This odd diversity of misery and joy

Grrrr. Monday. It's grim.

There are some things that are certain to cheer one up at the start of a week, however!

One of them is our beloved Sir Noël Coward, The Master, whose 125th birthday it is today!

The other is the assembled talents of a bevy of drag queens. From Belgium.

Put 'em together on a Tacky Music Monday, and what do you get? This old fave!

Stephen Gallavin - Mad About The Boy

Have a good week, dear reader.

What explains this mass mania to leave Pennsylvania?

It was "The Master" Sir Noël Coward's birthday yesterday. All hail.

Here's another favourite of ours among his many fabulously cynical numbers, aptly performed by another of our Patron Saints, by way of a celebration:

Elaine Stritch - Why Do the Wrong People Travel? [Sail Away]

Travel they say improves the mind,
An irritating platitude, which frankly, entre nous,
Is very far from true.

Personally I've yet to find that longitude and latitude
Can educate those scores of monumental bores
Who travel in groups and herds and troupes
Of varying breeds and sexes
Till the whole world reels...

To shouts and squeals...
And the clicking of Roliflexes.

Why do the wrong people travel, travel, travel
When the right people stay back home?
What compulsion compels them
And who the hell tells them
To drag their cans to Zanzibar,
Instead of staying quietly in Omaha.
The Taj Mahal and the Grand Canal
And the sunny French Rivera
Would be less oppressed if the Middle West
Would settle for somewhere rather nearer.

Please do not think that I criticize or cavel
At a genuine urge to roam.
But why, oh why, do the wrong people travel
When the right people stay back home
And mind their business
When the right people stay back home
And eat hot doughnuts
When the right people stay back home
I sometimes wonder
Why the right people stay back home?

Just when you think romance is ripe it rather
Sharply dawns on you
That each sweet serenade is for the tourist trade
Any attractive native type who resolutely fawns on you
Will give as his address American Express
There isn't a rock between Bangkok
And the beaches of His---pianola
That does not recoil from suntan oil
And the gurgle of Coca-Cola

Why do the wrong people travel, travel, travel
When the right people stay back home?
What explains this mass mania to leave Pennsylvania
And clack around like flocks of geese.
Demanding dry Martinis on the isles of Greece
In the smallest street, where the gourmets meet,
They invariably fetch up
And it's hard to make them accept a steak
That isn't served rare and smeared with ketchup.

Millions of tourists are churning up the gravel
While they gaze at St. Peter's Dome,

But why, oh why do the wrong people travel
When the right people stay back home
With Cinerama
When the right people stay back home
With all that Kleenex
When the right people stay back home
I merely asking
Why the right people stay back home?

What peculiar obsessions inspire those processions
Of families from Houston Tex
With all those cameras around their necks?
They will take a train
Or an aeroplane
For an hour on the Costa Brava,
And they'll see Pompeii
On the only day
When it's up to its ass in molten lava!

It would take years to unravel, ravel, ravel
Every impulse that makes them wanna roam.
But why oh WHY do the wrong people travel
When the right people stay at home...
And play Canasta
When the right people stay back home
Won't someone tell me
Why the right people stay back home?

Youthful allure you can’t procure

Having almost "lost a day" after rolling in at 5.30am from Our Sal's birthday party, then last night spending a third night out on the trot with friends visiting London from "oop North", I have a little bit of catching up to do - not least the fact that yesterday was The Master Noël Coward's birthday, and a tribute seems fitting.

So without further ado, here is the man himself singing a rather pithy number that I certainly have never heard before...

Noël Coward - What's Going to Happen to the Tots

Life today is hectic
Our world is running away
Only the wise can recognize
The process of decay
Unhappily, all our dialectic
Is quite unable to say whether we’re on the beam or not
Whether we’ll rise supreme or not
Whether this new regime or not
Is leading us astray

We all have Frigidaires, radios
Television and movie shows
To shield us from the ultimate abyss
We have our daily bread neatly cut
Every modern convenience but
The question that confronts us all is this:

What’s going to happen to the children
When there aren’t any more grown-ups?
Having been injected with some rather peculiar glands
Darling Mum’s gone platinum
And dances to all the rumba bands
The songs that she sings at twilight
Would certainly be the highlight
For some of those claques that Elsa Maxwell
Takes around in yachts
Rockabye, rockabye, rockabye my darlings
Mother requires a few more shots
Does it amuse the tiny mites
To see their parents high as kites?
What’s, what’s, what’s going to happen to the tots?

Life today’s neurotic, a ceaseless battle we wage;
Millions are spent to circumvent
The march of middle age
The fact that we grab each new narcotic
Can only prove in the end

Whether our hormones gel or not
Whether our cells rebel or not
Whether we’re blown to hell or not
We’ll all be round the bend
From taking Benzedrine, Dexamyl
Every possible sleeping pill
To knock us out or knock us into shape
We all have shots for this, shots for that
Shots for making us thin or fat
But there’s one problem that we can’t escape

What’s going to happen to the children
When there aren’t any more grown-ups?
Thanks to plastic surgery and uncle’s abrupt demise
Dear Aunt Rose has changed her nose
But doesn’t appear to realize
The pleasures that once were heaven
Look silly at sixty-seven
And youthful allure you can’t procure
In terms of perms and pots
So lullaby, lullaby, lullaby my darlings
Try not to scratch those large red spots
Think of the shock when mummy’s face
Is lifted from its proper place
What’s, what’s, what’s going to happen to the tots?

What’s going to happen to the children
When there aren’t any more grown-ups?
It’s bizarre when grandmama, without getting out of breath
Starts to jive at eighty-five and frightens the little ones to death
The police had to send a squad car
When daddy got fried on vodka
And tied a tweed coat round mummy’s throat
In several sailor’s knots
Hushabye, hushabye, hushabye my darlings
Try not to fret and wet your cots
One day you’ll clench your tiny fists
And murder your psychiatrists
What’s, what’s, what’s going to happen to the tots?

Brilliance personified.

Sir Noël Peirce Coward (16th December 1899 – 26th March 1973)

Thoughts for the Day

Alexander Armstrong - London Pride [Noël Coward]

London Pride has been handed down to us,
London Pride is a flower that's free.
London Pride means our own dear town to us,
And our pride it forever will be.
Grey city,
Stubbornly implanted,
Taken so for granted
For a thousand years.
Stay, city,
Smokily enchanted,
Cradle of our memories,
Of our hopes and fears.

[the news]

A country where the verb "to work" becomes a most improper noun

“I like long walks, especially when they are taken by people who annoy me”

"It's discouraging to think how many people are shocked by honesty and how few by deceit."

"Success took me to her bosom like a maternal boa constrictor."

"I love criticism just so long as it's unqualified praise."

"Never mind, dear, we're all made the same, though some more than others."

He was terribly World Weary:

Noel Coward - World Weary

When I'm feeling weary and blue, I'm only too
Glad to be left alone
Dreaming of a place in the sun when day is done
Far from a telephone
Hardly ever see the sky
Buildings seem to grow so high
Give me somewhere peaceful and grand
Where all the land
Slumbers in monotone

I'm world weary, world weary, living in a great big town
I find it so dreary, so dreary
Everything looks grey or brown
I want an ocean blue
Great big trees
Bird's eye view of the Pyrenees
I wanna watch the moon rise up
See the great red sun go down
Watching clouds go by through a windy sky fascinates me
But if I do it in the street every cop I meet simply hates me
Because I'm world weary, world weary
Tired of all these jumping jacks
I wanna get right back to nature and relax

I'm world weary, world weary, living in a great big town.
I find it so dreary, so dreary,
Everything looks grey or brown.
I want a horse and plough, chickens too,
Just one cow with a wistful moo,
A country where the verb "to work"
Becomes a most improper noun
I can hardly wait till I see the great open spaces.
My loving friends will not be there I'm so sick of their damned fool faces
Because I'm world weary, world weary,
I could kiss the railroad tracks,
I wanna get right back to nature,
Assume a horizontal stature,
I wanna get right back to nature and relax.

Sir Noël Peirce Coward (16th December 1899 – 26th March 1973)

A class beyond compare

It's foul out there, and yet again we have to haul ourselves reluctantly out into it to earn our crust...

Who better to cheer us up on this Tacky Music Monday but tomorrow's birthday girl Miss Mary Martin and The Master himself Noel Coward?

It does the trick for me!

Noel Coward and Mary Martin Medley

Medley:
Get Out Those Old Records
They Didn't Believe Me
'S Wonderful
Time on My Hands
I Didn't Know What Time It Was
Anything Goes
Dancing in the Dark
Ballerina
I Won't Dance
Papa, Won't You Dance with Me?

Sublime.

Have a good week, peeps!

People I employ have the impertinence to call me Myrna Loy

As my regular reader will no doubt be aware, we at Dolores Delargo Towers have - among many obsessions - a passion for Art Deco, and a particular adoration of The Master Noël Coward. Imagine our delight when tickets came up for an intimate cabaret that successfully managed to blend the two things into one...

Brasserie Zedel is a marvellous survivor of the "march of progress". When the Crown Estate decided to dispense with the gargantuan Regent Palace Hotel at the edge of Piccadilly Circus back in 2010 [it had become very run-down, and catered mainly for back-packers and cheap tourists by that stage], parts of its edifice [presumably listed] were preserved to form the cornerstones of the new office and retail development [home to the UK base of Tw*tter, apparently] that went up in its place.

Thankfully, some of the subterranean suites, bars and restaurant also survived in their Art Deco glory.





Perfectly restored and immaculately detailed with posters and photos from the "Jazz Age", Brasserie Zedel now occupies the space and continues that Deco tradition today, with a combination of dining, champagne and cocktails in its three suites. Our evening's entertainment yesterday was hosted in the small-but-beautifully-extravagant "Crazy Coqs Cabaret Room" (known in the 1930s as the "Chez Cup Bar") - in the masterful [pun intended] company of Coward champion and expert performer Stefan Bednarczyk.

And it was superb.

Mr Bednarczyk is more than just an expert in "Noël Cowardry"; he has made it his life's work to get to know the man. Over time he befriended Graham Payn (Coward's widower), Judy Campbell (who Coward called his "muse") and Sheridan Morley (his official biographer, whose widow Ruth is Zedel's artistic director), all of whom provided him with pithy anecdotes and some largely unfamiliar material from which he crafted the show.

Not least of these "rarities" - and we had certainly never heard any of them before - were Coward's poems (or "verses" as he preferred to call them). Mostly autobiographical, and at times achingly melancholy, they provided a marvellous foil for Mr Bednarczyk's interpretations of more recognisable material like Don't Put Your Daughter On The Stage Mrs Worthington and Mad Dogs And Englishmen. This one took our breath away - I Am No Good At Love:

I am no good at love
My heart should be wise and free
I kill the unfortunate golden goose
Whoever it may be
With over-articulate tenderness
And too much intensity.

I am no good at love
I batter it out of shape
Suspicion tears at my sleepless mind
And gibbering like an ape,
I lie alone in the endless dark
Knowing there's no escape.

I am no good at love
When my easy heart I yield
Wild words come tumbling from my mouth
Which should have stayed concealed;
And my jealousy turns a bed of bliss
Into a battlefield.

I am no good at love
I betray it with little sins
For I feel the misery of the end
In the moment that it begins
And the bitterness of the last good-bye
Is the bitterness that wins.

As reviewer Fiona-Jane Weston rightly states:

"Bednarczyk’s recitations of these works were a masterclass in verse-speaking, embracing enjambed lines where the sense and breath followed from one line into the next, and using the rhythm and metre skilfully, avoiding the temptation to allow the narrative to descend into prose."

His performance of the more familiar Coward songbook was also delightful. Perfectly phrased, yet never veering into sentimentalism or literal impersonation, he gave us a comprehensive tour of later works such as Don’t Let’s Be Beastly to the Germans, London Pride, There Are Bad Times Just Around the Corner [dedicated to the recent cabinet re-shuffle, with the sardonic observation that despite everything Iain Duncan-Smith and Jeremy Hunt are still in their jobs...], and our own favourites Nina and If Love Were All.

And, befitting of a performer who has his eye on political campaigning - not least for gay rights - Mr Bednarczyk performed the sadly excised male version of Mad About The Boy [that I featured on the occasion of The Master's birthday last year]. The lyrics are memorable:

Mad about the boy
I know it’s silly
But I’m mad about the boy
And even Dr Freud cannot explain
Those vexing dreams
I’ve had about the boy

When I told my wife
She said
“I never heard such nonsense in my life!”
Her lack of sympathy
Embarrassed me
And made me frankly glad about the boy.

My doctor can’t advise me
He’d help me if he could
Three time he’s tried to psychoanalyse me
But it’s just no good

People I employ
Have the impertinence
To call me Myrna Loy
I rise above it
Frankly love it
‘Cos I’m absolutely
Mad about the boy

No video footage of Stefan Bednarczyk performing Noël Coward exists on the web, unfortunately. In fact I can't even find a website for Mr B [although I did find out that he appeared in Mike Leigh's Gilbert & Sullivan movie Topsy Turvy]!

Here, instead, is the opera genius Felicity Lott with her inimitable version of another Coward classic that Mr Bednarczyk performed for us - A Bar on the Piccola Marina:

Felicity Lott - A Bar on the Piccola Marina

If ever this show pops up again (which it undoubtedly will), I highly recommend to anyone to grab a ticket. We had a marvellous time.

And if you are in the vicinity of Piccadilly Circus, you simply must visit Brasserie Zedel!

I rise above it, frankly love it

It seems the great and the good are dropping in droves - Eleanor, Peter, now Joan - so it's good to have a celebration for Noël Coward's birthday by way of an uplift.

The Master may have written his masterpiece Mad About The Boy about Douglas Fairbanks Jr, Ramon Novarro, Rudolf Valentino, Cary Grant or Tyrone Power, back in 1932.

However, given that Noël observed in 1962 "if Peter O'Toole had been any prettier, they would have had to call the film Florence of Arabia", I think today, of all days, we should dedicate it to him.



Here to perform it for us - and what a joy it is to discover this fabulous version! - is none other than [the ex of another of today's birthday boys Benny Andersson] Miss Anni-Frid Lyngstad:

Anni-Frid Lyngstadt - Mad About The Boy

Sublime...

From BytesDaily blog:

Noël Coward wrote the song for a 1932 London revue, Words and Music. The song concerns the unrequited love of the singer for a film star and, as originally written, it was sung by four different women who are queued outside a cinema, all pining for the matinee idol. For the New York Broadway version, Coward wrote additional verses that referred to gay feelings, effeminacy and conversion therapy. The verses ran foul of censorship laws and were never performed, references to homosexuality being forbidden.

The original lyrics are:

Mad about the boy
I know it's stupid to be mad about the boy
I'm so ashamed of it but must admit the sleepless nights I've had
About the boy

On the silver screen
He melts my foolish heart in every single scene
Although I'm quite aware that here and there are traces of the cad
About the boy

Lord knows I'm not a fool girl
I really shouldn't care
Lord knows I'm not a school girl
In the fury of her first affair

Will it ever cloy
This odd diversity of misery and joy
I'm feeling quite insane and young again
And all because I'm mad about the boy

So if I could employ
A little magic that will finally destroy
This dream that pains me and enchains me
But I can't because I'm mad...
I'm mad about the boy

One of the verses in the "straight" version is

Mad about the boy,
It's pretty funny
But I'm mad about the boy.
He has a gay appeal that makes me feel
There's maybe something sad about the boy.

The word “gay” did not become synonymous with homosexual for another three decades but, according to the Encyclopaedia Of Homosexuality, the phrase "gay cat" meaning "a homosexual boy" first appeared in print in 1933. It is therefore likely that the use of the word gay for homosexual was already in use and that the straight lyrics include in-jokes by Noël Coward.

The lyrics to the banned version are:

Mad about the boy
I know it’s silly
But I’m mad about the boy
And even Dr Freud cannot explain
Those vexing dreams
I’ve had about the boy

When I told my wife
She said
“I never heard such nonsense in my life!”
Her lack of sympathy
Embarrassed me
And made me frankly glad about the boy.

My doctor can’t advise me
He’d help me if he could
Three time he’s tried to psychoanalyse me
But it’s just no good

People I employ
Have the impertinence
To call me Myrna Loy
I rise above it
Frankly love it
‘Cos I’m absolutely
Mad about the boy

We have, here at Dolores Delargo Towers, a cover of the "gay" version by the late Peter Greenwell, but unfortunately no recording appears to be "out there" by The Master himself.



And there was only one Noël Coward, after all.

I fear on the whole, an ingénue role would emphasize her squint

On the splendid occasion of that eternally inspirational icon of camp Sir Noel Coward's birthday, I think it appropriate to revisit the things I had to say on the occasion of his 110th anniversary in 2009:

It was for a very good reason that he was known as "The Master". His wit, camp, style and poise genuinely did epitomise a whole era of British life -through his plays, songs, music, acting, performance and sheer panache.

His stage productions including Cavalcade, The Vortex, Hay Fever, Private Lives, Design for Living, Present Laughter, Bitter Sweet and Blithe Spirit, and films such as Brief Encounter are forever embedded in the psyche as examples of what represents "Britishness" in classic 20th Century drama.

UK society [and indeed high society - among his close friends were Prince George, Duke of Kent, and Lord Louis Mountbatten} adored him so much that there was an almost universal decision to ignore his gay lifestyle and his long-term relationship with Graham Payn. ["There are still a few old ladies in Worthing who don't know", he said.]

After all, his film In Which We Serve and songs such as London Pride had been officially sanctioned as a major contribution to the war effort, and in real life he worked on behalf of the the Secret Service for much of WW2... The rest is history, as Sir Noel continued to be an internationally beloved dilettante until his death in 1973.

So without further ado, here is a cavalcade (geddit?) of the Master's finest moments...

Noel Coward - Nina

Noel Coward in Havana

Noel Coward - London Pride

Noel Coward - Mrs Worthington

Noel Coward Society

And I said no, no, no

No comment...

Noel Coward - Rehab

Amy Winehouse RIP

"Although she never was a girl to let a man go, she wouldn't sacrifice her principles for sex."

What mere words of mine could pay tribute to the sheer genius that was Noël Coward (who was born 110 years ago today)?

It was for a very good reason that he was known as "The Master". His wit, camp, style and poise genuinely did epitomise a whole era of British life -through his plays, songs, music, acting, performance and sheer panache.

His stage productions including Cavalcade, The Vortex, Hay Fever, Private Lives, Design for Living, Present Laughter, Bitter Sweet and Blithe Spirit, and films such as Brief Encounter are forever embedded in the psyche as examples of what represents "Britishness" in classic 20th Century drama.

UK society (and indeed high society - among his close friends were Prince George, Duke of Kent, and Lord Louis Mountbatten) adored him so much that there was an almost universal decision to ignore his gay lifestyle and his long-term relationship with Graham Payne. ("There are still a few old ladies in Worthing who don't know", he said.)

After all, his film In Which We Serve and songs such as London Pride had been officially sanctioned as a major contribution to the war effort, and in real life he worked on behalf of the the Secret Service for much of WW2... The rest is history, as Sir Noël continued to be an internationally beloved dilettante until his death in 1973.

So without further ado, here is a cavalcade (geddit?) of the Master's finest moments...

Noel Coward - Nina

Noel Coward in Havana

Noel Coward - London Pride

Noel Coward - Mrs Worthington

Here is Stephen Fry paying tribute to The Master earlier this week:

Stephen Fry with The Noël Coward Society

And finally, my favourite version of a favourite Noël Coward song by that latter-day genius Neil Hannon and The Divine Comedy:

Divine Comedy - I've Been To A Marvellous Party

Noël Coward Society

Noël Coward on Wikipedia

The original version of Rehab

The Amy Winehouse classic as you've probably never heard it before...

Noël Coward - Rehab

Star Quality, indeed

"My importance to the world is relatively small. On the other hand, my importance to myself is tremendous. I am all I have to work with, to play with, to suffer and to enjoy. It is not the eyes of others that I am wary of, but of my own. I do not intend to let myself down more than I can possibly help, and I find that the fewer illusions I have about myself or the world around me, the better company I am for myself."

We went to the very last day of the exhibition Star Quality: Aspects of Noël Coward at the National Theatre last night. I figured I’d lose too many Princess Points if I had missed it.

It was a fabulous collection of ephemera, photographs and letters relating to the incredibly creative life of "The Master" - from his early years as a young actor, through his early successes with Hay Fever, Cavalcade, Blithe Spirit and Private Lives, the War Years (when he was not only lauded for his morale-boosting films such as In Which We Serve and Brief Encounter but was also acting as a spy for HM Government!), his friendships with Gertie Lawrence, Bea Lillie, Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh, The Lunts and Lord Mountbatten, to his later reinvention as a top-billing cabaret artist in Las Vegas and his private life with partner Graham Payn.

Star billing went, of course, to that dressing gown...



An incredible display - but one of the revelations that came out of the exhibition was his lifelong friendship with a very remarkable pair of queens indeed. Raymond Mander and Joe Mitchenson were avid collectors of, and enthusiasts for, everything to do with the British theatre. Many of the items featured in the exhibition were in fact from their private collection, which apparently has at its heart two thousand or more archive boxes containing playbills, posters, programmes, engravings, cuttings and production photographs of London and regional theatres, with files on every actor and actress of note in the British theatre, and sections on circus, dance, opera, music-hall, variety, dramatists, singers and composers, together with many engravings, figurines and pictures.

The Mander and Mitcheson collection

Although the collection is only open to researchers, which is a shame, it is a tribute to these two that so much of the history of theatre - and indeed Noel Coward’s own - might well have been lost to private hands. Hopefully one day, someone might find a permanent exhibition space for this marvellous life’s work - a Theatre Museum, perhaps? (Oh no, I forgot - the last one closed down thanks to a lack of support from the rich commercial theatres!)

Anyway, here’s a treat from The Master himself.

Noel Coward - Mad Dogs and Englishmen

Article from The Independent: What’s inspiring the Noel Coward renaissance?

Noel Coward website