HISTORIC HOMO With tim Warrington
MASTER
CLASS
In a career that spanned six decades, Noël Coward was the master of everything artistic. From composing to painting, dancing to drama; he did it all. Yet despite his many achievements, he is probably best remembered as a great wit. And today, almost 40 years after his death, he is still one of the most oft quoted people in the world.
Noël coward was the cat’s meow and he knew it. “I’m an enormously talented man and there’s no use us pretending that I’m not.” There’s something divinely sexy about a man who’s sure of himself... even with his slight lisp, hair pomade, silk dressing gown and perfectly-poised cigarette holder. Noël Coward had confidence by the bucket load and was bewitching to both men and women. Born into genteel poverty in 1899, a combination of fierce determination and the pushiest of showbiz mothers ensured “Destiny’s Tot,” was treading the boards by the age of 12. Like a precocious beauty pageant toddler, he thrived on maternal coaxing, playing Prince Mussel in The Goldfish and later, the lead in Peter Pan. And so began the career of one of Britain’s greatest playwright’s – one who ranked second only to William Shakespeare according to a poll in The Stage magazine. Noël Coward became the embodiment of the affected, stiff-upper-lip, upper-class Englishman. A Jack of all trades and a master of... all. He was a dramatist, actor, writer, composer, lyricist, painter and perhaps most famously of all, a wit. It seemed he had something to say about everything and everyone. “People are wrong when they say opera is not what it used to be. It is what it used to be. That is what’s wrong with it.” Coward was also famously immodest; his enthusiasm for self-aggrandizement was equaled only by his energetic judgment of others. He referred to writer Gertrude Stein’s erudite achievements as “literary diarrhea”. Of Leonardo da Vinci’s La Gioconda, he said, “The Mona Lisa looks as if she has just been sick, or is about to be.” He was known by his friends as The Master – a moniker well deserved. After 112 DNA
all, he wrote more than 60 plays, 300 songs and appeared in 25 films. Almost 40 years after his death, Noël Coward remains one of the most influential forces in entertainment. He began writing his own material early, and by age 21, Coward had scripted and starred in his first full-length play, I Leave It To You. Four relatively uneventful and largely unsuccessful years later, Coward achieved massive success in England and America with The Vortex. This controversial play contained many thinly veiled references to drug use, homosexuality and debauchery in the upper class. Like much of his work, The Vortex seems frivolous on the surface, but his clever employment of wit and satire enabled him to discreetly highlight society’s foibles and thumb his nose at the establishment. The audience loved it. Hit after hit followed and he became famous for his witty one-liners. The Master once sent a telegram to his friend Gertrude Lawrence saying, “A warm hand on your opening.” Hand in hand with success came social advancement – weekends spent at the country estates of generous friends and benefactors where he immersed himself in high living and colourful conversation. Wit and panache compensated for his lowly birth and whatever was undesirable about his antecedents; it provided entry to the most fashionable circles. Later in life, Coward became a regular at the queen Mother’s soirées, and even his affair with her brother in law, George, Duke Of Kent, didn’t prevent his knighthood in 1970. A song book inscribed by Coward could still be seen in the queen Mum’s London digs, Clarence House, until her death in 2002. It was during the war that Coward wrote some of his best plays, including