Dec 28, 2009

Hay Fever | Author Biography

Noel Peirce Coward—the celebrated actor, composer, and playwright once described as the person who ‘‘invented the ’20s’’—was born on December 16, 1899, in Teddington-on-Thames, Middlesex, England, to Arthur Sabin and Violet Agnes (Veitch) Coward. His father worked as both a clerk for a music publishing company and a piano salesman. Young Noel attended Chapel Royal School in Clapham but learned his most vocational lessons while studying acting with Sir Charles Hawtrey’s drama company. Working with this theater group, he developed comic timing and his trademark casual demeanor. Encouraged by his mother, Coward made his first professional theatrical appearance when he was only twelve. He continued to act in London throughout his teens, while also making both his first attempts at playwriting and his film debut in director D. W. Griffith’s 1917 feature Hearts of the World.

Noel Coward

Coward’s first play was produced in 1920; three more of his compositions went on the stage in 1922. The Young Idea (1922), although deemed a pale imitation of playwright George Bernard Shaw’s style, showed signs of the unique humor found in Coward’s later work. Already prolific, Coward produced four more plays before writing Hay Fever in the three days following his first trip to the United States in the fall of 1924. He wrote seventeen more plays in the next decade, often acting in, directing, producing, and composing music for them as well. During this period he wrote what is widely considered his best work, the comedy Private Lives (1930), in which he starred with actress Gertrude Lawrence. Lawrence was only one of the theater luminaries— including Laurence Olivier, Vivien Leigh, John Gielgud, Claudette Colbert, Mary Martin, Tallulah Bankhead, and Michael Redgrave—with whom Coward formed close friendships. Like these celebrities, the playwright cultivated a debonair public persona. He embodied—both on stage and off—the image of the suave, cynical gentleman who appears in evening dress, a cigarette in hand, ready to offer witty cocktail party repartee.

Among his sophisticated theatrical companions it was an ‘‘open secret’’ that Coward was a homosexual, but he never came out publicly. During most of his lifetime the British censors did not allow works containing homosexual themes to appear on stage, and Coward’s one play which depicted gay characters, Semi-monde, although written in 1926, did not get produced until 1977.

After 1935, Coward wrote twenty more plays, including the hit Design for Living (1933) and his biggest box office success Blithe Spirit (1941), a comedy of manners that ran for two thousand performances in London and won the New York Drama Critics Circle Award for Best Foreign Play in 1942. After World War II public tastes changed, and Coward’s work received less critical attention. Yet, his reputation was well established, and he continued to express his talents in diverse ways: publishing fiction, acting in films, and continuing to write songs, movie scripts, and plays. In 1970, he was honored with a knighthood as well as a special Antionette (Tony) Perry Award. Three years later, on March 26, 1973, he died of a fatal heart attack in Blue Harbor, Jamaica.