In the Philippines they have lovely screens
To protect you from the glare
In the Malay States there are hats like plates
Which the Britishers won’t wear
At twelve noon the natives swoon
And no further work is done
But mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the midday sun
‘Mad Dogs and Englishmen’ is one of many funny songs written by the flamboyant English writer, composer, director and performer Noel Coward, known for his wit, flamboyance and personal style, which Time magazine, when it put him on the cover of its 1933 edition, summarised as ‘a combination of cheek and chic, pose and poise.’
Coward was born in 1899 and died in 1973. This feature-length biographical documentary, made last year to mark the 50th anniversary of his death, charts his progress from child performer in the pre-screen days to becoming, by the age of thirty, the highest-paid writer in the world and a star, as they say, of stage and screen. His career faltered after the war and he coped with changing fashion by changing artistic direction, but it wouldn’t be true to say he reinvented himself; he maintained that distinctive persona of creative aristocrat right to the end.
Coward was very much the author of his own legend. Through sheer force of will he converted a childhood stutter into the clipped aristocratic tones for which he was famous. He talked like a toff but never hid his humble origins. His father was a struggling piano salesman and his mother ran a boarding-house in Pimlico, working like a drudge to support her three sons, the eldest of whom died in childhood. The family had neither money nor educational tradition, although they were musical. One of his aunts was known as ‘The Twickenham Nightingale’, a fact he reports with a trademark wry smile and the hint of an eye-roll.
Coward remained devoted to his mother until her death. It was she who put him on the stage at the age of 11, an experience he drew on for another of his amusing songs.
Don’t put your daughter on the stage, Mrs. Worthington
Don’t put your daughter on the stage
She’s a bit of an ugly duckling
You must honestly confess
And the width of her seat
Would surely defeat
Her chances of success.
He is very entertaining in recounting how his own stage career began. Indeed, all his stories are told entertainingly, their occasional mild bitchiness leavened by self-deprecating wit. The stories are told here through clips from TV interviews, notably with David Frost and Melvyn Bragg. Alan Cumming narrates, and gay actor Rupert Everett voices extracts from his letters and diaries. We also hear fond memories and praise from Lawrence Olivier, Richard Attenborough, Maggie Smith, Michael Caine, Lauren Bacall, Harold Pinter, John Mills, Lucille Ball and Frank Sinatra, who once advised would-be singers that if they wanted to learn the craft they should ‘go and listen to Mr Noel Coward’.
The title – Mad About the Boy – is taken from one of his more serious songs, a polished romantic ballad supposedly sung by a young woman to a male matinee idol. But its mood of unrequited yearning reflects the great sadness of his life – he was a gay man at a time when homosexuality was illegal in the UK and the USA. A moody modern version (sung by Adam Lambert, who replaced Freddie Mercury in Queen) plays over much of the narration, providing a poignant musical accompaniment to stories about how he did sometimes and somehow find love.
As the years passed and legal regimes in the anglosphere became more tolerant and progressive, the restraints imposed on his self-expression relaxed so that by the late 60s he was able to joke about it. In one TV interview, when asked how he educated himself, he said ‘I joined a public lavatory, sorry – library’, and then a second later, he quips ‘Freudian slip’.
My companion and I debated whether this was a well-rehearsed punchline whose opportunity had finally come, or a genuine spur-of-the-moment witty comeback.
I would say ‘he wrote innumerable songs and plays’, but they are in fact enumerated at the end over the credits, and it’s a formidable tally. You will know of his plays Blithe Spirit, Private Lives and Brief Encounter, all of which were made into films. He also wrote, starred in and co-directed the wartime movie In Which We Serve, based on an episode in the life of Louis Mountbatten.
Coward was a genuine patriot, despite that louche, snooty demeanour. He even worked as a spy for the British government during the war, feeding disinformation to the Germans. He truly was a fascinating and remarkable man.
My younger companion had heard of the famous plays. I was more interested in the funny songs, which apart from the ones already mentioned include ‘Don’t Let’s Be Beastly to the Germans’….
…when our victory is ultimately won,
It was just those nasty Nazis who persuaded them to fight
And their Beethoven and Bach are really far worse than their bite.
And although he adopted the persona of an aristocrat, he could be slyly satirical about the class system, as in
The Stately Homes of England,
How beautiful they stand,
To prove the upper classes
Have still the upper hand;
……
The playing fields of Eton
Have made us frightfully brave
And though if the Van Dycks have to go
And we pawn the Bechstein Grand,
We’ll stand by the Stately Homes of England.
On paper it’s not always easy to see how the lyrics scan to the rhythm of the song, but with his gift for the complex rhyme and the perfectly-timed pause, The Master always nails it.
Mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the midday sun
The Japanese don’t care to
The Chinese wouldn’t dare to
Hindus and Argentines sleep firmly from twelve ’til one
But Englishmen detest a siesta.
Mad Dogs is the only song we see him performing in full, in an old film clip, and he manages to make that last line round out the verse with satisfying rhythmic precision. Unfortunately he sings at breakneck speed and the audio is murky, which is a bit of a problem throughout this production. But look it up and listen online and you’ll see what I mean.
Asked in one interview how he would like to be remembered, Noel Coward pauses a moment and says ‘that I amused people’. Judging by the frequent chuckling and chortling of the audience at the screening I attended, much of it emanating from yours truly, he’s still succeeding, even though he’s been dead for 50 years.