NOEL COWARD

Noel Coward was born in Teddington , England in 1899. He was from an artistic family background, and was soon showing off his own skills as an actor, treading the boards of the stage at the age of six. Natural artistic ability was made even more apparent, when by the age of sixteen he had written a full play. He would later add the careers of dramatist, painter and singer to his resume, to make him one of the most talented all round artists of all time.

At the Age of twenty-one Noel Coward travelled to New York . Here, he was able to take in several Broadway plays, and was mightily impressed by the energy and hustle created in them. With this in mind he returned to London and began writing plays for the West End with a similar style to those he witnessed across the water.

One such play was Private Lives, in which Coward starred alongside his good friend Gertrude Lawrence. He claimed to have written it in a single night in a hotel room, when unable to get to sleep. Design for living was for a time prohibited in England . It had an even racier storyline than Private lives.  In this play, Coward is ridiculing the strict morality of that time. Ironically, by the time it was allowed to be played in England , critics viewed it as putting across an old fashioned message. In all of his works, Noel Coward sought to be controversial, getting people to question the morals of that time. Himself a confessed homosexual, the attitude of the masses to people like him spurred him on to highlight these types of problems through his great work. Soon, everyday people were dressing like him, and mimicking his mannerisms, such as the use of cigarette holders, and he definitely helped gay people and public gay behaviour become more acceptable.

During the Second World War, such storylines as those seen in This Happy Breed and Brief Encounter helped to keep the populations spirits high. After the Second World War, Coward reinvented himself as a cabaret singer, and some people argue that he was the true founder of Brit Pop. Coward spoke candidly about how he composed music for light hearted comedy and such like. He admitted to leaving the technicalities to a professional, as he had never been trained properly in that area. He also stated that the tunes would come to him in a moment of spontanaiety, whilst sat at dinner, or out for a walk. Apparently, he was far too busy with other things in life to sit down, and consciously try to think up some good tunes. His own idiosyncratic style seemed to work for him.

Noel Coward was knighted in 1970, and died three years later, on the Caribbean island of Jamaica . He will always be remembered as one of the all time great artists who pushed back the boundaries of what was acceptable, constantly challenging the establishment, and a pioneer for minority groups.

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