Noël Coward

            On Monday morning I only saw three live bedbugs. One was an adult near the baseboard at the foot of my bed and it was black and greasy inside. The other two were on the wall above the head of my bed and they were babies. I think I saw that a few more babies had been caught on the carpet tape. 

            I published “L’epoque légendaire” (The Legendary Era) by Boris Vian on my Christian’s Translations blog. I looked for and found some photos of Vian that I hadn’t seen before. 

            I listened to “Docteur Faust” by Serge Gainsbourg while comparing the transcript I’d made a few years ago with the one I found yesterday online. I’ve gone through about half of both transcripts and so far the recent one seems more correct. 

            I weighed 91.7 kilos before breakfast. 

            I played my Gibson Les Paul Studio during song practice and it stayed in tune most of the time. 

            I weighed 92.8 kilos before lunch. 

            In the afternoon I took a bike ride downtown and back. 

            I weighed 91.55 kilos at 17:55. 

            I was three days behind in my journal and worked on catching up. 

            I had a potato with margarine and a piece of roast pork while watching an interview with Carol Burnett that was included in the DVD of her shows. 

            Carol says Vicki Lawrence was very shy and they didn’t give her too much to begin with. But she learned her craft in front of 30 million people a week. Harvey Korman took her under his wing and mentored her. he taught her how to do accents and how to not just listen for her cue but how to listen to the other actors. 

            Carol started out being kooky and crossing her eyes but over the years her comic delivery became more mature. She says it was probably only 7% of the time that they broke up during a skit.

            Carol could see the production staff in the glass booth often making comments and laughing during her Q & A with the audience. She wanted to know what they were saying so she wore an ear piece and had Bob Mackie design a dress that would conceal it. When she heard their jokes in response to audience questions she would repeat them in her answers and the directors thought she must be wearing a wire. They had the cameraman move behind her but they couldn’t see it. On the way home her husband the producer Joe Hamilton asked her if she’d been wearing a wire but she pretended she didn’t know what he was talking about. She never admitted it until this interview. 

            “Ragtime Cowboy Joe” was the only song James Stewart could play on the piano. He’d gotten to Carol’s last show early and they were hiding him from her. When Carol ended the series as the Charwoman they surprised her by having a lot of her favourite guest stars file past her, such as Bernadette Peters, Betty White, Alan Ludden, Roddy McDowell, Jim Nabors, and even Harvey Korman was there. 

            Mel Tormé, Bernadette Peters, Chita Rivera were also very good comic sketch actors. A lot of people known as singers liked to come on the show because they would be included in sketches. 

            Carol wants to see more classy humour on TV. 

            Placido Domingo told Carol her show helped him learn English. 

            I’ve been listening to Noel Coward who wrote some great songs with some very clever lyrics. He was actually better than the most renowned lyricists of his era like Sondheim, Mercer, and Porter. He made his stage debut by the age of 6. At 14 he became the protégé and probably lover of Philip Streatfield. He wrote his first play at 16. He attended the Italia Conti Academy of Theatre Art. The earliest known recording of a Noël Coward song was “Peter Pan” in 1918. He made his film debut in Hearts of the World. His first two co-written plays were Ida Collaborates and Women and Whisky. His first solo play was The Rat Trap in 1918. His first West End play was I’ll Leave It To You in 1920. His early writings in the 1920s were short songs and sketches for revue shows. In 1920 he started the turtleneck fad. His first musical review was London Calling in 1923. His first critical and financial hit was The Vortex in 1924, which was shocking for its use of drugs and sex and attracted large audiences. He wrote Hay Fever, Private Lives, Present Laughter, and Bitter Sweet. In 1925 he had four plays running at the same time in the West End. By 1930 he was the highest earning author in the western world with an income of the modern equivalent of 3 million pounds a year. He thrived during the Great Depression. His plays made into movies were Cavalcade, This Happy Breed, In Which We Serve (which he co-directed), Blithe Spirit, Brief Encounter, Design for Living, He was also a composer, painter and comedian. He was the first British pop star. He worked under cover for British intelligence during the war. He ran the British propaganda office in Paris. He toured the world to entertain British troops. He was on Hitler’s hit list of British celebrities who would be executed if Germany conquered England. After WWII he reinvented himself as a songwriter and cabaret singer with songs like “Mad Dogs and Englishmen”, “I’ll See You Again”, “I Went to a Marvellous Party”, “Don’t Let’s Be Beastly to the Germans”, and “London Pride”. . Paramount offered him $500 a week for 23 years if he would make three commitments for them either as a writer, actor or director. He turned them down because he thought that his fans in England would call him a sell-out. In 1954 he did a season in Las Vegas, performing for two nights a week for what he would later call “Nescafe Society” and earning $35,000 a week (which was like almost half a million now). It was recorded as Noël Coward at Las Vegas. He starred in the Ford Star Jubilee TV series in 1955. He became a tax exile in Bermuda in 1956. He starred in The Scoundrel. He co-starred in The Italian Job, Surprise Package, Our Man in Havana, Boom, . He wrote the novel Pomp and Circumstance in 1960. He was close friends with Marlene Dietrich. He was knighted in 1970 and was the first tax exile to receive that honour. He wrote 140 plays and hundreds of songs. The character of Beverly Carlton in The Man Who Came to Dinner was based on Coward. When Gertrude Lawrence married Richard Aldrich he sent her a telegram: “Dear Mrs. A. Hooray Hooray! Finally you are deflowered. I love you now as always. Sincerely Noel Coward.” He preferred a cup of cocoa over Hollywood. The Queen Mother attended his funeral service “Because he was my friend”.