I'm finishing the second biography on Noel Coward [12/16/1899 - 3/26/1973 and it can get very gossipy. A lot of talk about who was sleeping with who. Noel had two important long term relationships: Jack Wilson, and Graham Payn. [Payn wrote the first biography I read.] Then there were the affairs with the famous: James Cagney, Louis Hayward, Michael Redgrave and others. He had developed such a reputation of inviting young male actors in his plays back to his rooms for a 'cocktail' that when he invited Dirk Bogarde, Bogarde had such a look on his face, Noel said; " Don't worry. I am just across the street from the police, and you can bring your whistle." As he aged Noel became more and more difficult in a bitchy way. He had always been very witty but it became more and more caustic. Walking across the street with a friend he saw an advert for a new film starring Michael Redgrave and Dirk Bogarde titled 'The Sea Shall Have Them'. Noel said 'I don't see why not everyone else has.'
Quite for no reason
I'm here for the season
And high as a kite,
Living in error
With Maud at Cape Ferret
Which couldn't be right.
Everyone's here and frightfully gay,
Nobody cares what people say,
Though the Riviera
Seems really much queerer
Then Rome at it's height,
Yesterday night
I went to a marvelous party
With Nounou and Nada and Nell,
It was in the fresh air
And we went as we were
And we stayed as we were
Which was hell.
Poor Grace started singing at midnight
And didn't stop singing till four;
We knew the excitement was bound to begin
When Laura got blind on Dubonnet and gin
And scratched her veneer with a Cartier pin,
I couldn't have liked it more
I went to a marvelous party
I must say the fun was intense
We all had to do
What the people we knew
Would be doing a hundred years hence.
Dear Cecil arrived wearing armor,
Some shells and a black feather boa,
Poor Millicent wore a surrealist comb
Made of bits of mosaic from St. Peter's in Rome
I couldn't have liked it more.
People's behavior
Away from Belgravia
Would make you aghast
So much variety
Watching society
Scampering past,
If you have any mind at all
Gibbon's divine Decline and Fall
Seems pretty flimsy,
No more than a whimsy,
By way of contrast
On Saturday last
I went to a marvelous party
We didn't start dinner till ten
And young Bobbie Carr
Did a stunt at the bar
With a lot of extraordinary men;
Dear Baba arrived with a turtle
Which shattered us all to the core,
When suddenly Cyril screamed fiddledidee
And ripped off his trousers and jumped in the sea.
I couldn't have liked it more.
I went to a marvelous party
Elise made an entrance with May
You'd never had guessed
From her fisherman's vest
That her breast had been whittled away.
Poor Lulu got fried on Chianti
And talked about esprit de corps.
Maurice made a couple of passes at Gus
And Freddie, who hates any kind of a fuss,
Did half of the Big Apple and twisted his truss,
I couldn't have liked it more.
I went to a marvelous party.
We played the marvelous game.
Maureen disappeared
And came back in a beard
And we all had to guess her name!
We talked about growing old gracefully
And Elsie who's seventy-four
Said A, it's a question of being sincere
And B, if you're supple you've nothing to fear.
Then she swung upside down from a glass chandelier.
I couldn't have liked it more.
Noel Coward
