Noel Coward was a British playwright, composer, and actor known for his witty dialogue and situational comedy. He was knighted in 1970 and is best known for his plays Private Lives, Present Laughter, and Blithe Spirit. Coward also wrote musicals and composed famous songs. He lived a flamboyant lifestyle due in part to his work with MI5 during World War II. Coward’s sexuality remains a topic of speculation, but he maintained many lifelong female friendships. He died in 1973 and is buried in Jamaica. The Noel Coward Theatre was opened in 2006 in his memory.
Noel Coward was an early 20th-century British playwright known for his witty dialogue and slapstick situational comedy. Though best remembered for his early plays, Coward had a long career as a composer and actor. In recognition of his contributions to the arts and to the country, Noel Coward was knighted in 2010 and received a special Academy Certificate at the American Academy Awards in 1970.
Born in 1899, Coward began training as an actor as a boy and played many children’s roles in the professional theater of the London area. He was apprenticed to a famous comedic stage actor, Sir Charles Hawtry, and later credited the actor with being most influential to his training as an actor and writer. He began producing plays and musical reviews around 1920, often casting his friends as characters and even playing parts himself.
Although critics differ in their opinions of Coward’s greatest work, three of his plays are almost always cited as masterpieces. Private Lives, written in 1930, details the comedic disasters of a newly remarried ex-married couple who accidentally rent adjoining suites for their honeymoon. Thought to be partially autobiographical, the 1939 comedy Present Laughter concerns a middle-aged actor terrified of his 40th birthday and desperately trying to avoid complications as he prepares for a world tour. In Blithe Spirit, a man’s deceased first wife haunts him, determined to get rid of his new bride. Blithe Spirit had a huge initial success of 1,997 performances, a record not broken until the 1970s.
Noel Coward, in addition to more than twenty plays, has written many musicals and musical revues. He composed several famous songs, including “Why Must the Show Go On?”, “Mad About the Boy” and “I’ve been to a Marvelous Party”. His songs are known for their comedic content and intricate rhyme schemes. Over the next several years, Coward frequently gave solo performances of his work, including at a show in Las Vegas.
Coward was often criticized for living a flamboyant life filled with travel and extravagance. It is not widely known that this lifestyle was due in part to his work during World War II as a member of MI5, the British secret service. Because of his covert position in intelligence gathering, Noel Coward could provide no public response to critics who complained of his lavish lifestyle in a time of great poverty in England.
Despite evidence of many reports and attempts by the press to get an answer, Noel Coward has refused to confirm the rumors that he was a homosexual. He maintained many lifelong female friends who were often his co-stars. Some critics speculate that these women served as a front for Coward’s gay affairs, including a 19-year affair with the Duke of Kent. Evidence suggests, however, that the women in his life, including Gertrude Lawrence and Marlene Dietrich, were close friends held in high regard by the writer.
After retiring from theater due to memory loss and arthritis, Noel Coward died of heart failure in 1973. He is buried in Jamaica, where he had long maintained a home. In 2006, the theater where he made his acting debut was refurbished and reopened as the Noel Coward Theatre. In memory of this wit-loving and stereotype-defying playwright, the play chosen to christen the new theater was the farcical musical parody, Avenue Q.
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