Noël Coward
In my next life I’d like to talk like this
Noël Coward truly knew how to live
The rehabilitation of Wallis Simpson
Two new biographies and a film by Madonna attempt to change our perception of ‘that woman’
A Word You Could Say on TV in 1955
Via Terry Teachout, I found this clip of Noël Coward’s 1955 TV special “Together With Music” (with Mary Martin). The thing that surprised me was that he was able to sing the word “sluts” on national U.S. TV in the ’50s — a word you couldn’t even say in the movies at the time. It turns out the sponsor and the network wanted him to rewrite the song, but he refused, saying that he had been an arbiter of good taste all his life and that he was the perfect judge of what was and was not vulgar: “Look at that,” he said, pointing at a line of Ford cars that had been brought onto the stage to advertise the sponsor’s product, “that’s vulgar.”
Suddenly everyone’s mad about Noël
Revivals of Noël Coward’s plays are all the rage. Just don’t copy his acting style.