Born On This Day... Noel Coward

I am not able to recall why or how, as a youth, that I came to know & understand that Noel Coward was gay. I do know that as I came out to myself at around age 13, I researched everything I could find about homosexuality, & the news was never good. At the public library, all the information & listings included the words “invert” & “perversion”.


I latched onto the idea that Noel Coward would be a fine role model for dealing with the realization that I was gay. He was after all, fabulous, famous, well loved & moved in a circle with the most talented artists of the day. I would read everything by & about him, an avocation that lasts to this day.


I eventually would go on to play Elyot in Private Lives in college. The director of that piece told me recently on Facebook, that I reminded her of “a young Peter O’Toole” at the time we were doing this play. Unfortunately, I would go on to ape many of Mr. O’Toole’s behaviors later in life. I loved doing Private Lives, which I think is a nearly perfect piece of theatre, with not a wasted bit of dialogue or a false moment.


In the summer of 1978, I had the good fortune to play Simon in an amazing, impressive & beautiful production of Hay Fever, which was designed (sets, lights & costumes!) & directed by the man that would eventually become my Husband. The entire cast was dressed in different shades of whites. It was a very happy summer living in Noel Coward’s witty, wicked world, but I was starting to fall in love with my director. Sir Noel Coward has been a major player in my life & helped shaped the man I would become.

Known for his wit & elegance, Noel Coward defined the post-World War I era. Although regarded as a gay icon today, Coward was never open about his homosexuality during his lifetime. Coward had his first sexual experience, with another boy actor, at age 13, but his closest friends were girls, including his lifelong friend, fellow child actor Gertrude Lawrence. By 15, Coward was already a well known actor & had begun writing & composing. He produced & starred in his first full length play- I Leave It To You, at age 21. 4 years later The Vortex, his controversial work about sexual encounters & drug abuse among the upper class, was a smash hit & made the young Noel a celebrity. By his mid-30s Coward had written & produced some of his best known plays, including Hay Fever, Private Lives, & Cavalcade. During the course of his career he wrote more than 50 plays & 300 songs & 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 & 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 & perform, but his style fell out of favor & his work was criticized as frivolous & outdated.

In the 1950s he became a cabaret performer, achieving popular acclaim in Las Vegas. Escaping England's high taxes, Coward lived in Jamaica & Switzerland. He was friends with many famous artists, including Laurence Olivier, Errol Flynn, Daphne du Maurier, Spencer Tracy, & Katharine Hepburn.

Coward had sexual & romantic relationships with men throughout his life. Jack Wilson, an American stockbroker, was his lover & business manager for a decade beginning in the mid-1920s. After World War II Coward fell in love with South African actor Graham Payne; the pair 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, society's hypocrisy, & the battle against conventional moral restrictions. Design For Living, depicting a bisexual ménage a trois between 2 men & a woman (starring the famous Alfred Lunt & Lynn Fontaine. Both of whom had same sex affairs), sold out every night of its Broadway run. In 1966 Coward wrote & starred in Song At Twilight, the story of an ageing gay author who fears he will be exposed. This is his only work to deal explicitly with homosexuality.

Coward was knighted by The Queen 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."