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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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