piece of escapism which Coward hoped would score a hit with a war-weary public. He had created the fictional island of Samolo for ‘We Were Dancing’ in Tonight at 8.30, and with Lesley’s assistance, planned out in precise detail its history and geography, a virtual Baedeker’s Guide to be printed in the programme notes. Its star was to be Yvonne Printemps, but Printemps was unavailable, and Coward sought the services of Mary Martin, the Texan singer famous for her rendition of Cole Porter’s ‘My Heart Belongs to Daddy’. An American star was a suitable choice, for Pacific 1860 sought to capitalise on American musicals of the period, experiencing a golden age since Oklahoma! in 1943. It was agreed, by Noel Coward Ltd and H. M. Tennent, that the show would reopen the bombed Drury Lane Theatre, but rebuilding permits were no great priority when thousands of houses were needed,4 and Drury Lane would not be ready until the late autumn. The closing of two Coward shows within a month – Sigh No More on 23 February (a run of less than eight months), and Blithe Spirit (a more impressive four and a half years) on 9 March – did nothing to cheer him. Events appeared to be conspiring against him, so four days later he went to France.
Paris was an escape for those who could afford it, with unrationed food and drink and the liberated atmosphere of a city which knew how to enjoy its victory. Duff and Diana Cooper were now installed in the British Embassy, presiding over a social renaissance. For reasons of hedonism, fashion and legality, this resurgence had a strong homosexual flavour; Nancy Mitford recorded one evening that of the twelve people she had ‘in before dinner . . . I was the only normal one . . . It is rather strange one must admit. Nature’s form of birth control in an overcrowded world, I daresay.’ Paris had become ‘quite giddy, people doing all sorts of things they will regret later’. The atmosphere was a reprise of Semi-Monde: the painter Edward Burra told William Chappell of ‘a cute party with Noel C. Cocteau & Berard. no mention of Bobbie [Helpmann] who was dipping ces longs cils & plongeant ses regards clair et surpris in a gin vermut au Ritz Bar I’ve no doubt . . .’
Coward met Marlene Dietrich and her amour, Jean Gabin, and saw Boris Kochno’s ballet, during which Dietrich ‘talked about herself a good deal’. He and Graham took off for the south, with its pre-war memories. They visited Maxine Elliott’s Château de l’Horizon, recently occupied by the American army, and dined with the Windsors; Coward could seldom resist royalty, even the deposed variety. Back in England, there was an encounter with reigning monarchy at a revival of This Happy Breed at Windsor: ‘The Queen thanked me for the play and . . . said how sweet it was to see me again.’
In these accounts of royal encounters – high tea with the Duchess of Kent at Coppins, intimate chats with the Queen – there is no hint of the disappointment Coward is supposed to have felt at the lack of official recognition of his war work. Theories still circulated about the reasons for the oversight: his court case, his homosexuality, Churchill’s disapproval. According to Jon Wynne-Tyson, an old friend of his mother’s and Coward’s, who worked at Whitehall vetting those considered for honours, reported that Coward was not considered because of his involvement with Prince George. ‘They don’t forgive lightly . . . the currency thing, and leaving the country, gave them a marvellous excuse, filling in the appropriate document in Whitehall: “No to Noel Coward”.’5
There had been a brief flurry of expectation during the Play Parade tour, when Mountbatten had intimated that ‘his cousin’ would like to award Coward a knighthood in the New Year’s honours list of 1943. But the idea was squashed, leaving Coward to wonder ‘if Winston Churchill has been obstructive’. Mountbatten ‘explained that he considered sabotage had been at work, so that’s that and I shall not reconsider the matter’. Lister recalled that his employer waited nervously until one a.m. for the call from Mountbatten. When it came, ‘Noel broke down and cried.’ Others blamed the press. When Coward had made his speech about the press neglecting the efforts of General Slim’s 14th Army, John Gordon pointed out that restrictions prevented such reports, and went on to quote from Present Indicative on Noel’s First World War record. The day after his piece was published, he lunched with Lord Beaverbrook, his boss, who reported, ‘We’ve just had a Cabinet meeting and your article about Coward came up. Churchill told us he had put Coward down for a knighthood in the Honours list about to be issued. The Cabinet put its feet down in view of what you had written and insisted on Coward’s name being taken off the list. Churchill had to agree.’
Whatever the cause, Coward had good reason to feel bitter. His contribution to the war effort since In Which We Serve had been exemplary, and surely his work for ‘Little Bill’ merited some recognition? Rumours became yet more convoluted, including one that Coward’s currency trial had been a ‘blind’ for espionage work and that he expected to be cleared later; things went wrong, and he was left out in the cold. Coward’s own comments do not make matters any clearer. Years later, he said, ‘I was told that the King would like to honour me, and I replied that while I would, of course, do anything he wished, I would rather he didn’t offer me a knighthood. After that I heard no more . . . I had to think of the billing you know,’ he joked, ‘the name on the marquee. Noel Coward has a certain ring to it. Sir Noel Coward is not quite the same.’
No such honour would come for another thirty years. Whatever Coward felt about it, he had become disenchanted with Britain. He felt hounded by the press, unappreciated by the public, unrecognised by the establishment. Society had grown tired of the erstwhile witty young man about town. To survive the bleak years ahead, he would have to repeat what he had done twenty years before: invent another Noel Coward altogether.
*
In May 1946 Coward was back in Paris, working on the French version of Blithe Spirit, and appearing at a gala concert with Payn (‘nervous . . . did his numbers well but was not relaxed enough’) and Dietrich. Noel had to make a second appearance when Grace Moore, the opera singer, left the stage with a sore throat. ‘I flew from my dressing-room . . . and sang “Mad Dogs” and “Germans”, neither of which I had rehearsed. This really tore the place up, which was jolly gratifying and I felt was deserved, as I had behaved well all day and not lost my temper.’
Finances had improved, with income from Blithe Spirit and revivals. His consumption continued to be lavish, and he had begun an art collection as well as adding to his stable of fast cars. On Molyneux’s advice Noel bought a Vlaminck oil for £1000 and later one for £450; in June he acquired an MG18 hp drophead coupé for £1350: such were a bachelor superstar’s symbols of prestige. His real-estate problems had been solved by Lorn Loraine’s idea of charging the upkeep of Goldenhurst to Patience Erskine, Calthrop’s girlfriend. This was mutally satisfactory; it gave Erskine a home and set Coward’s mind at rest about the house, which had been courting ruin.
At White Cliffs, Coward made use of his isolation to work on the large portfolio of musical numbers his new operetta demanded. A budget of £40,000 was agreed with Prince Littler, director of Drury Lane, and by July auditions had begun and the final title, Pacific 1860, had been established. After a happy summer holiday in France, making friends of Ginette Spanier (directrice of Balmain) and her husband Paul-Emile Seidmann (whom he nicknamed ‘Marie-Antoinette’), Coward returned to England to meet his star-to-be Mary Martin, her manager-husband, Richard Halliday, and their five-year-old daughter, Heller, at Southampton. The following night he threw a party at Gerald Road, at which ‘everybody fell in love with Mary on sight’. To Charles Russell, Martin had no ‘ “star grandeur” . . . she was a genuine kind of girl’. His partner, Lance Hamilton, noted that Halliday was ‘a wonderful husband and never leaves her side. He even washes her hair and I think often designs her clothes.’ But Martin brought unwelcome news; Jack Wilson had done his best to prevent the pair from coming. Wilson’s disloyalty was accepted phlegmatically, ‘He has obviously changed. I don’t think he really cares any more for England or for us, which is very sad.’
Coward’s wartime prosecution had called Wilson’s managerial abilities into question, and the other qualities which had drawn Noel to him were being eroded by his increasing dependency on alcohol – a lack of discipline which Coward found intolerable. That February, Coward had heard from Beaumont, recently returned from the States, ‘unhappy stories of Jack’s attitude’. The relationship, begun so passionately, would end in recrimination but, even then, Noel could not sever links entirely. It was a weakness which continued to cause him pain. A month later, Coward read slaying notices of the Broadway production of Present Laughter. ‘I see clearly that I shall have to have a showdown with Jack’, he wrote. ‘I cannot afford to have my valuable properties bitched up.’ But Wilson wrote back, explaining that the first-night audience had been ‘social steel’, and business was good. Noel was not convinced.
After a request for intervention to Aneurin Bevan, the Minister for Health, Drury Lane got its building permit, and the opening of Pacific 1860 was set for mid-December, with rehearsals to begin on 4 November. Continual delays were embarrassing for Coward, with his American star having nothing to do, so when a trip to Paris to see the French version of Blithe Spirit (Jeux d’Esprit) was deemed necessary, he decided to take Martin and Halliday with him. They were well rewarded: there was a spectacular Molyneux party, and Cocteau’s new film, La Belle et la Bête. Less happy was Jeux d’Esprit: ‘flat-footed, obvious and badlydirected’, and the company didn’t know their words, a cardinal sin for a Coward cast. The director was exhorted to do better, but the play was not a success.6
Back at White Cliffs, Aunt Vida died on 8 November. She had fallen and broken her hip, and had been bedridden since, in the cottage she shared with Violet. ‘She looked very pathetic and little’ to Coward when he went over to say goodbye. A constant in his life, her loss was felt by her nephew; for Violet, it was the end of a love-hate relationship. ‘Doesn’t she look pretty, like a little snowdrop’, she said when she saw Vida in her coffin. ‘It’s a pity she looked so disagreeable when she was alive.’
*
Pacific 1860 resembled nothing so much as Bitter Sweet in a tropical setting. Graham Payn played Kerry Stirling (‘slim and dark and [with] more romantic imagination than is altogether comfortable for him’); Mary Martin, the outrageous Elena Salvador, a world-famous opera singer who wears men’s riding breeches and falls in love with Kerry. Like Larita in Easy Virtue, her morals are questioned and yet she is essentially better than her detractors; another reflection of Coward the outsider. Her friends counsel Elena to forget her ‘fantastic folly’, her love for this young man. ‘Your career has been unparalleled and your success unqualified’, says Felix. ‘And now . . . because of the sudden flare up of a romantic emotion, you are prepared to sacrifice everything that all those hard years have brought you.’ Writing a painful farewell note to her beloved, she leaves the island, but returns a year later, and the two lovers are reunited – a happy ending which appeared to reflect the joy Coward had found in his love for Payn.
The preparations for the production were less joyous, and its star was ‘at last showing signs of being tiresome’. Martin refused to wear either hats or wigs as Calthrop’s designs dictated. Payn thought that Martin’s husband, Richard Halliday, was behind much of the fuss, ‘either that, or Mary used him as an excuse . . . Of course, Gladys was wicked. Mary said she was allergic to bows, and the dress came back with hundreds of tiny bows on it.’ Charles Russell later put forward another explanation, ‘Gladys rather took a fancy to Mary . . . But she wasn’t interested in Gladys, so Gladys started getting bitchy about Mary’s appearance . . .’
Rehearsals were uncomfortable in an unheated theatre. Coward had to sit on a sugar box, wearing two sweaters, a fur coat and an eiderdown over his knees, watching his shivering company turn a pale shade of mauve. The whole exercise was fraught, but the first night on 19 December was ‘really triumphant. Mary wonderful; Sylvia Cecil stopped the show; Graham magnificent.’ Afterwards Coward’s intimates convened at Clemence Dane’s, but his old friend was not very forthcoming: ‘Winnie never said one word of praise to me . . . Dick Addinsell never said one word about the music. They were both vile . . .’ This sour note was a foretaste of the press the next day, ‘The blackest and beastliest day of the year’, wrote Noel. Not only were the notices uniformly dreadful, but his dog, Matelot, which Graham had bought him, had died; both he and Payn were ‘horribly upset’.
The reasons for Clemence Dane’s froideur were made clear when Coward telephoned her the next day. She delivered an extended character analysis. ‘She told me that for the last three years I had been . . . so unbearably arrogant that it’s grotesque; that everyone is laughing at me; that I am surrounded by yes-men; that the reason Pacific 1860 is so bad is that I have no longer any touch or contact with people and events on account of my overweening conceit; that I have ruined Graham . . . that I have encased Mary Martin in a straitjacket . . . crushing her personality; that I am disloyal and behaved badly over Sigh No More (cutting Dick [Addinsell]’s music).’ Dane’s diatribe recalled the accusations against Garry Essendine in Present Laughter; it seemed that the flaws in Coward’s character had been made more visible by the war. Others saw them too. Charles Russell, then acting stage manager for Coward, outlined the odds, ‘It was just after the war, and the theatre was cold and unoccupied and they had a terrible time setting it up. It cost a fortune. Coward didn’t care about money – when it was other people’s. He fell out with Mary Martin, and gave her Graham Payn as a leading man. It was laughable.’ Clemence Dane’s telephone call ended peacefully enough, with Coward promising to be less arrogant. But privately he thought her judgement, and that of his other friends, wrong. Not only that, her writing was deteriorating, and her conceit was close to mania; he thus turned the arrow to point at its firer.
Noel toyed with the idea that Pacific 1860 might be reworked, but rejected such kow-towing. Dane’s criticisms seemed even more apposite as Coward decided ‘if the critics and the public don’t like the show, that’s their affair but I won’t muck about with it and alter something that I consider charming and accurate’. He was taking no account of other people’s opinions (unless sycophantic), a dangerous tactic in a medium which demanded compromise between author, producer and performer. To outsiders, it was par for the course; John Gielgud maintained that Noel ‘bossed his friends about – people like Gladys Calthrop and Jeffrey Amherst – he over-rode them. He would listen to them, but not take any notice.’
*
At the end of March 1947, Prince Littler indicated he was putting two weeks’ notice up on Pacific 1860. Coward was relieved. The four-month run had been dreary, and hard on Payn, ‘whose big chance it should have been. However, that is the theatre.’ To rectify matters, Coward decided to revive Present Laughter and alternate it with a new play, Might Have Been, if it could be ready in time. Rehearsals of Present Laughter began, with Joyce Carey in her old role as Liz, and a newcomer, the South African actress Moira Lister, as Joanna. Coward was once again Garry Essendine. It opened at the Royal Court Theatre in Liverpool on 7 April, transferring to the Haymarket on 16 April. The production received excellent notices, broke box-office records in its first week, and ran for two years and 528 performances.
Moira Lister recalls the apprehension she felt at appearing on stage with the Master. As Joanna she had to deliver a slap to Garry’s face, and out of nervousness she gave him ‘the most almighty slosh across his face’. Coward winced, but said nothing until the final curtain. ‘Then, even before we could get off stage he turned on me like a viper and said that if I ever did that again, he would hit me right back in front of the audience.’ The following night, nerves a-jangle, she hit him even harder, and ran off at the curtain call before he could catch her.
Encouraged by this new success, Coward resumed work on Might Have Been, for which Lorn Loraine provided a better but more contentious title, ‘Peace in Our Time’. Taking its cue from Saki’s 1914 invasion fantasy, When William Came, the play was to hypothesise English life under the Nazis. Coward had seen at first hand the effects of the occupation in Paris, and the stigmatising of collaborators such as Colette, Chevalier and Chanel; he wondered if England would have suffered the same ‘atmosphere of subtle disintegration, lassitude, and, above all, suspicion’. He set his sombre fantasy in The Shy Gazelle pub, between Knightsbridge and Sloane Square (giving his local garage a namecheck along the way), and filled it with character types: Cockney stalwarts, tarty women, intellectual homosexuals, all supposed denizens of the public house – despite their air of having just checked out of the Savoy. Only the circumstances are drastically different; Churchill has been executed, the royal family are prisoners at Windsor, and the Isle of Wight is a concentration camp. The phlegmatic patriots of the pub are a stalwart lot, full of This Happy Breed-style speeches, with the added spice of sensationalism: an escaping prisoner of war is branded on his forehead; the publican’s daughter is tortured to death. Polemical and politicised, ‘Peace in Our Time’ ends with hand-to-hand fighting in Sloane Street as the reinvasion of Britain is triumphant. One wonders whether Coward would have liked a reinvasion of his own, in the new socialist Britain.
Crucially, for a man of exquisite timing, he had misjudged his moment. The British public did not want to be reminded of years of deprivation and war; the depressing picture of a defeated people undergoing shortages and domination was all too close to the truth, since Britain was still suffering from austerity and rationing. His audiences expected the escapism of his late war films, Brief Encounter and Blithe Spirit. That he had not delivered the goods underlined Clemence Dane’s criticisms.
The play was put into production, with Coward seeking a new, young cast. He wanted Kenneth More to play the young resistance fighter, and More recalled being terrifed when invited, alone, to Gerald Road. When Noel walked towards him with what seemed predatory intent, More burst out, ‘Oh Mr Coward, sir! I could never have an affair with you, because – because – you remind me of my father!’ Coward laughed and said, ‘Hello son’. Another young actor he had wanted for the play was Dirk Bogarde. He too was invited to Gerald Road where Coward preempted his nerves by announcing, ‘I shan’t jump on you. I’m not the type, and Gerald Road Police Station is immediately opposite. Would you care for a whistle or will you merely shout?’
‘Peace in Our Time’ opened in Brighton on 14 July, in terrific summer heat, and a ‘fairly silly holiday audience’ gave it an ovation, encouraging Coward to think he had a success on his hands. ‘In spite of all the press have said about me, I seem to be loved by the public. It is a lovely feeling and I am grateful.’ Elspeth March, who played one of the leads, thought that the ‘jingoistic’ nature of the play was responsible, ‘the applause was like a cannon – you reeled back, it was so enormous . . . Noel came on and made a marvellous speech, telling the audience he was so proud of us, that the acting was of the highest traditions in the British theatre. It reduced us all to tears.’ In London, the reception seemed positive, and Noel celebrated by buying another Vlaminck to add to the ‘Coward collection’.
At the end of July Coward and Payn left for New York. Noel enjoyed showing off his new friend; they saw the Wilsons at Fairfield, dined at the chic Oyster Bay home of Horst P. Horst – now living with Valentine Lawford – with Greta Garbo, Margaret Case and Christopher Isherwood. In Chicago they saw Tallulah Bankhead in a surprisingly good production of Private Lives. It would tour every American state bar three, grossing more than $1.5 million, of which ten per cent would go to Noel Coward Inc.; at least in this piece of business, Noel had cause to be grateful for Jack’s participation. Taken aback by the offer of an Augustus John picture as a present, Coward noted that Tallulah was ‘a curious character; wildly generous, a very big heart and can be both boring and amusing’. But Tallulah darling was by now becoming a parody of herself, her taste for alcohol and narcotics turning her seductive features into those of a raddled addict. They saw Carmen Miranda in cabaret, and after the show, the singer joined Noel, Graham and Tallulah at their table. ‘Tallulah was nicely thank you and proceeded to be noisy and vulgar from then on. Carmen Miranda wisely disappeared. Tallulah screamed and roared and banged the table etc., and I wished the floor would open.’ They drove to a Chicago dive, where ‘callow youths became hypnotised’ by a bebop band, ‘and began to wriggle and sway and scream exactly like a revival meeting’. This display of modern club culture pained Noel, assailed by ‘the heat, the violent noise and Tallulah still shrieking’. At another club, he was seated under a trumpet-player, ‘whereupon I walked out and came home. I am forty-seven and sane.’
In New York, Coward’s approval was sought for new projects. Lillian Gish, who was playing in The Marquise in Bucks County, wanted to bring it into New York; the author did not. He was also opposed to a revival of Tonight at 8.30, proposed by Gertrude Lawrence and Fanny Holtzmann, her energetic lawyer. It seemed that if Britain was not keen on Coward, America might take him over. He was offered a handsome contract by Paramount; if he would commit himself to three films as actor, author or director, they would pay him $500 a week for twenty-three years. But this was another form of enslavement, and Coward told the agents that he valued his freedom. ‘They went on about England being finished, etc., and I suddenly saw the headlines: “Noel Coward signs up to American Film Company. Another rat leaving the sinking ship.” All my instincts told me violently to refuse. So I did and they were astounded.’
Coward was inclined to reconsider the Gertrude Lawrence Tonight at 8.30 revival. Jack Wilson and Graham Payn thought it a good idea, and it could be a means of reviving Payn’s career. News from England encouraged some sort of action; Beaumont had cabled to say he was unhappy with ‘Peace in Our Time’, the usual prelude to drastic measures. Coward was annoyed at the prospect of its failure: ‘Really, if that play turns out to be a flop I shall be forced to the reluctant and pompous conclusion that England does not deserve my work. That is a good play, written with care and heart and guts and it is beautifully acted and directed . . .’
Coward’s only religion had been his patriotism; for him, as for his peers, it was a shared experience of love of one’s country, a feeling that you were working for it, not in spite of it. Thus the apostasy came that much harder: ‘I have sick feeling about England anyhow’, he wrote, echoing the sentiments of ‘Peace in Our Time’ and its idea that the country would have been less complacent and lazy had the Battle of Britain been lost. ‘We are so idiotic and apathetic and it is nothing to do with “after the war” because we were the same at Munich and before that.’ He was seriously considering his options.
*
Autumn 1947 also marked a nadir in Coward’s relationship with Jack Wilson, still ostensibly his partner and producer in the US, despite his many failures. On 28 September Noel finished his new play, based on his short story ‘What Mad Pursuit?’, his tale of a misspent weekend on Long Island. Long Island Sound was ceremoniously read to the Wilsons and Neysa McMein, but they were not impressed: ‘Jack prophesies that the press will crucify me for it.’ A couple of days later, Wilson interrupted Coward at dinner to tell him that Payn would not be able to rehearse Tonight at 8.30 without a permit (which Coward had already arranged with Fanny Holtzmann). Coward realised that Wilson was no longer to be trusted.
Matters worsened at rehearsals for Tonight at 8.30. Wilson had been making remarks about Payn’s place in the show, saying, ‘I am the biggest baby-sitter in New York’, and referring to him as ‘Payn-in-the-ass’. The only way to avoid theatrical suicide would be for Coward to stay with the production until it opened in Baltimore, to prevent Wilson from causing trouble. At the same time, Coward learned that his royalties had been 8 per cent of the gross on a recent tour of Blithe Spirit, but Wilson had got 5 per cent ‘for his kindness in letting them do it’, plus 5 per cent of the profits. On the train to Baltimore with Fanny Holtzmann for the opening of Tonight at 8.30, he heard further accusations; she told him that under Wilson’s management he had been overpaying tax and that his financial affairs had been mishandled for the past twenty years. Such allegations were hardly unbiased: pursuing Coward as a lucrative possible client, Holtzmann was not above trashing the opposition, and the outcome was that she and her brother David were hired.
Of the opening night, Coward wrote, ‘Graham better than ever. Lighting bad as ever. Electrician sacked.’ In Boston weekly receipts were $4000 down on Baltimore. On the first night on Broadway, Coward defied New York custom by going onstage to extol the production. He then led Graham Payn to the front, presenting him to the audience. For those who knew of their relationship – as many of the first-nighters did – this was an additionally unacceptable act. To friends it seemed Coward was risking his reputation. Frith Banbury thought that Noel had ‘allowed his heart to overcome his head . . . But no one said nay, and Graham . . . hadn’t the nous to say “Come on, my dear, this isn’t . . . a good idea.” It really destroyed Graham’s career, in a way.’ The New York press slaughtered the show, and singled out Payn for special contempt. The second cycle of Tonight at 8.30 seemed to go well the following evening, but by 24 February Noel knew he had a flop on his hands. It was time to leave Western civilisation behind.
1. The film was Flames of Passion, which was playing next to the Manchester theatre where Easy Virtue opened in 1926; a neat if belated revenge on the local council which had demanded that Coward’s play be retitled.
2. Probably based on Ashford, Kent, where visitors arrived en route for Goldenhurst. In the film, the Lake District station of Carnforth was used.
3. Howard played Alec again in Otto Preminger’s colour TV version of Tonight at 8.30 in New York in 1954, with Ginger Rogers as Laura. Preminger said, ‘Forget about the picture you made. Here we have something different – we have Ginger Rogers. You must pick her up with you, take her to the counter for coffee and pinch her ass.’
4. As Coward was well aware: on 20 January the Sunday Express announced that a question would be asked in Parliament about repairs done to White Cliffs.
5. Maugham’s lack of an honour was also claimed to be due to his sexuality. His biographer wrote, ‘there can be little doubt that he had been systematically excluded from the Honours List for nearly forty years’.
5. Other Coward plays had done well in France since the translation of Hay Fever as Weekend had been produced in Paris in 1928. This was followed by Le Printemps de Saint-Martin (Fallen Angels, 1928), Au Temps des Valses (Bitter Sweet, 1930), Les Amants Terribles (Private Lives, 1933), and Sérénade â Trois (Design for Living, 1935).