Product Description

A publishing event! The first and definitive collection of letters (most of them previously unpublished) both from and to the incomparable Noël Coward, a unique and irresistible portrait of a society and age—from the Blitz to the Ritz and beyond.

The range, charm, and vitality of his talents—he was a playwright, actor, composer, librettist, lyricist, director, painter, writer, cabaret singer, wit—brought him into close encounters, and often close friendship, with the great and the gifted. He knew everybody who was anybody in the theater and in the movies, in literature and in politics, on both sides of the Atlantic.

Among those at his “marvelous party”: George Bernard Shaw . . . T. E. Lawrence . . . Virginia Woolf . . . the Churchills . . . Daphne Du Maurier . . . Greta Garbo (she wrote asking him to marry her; he wrote back saying he almost accepted) . . . Ian Fleming . . . W. Somerset Maugham . . . Marlene Dietrich (he advised her, “To hell with God damned ‘L’Amour.’ It always causes far more trouble than it is worth”) . . . Tallulah Bankhead . . . Edith Sitwell . . . FDR . . . Gertrude Lawrence (in a cable about Private Lives: “Have written delightful new comedy stop good part for you stop wonderful one for me stop”), and many more.

There are letters about his productions of Bitter Sweet . . . Cavalcade . . . In Which We Serve . . . Brief Encounter . . . Private Lives, etc. . . . about his activities during World War II (he was a spy for the British government along with co-conspirator Cary Grant) . . . about the move to make him a knight that was endorsed in a personal letter from King George VI and blocked by Winston Churchill. Here are letters to and from his beloved mother, Violet . . . his longtime set and costume designer, Gladys Calthrop . . . his traveling companion from the 1930s on, Lord Amherst . . . and his business manager and onetime lover, Jack Wilson, in which he reveals his “secret heart.”

Profoundly savvy, witty, loving, bitchy, and often surprisingly moving, The Letters of Noël Coward gives us “Destiny’s Tot” at his crackling best. An irresistible portrait of a time, of the man himself, and of the world he lived in and enchanted.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #71176 in Books
• Published on: 2007-11-13
• Released on: 2007-11-13
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 800 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Writers labor to come up with lines half as good as those Noël Coward dropped into the mailbox every day—I felt that some sort of scene was necessary to celebrate my first entrance into America, so I said, 'Little lamb, who made thee,' to a customs official. The playwright, actor and songwriter is in fine form in these missives, telegrams and poems (he would rhyme almost anything, even communications to his business manager), presented along with return mail from friends and luminaries. Day (Coward on Film: The Cinema of Noel Coward) arranges the well-chosen selections in roughly chronological order with some unobtrusive narrative context; at times he spotlights a lifelong correspondence with a single person to flesh out Coward's relationships, such as with Gertrude Lawrence. Coward's voice is charming, whimsical, sharp-eyed and canny, often alternating, in the showbiz way, between effusive warmth (letter to Tallulah Bankhead: Thank you very much, darling, for all your sweetness and your insane generosity) and cutting putdown (letter about Tallulah Bankhead: a conceited slut). A true intellectual of the stage, his comments on the nitty-gritty of writing, pacing, character and acting technique are incisive. Fans of Coward's plays and students of 20th-century theater will be fascinated, but casual readers will also find an entertaining browse. Photos. (Nov. 16)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Review
Coward was a genius [and] as we see here, a letter writer extraordinaire…What we get is much more than Coward’s letters, however delectable…We also get letters to Coward, many of them as entertaining as [his] for he corresponded with many of the mightiest pens in literature and show business…The result is a first class biography.”

–John Simon, The New York Times Book Review


“Barry Day has done a superb job with the collection…it is a feast...”

– Edward Herrmann, The Wall Street Journal


“(It) glitters with the multi-gifted playwright’s claws-out bitchiness, tremendous charm, and creative genius…”

– Vanity Fair


“Evocative…addressed to an astonishing array of people…”

– Hedy Weiss, Chicago Sun-Times


“Delightful, absorbing, skillfully-shaped; this collection enables the reader to be part of Coward’s extended family.”

– Robert Kimball

“Thanks to Noel and Barry, ‘I feel I’ve been to a marvelous party.’ What a treat!”

– Rosemary Harris

 “The sheen of the Coward legacy is further polished with this fascinating document of an important era in our collective cultural history. Sir Noel continues to be impertinently pertinent!”

– Michael Feinstein

 “Noel Coward’s letters are everything one would expect: witty, sentimental, peevish, touching. They are wonderful to read. What astounds me, however, is Barry Day’s brilliant, imaginatively edited commentary. He sets the letters up with care and intelligence; Noel Coward comes to life because the letters have been placed in such an informed and vivid context.”

– Andre Bishop, Artistic Director, Lincoln Center Theater



“Noel Coward is my number one hero. As far as I’m concerned, the British have a monopoly on humor, and our beloved Noel has a monopoly within a monopoly.”

– Hugh Martin

“A sumptuous banquet! Bringing Coward’s world so vividly to life that I keep expecting him to walk through the door.”

– Lynn Redgrave

 
“So many letters from his friends makes the telling of Noel’s life so much deeper and well-rounded. All in all, a rich book with a remarkably protean hero who both shapes and reflects his times.”


– Margot Peters


“Master had a singular impact on so many of our lives and Barry Day’s perceptive analysis of his correspondence is both illuminating and irresistible. Noel’s renowned wit, his unfailing generosity, his acute sense of contemporary history is here for everyone to enjoy.”

– Richard Attenborough


“Precise, Witty, remarkably observed, and gloriously English.”

– Judi Dench


“Thirty years after his death, it seems increasingly obvious that Noël Coward is the most enduring English playwright of the mid twentieth century. This meticulously edited collection of his letters will excite and amuse anyone interested in him, the theatre and his staggeringly wide circle of correspondents.”

– Nicholas Hytner, Artistic Director at the National Theatre


“A uniquely charming and enticing journey through a remarkable life. Coward’s own record is made all the more delightful by the wise and helpful interpolations of Barry Day, the soundest authority on the Master that there is.”

– Stephen Fry


“Here you get the truly private Noël…what really matters is the insight we get from these letters into a far more complex, thoughtful and kindly figure than the one we thought we knew.”

– Sheridan Morley

About the Author

Barry Day was born in England and received his M.A. from Balliol College, Oxford. In addition to his seven previous books on Noël Coward, Day has written about Dorothy Parker, Oscar Wilde, Johnny Mercer, and Rodgers and Hart. He has written and produced plays and musical revues showcasing the work of Coward, the Lunts, Oscar Wilde, Dorothy Parker, and others. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and a Trustee of the Noël Coward Foundation and was awarded the Order of the British Empire. He lives in New York, London, and Palm Beach.

Customer Reviews

Fun theatre read!
You have to read between the lines a bit on this one as both the writer and Noel Coward are very closeted BUT it is a fun dishy read for anyone who is interested in the theatre world. Noel's vast talents and endless productions left me breathless with writer's block!! The man was driven: writing, directing and starrring in play after play. Really inspirational. Ironic how a deeply closeted (well, that was the times) gay man ended up in Jamaica, of all places, now famous for its homophobia............

Wondeful Book
Avid fan of Noel Coward and this books is a welcome addition to my library. Great purchase!!

NOEL COWARD UP & PERSONAL, BUT NOT LETTER-PERFECT
The sheer output of the late Coward---plays, musicals, operettas, revues, movies, television and radio shows, verses, poems, short stories, autobiographies, diaries and a novel---might suggest to future generations that he was actually a brigade of bright young things banded together to bring wit, sophistication and a touch of class to the twentieth century. To this vast mountain of popular writings has been added a new book; at almost 800 pages, it is a massive volume, packed with a seemingly unending pile of trivia and minutia. There is actually painfully little of any worthwhile information not more readily available in the diaries and autobiographies, and the new information frequently falls into gossip, treacle or not really pertinent to a study of either the artist or his time. Purporting to tell the entire story, finally, of Coward as sort of an effete James Bond-type during World War II, there are letters which state that Coward was a spy for England. This has been said many times before, and the tome offers no new exciting anecdotes, breathless chases or heroic escapes. The backstage gossip is ephemeral to the point of absurdity: Marlene Dietrich had an unrequited crush on Yul Brynner; former Dennis resident Gertrude Lawrence may have had a lesbian relationship with Daphne du Maurier. And the weekly letters to his mother are downright embarrassing. Edited and arranged by Barry Day in a very clever manner including letters to Coward from his famous friends (along with Coward's replies) it's important to remember that these pieces were never really meant for publication. The wittier lines were always recycled into the public writings, and, unfortunately, there really isn't enough new material here to warrant the price or the girth of the work. Day has done yeomen work in turning Coward into his own cottage industry---this is the seventh book he's done on Coward's life and work, yet Coward's own dictum of responsibilities to an audience---shock them, amuse them, entertain them but never bore them---has been sadly ignored in this book. For greater fun, grab The Noel Coward Collection (BBC Video).