In 2000, a theater magazine poll of the greatest
theater and film personalities of all time ranked Noel Coward second only to
William Shakespeare. Known for his wit and elegance,
Coward defined the “New English Man” of
the post-World War I era. Although regarded as a gay icon today, Coward was
never open about his homosexuality.
Coward was born to a musical family in
December 1899 in Teddington, a London suburb. Smitten with the theater as a
young boy, he began acting at age 12, encouraged by his ambitious mother.
Coward had his first sexual experience—with another boy actor—at age 13,
but his closest friends were girls, including child actresses Gertrude
Lawrence and Esme Wyne. Coward and Wyne reportedly exchanged clothes on
occasion and strolled through London in drag.
By 15, Coward was already a well-known actor
and had begun writing and composing. He produced and starred in his first
full-length play, I Leave It to You, at age 21. Four years later The Vortex,
his controversial work about sexual shenanigans and drug abuse among the
upper class, was a smash hit and made its young writer a celebrity. By his
mid-thirties Coward had written and produced some of his best-known plays,
including Hay Fever, Private Lives, and Cavalcade.
Unlike the aristocrats he often chronicled,
Coward was from a lower-middle-class background, but his talent won him
entry into fashionable circles. Dubbed one of the postwar era’s “bright
young things,” Coward—who often wore a silk dressing gown and carried a
cigarette holder—was known as much for his panache as for his wit.
Although he enjoyed his portrayal as a playboy in the popular press, Coward
was in fact a workaholic. In 1926 he collapsed onstage in one of several
nervous breakdowns. From then on, he limited his performances to three-month
runs, but he never ceased to churn out new material. During the course of
his career he wrote more than 50 plays and 300 songs and starred in 25
films. Coward once said that to create successful work, an artist must
“consider the public. Coax it, charm it, interest it, shock it now and
then if you must, make it laugh, make it cry, make it think, but above all
never, never, never bore the living hell out of it.”
World War II brought major changes in
Coward’s life. He briefly worked as an undercover intelligence agent, a
job for which he proved to be too well-known. He then devoted himself to
entertaining troops around the globe. After the war, he continued to write
and perform, but his style fell out of favor and his work was criticized as
frivolous and outdated. In the 1950s he became a cabaret performer,
achieving popular acclaim in Las Vegas. Escaping England’s high taxes,
Coward lived in Jamaica and Switzerland. He was friends with many famous
artists, including Laurence Olivier, Errol Flynn, Daphne du Maurier, Spencer
Tracy, and Katharine Hepburn.
Coward had sexual and romantic relationships
with men throughout his life. Jack Wilson, an American stockbroker, was his
lover and business manager for a decade beginning in the mid-1920s, until
Wilson’s excessive drinking drove the men apart. After World War II Coward
fell in love with South African actor Graham Payne; the two men were
together until Coward’s death. But Coward was always circumspect about his
same-sex relationships, as were many other gay men of that era—a time when
homosexuality was still illegal in Britain.
Although never publicly adopting a gay
identity, Coward sometimes addressed homosexuality metaphorically in his
work, which often dealt with hidden longing, societal hypocrisy, and the
battle against conventional moral restrictions. Design for Living, depicting
a bisexual menage a trois between two men and a woman (and starring the
famous “lavender couple” Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne), sold out every
night of its Broadway run. In 1966 Coward wrote and starred in Song at
Twilight, the story of an aging gay author who fears he will be
exposed—his only work to deal explicitly with homosexuality. “Coward
paved the way for the growing cultural acceptance of homosexuality that
marked the past hundred years,” claims Variety theater critic Charles
Isherwood. “He gave audiences a taste for the irreverence and artifice of
camp that couldn’t be erased when its link to gay experience was finally
acknowledged.”
Coward was knighted by Queen Elizabeth in
1970. In January 1973 he appeared with longtime friend Marlene Dietrich at a
performance of the off-Broadway revue of his work, Oh Coward! It would be
his last public appearance—he died at his home in Jamaica in March of that
year. In 1984 a memorial stone was unveiled in Westminster Abbey bearing
words from one of his songs: “I believe that since my life began, the most
I’ve had is just a talent to amuse.”
Liz Highleyman is a freelance writer and
editor who has written widely on health, sexuality, and politics. She can be
reached care of Letters from CAMP Rehoboth or at POcolumn@aol.com.
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