The 1930s Crises: Conversation Piece and Operette

Home Chat: The Noël Coward Podcast

Host James Harvey and expert Julie Gambling explore two of Noël Coward's 1930s musical plays, 'Conversation Piece' and 'Operette'. The episo

Key takeaways

• The 1934 play 'Conversation Piece' used a Regency Brighton setting to provide escapism during the economic depression.
• Coward famously composed the hit 'I'll Follow My Secret Heart' late at night after realizing he had left a lamp on by the piano.

Main topics

• Noël Coward's 1930s musicals
• Historical context of the 1930s

Notable quotes

I'll Follow My Secret Heart, which became a Coward classic.

Conclusion

The episode provides a fascinating look at how Coward's musical works

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:03) Hello and welcome to the Home Chat Podcast from the Noel Coward Foundation, brought to you from the Noel Coward Room in Hoborne. My name's James Harvey and I'm sat around Coward's desk, as always, with archivist and the Noel Coward Archive Trust, Julie Gambling. Speaker 2 (0:17) Hello James. And Speaker 1 (0:18) today we're talking about not just one Noel Coward period play with music, but two. 1934's Conversation piece deals with the mischief of a French refugee in Regency-era Brighton, while 1938's Operette winds back the clock to... 1906 as a young stage actor gets her chance at stardom. So, Julie, why are we talking about these two plays together? Speaker 2 (0:41) Well, after talking about one of Cal's most famous plays in our last episode... Speaker 1 (0:45) That's Private Lives, available wherever you get your podcasts. Speaker 2 (0:48) Indeed. This week, we are going to talk about two of his lesser-known works from the same decade. Conversation Piece, which is a romantic comedy with music that opened in 1934, and Operette, a musical play which opened in 1938. Now, Conversation Piece, I believe, is called a play with music, whereas Operette is called a musical or something like that. A musical Speaker 1 (1:09) play. Speaker 2 (1:10) Okay. Okay, I do not know the difference. No, Speaker 1 (1:13) I don't think I know the difference. I wonder if Noel would know the difference either, really. Speaker 2 (1:18) Yes, so apologies for all those people who really do know the difference. We're not entirely sure. Both of them seem like quite charming musicals to me. Yes, they've both got Speaker 1 (1:27) around ten songs, I think. Speaker 2 (1:30) Something around Speaker 1 (1:31) that, which seems like a musical to me. I mean, Greatest Showman had, what, five? That's not... Maybe one or two more. Maybe one or two more. Speaker 2 (1:40) The reason we're talking about them together, though, is that they have many similarities. They're both historically set musical, which we'll come back to as well, because Coward did like to write a musical set in a different time from when he was writing. The former is set in Regency Brighton and the latter in Edwardian London. Both had stars who had become famous abroad. The structure of both pieces was similar in the fact that each were beginning with a prologue inviting the audience to enjoy the show. Both shows have a male quartet of ne'er-do-wells, Regency rakes in one and upper-class stage doll johnnies in the other. However, the shows had wildly different receptions, which reflects... how the tastes have changed as Europe moved closer to war as the decade progressed. Yeah, Speaker 1 (2:22) so in many ways, this is the story of European theatre in the 1930s. Indeed. Not to toot our own horn slightly, but we've stumbled across quite a weighty topic here. So let's start with conversation piece. the heck is it all about? In Regency era Brighton, charismatic French Duke Paul has escaped the terrors of the French Revolution and seeks to marry off his young ward, Melanie, to a rich family to restore both of their fortunes. But with Melanie revealed as a common music hall singer and not the former aristocrat Paul claims, will the Regency rich list find there's something fishy about the French? Speaker 2 (3:04) Oh, very good. That's very Speaker 1 (3:05) good. That's the name of a song in... in Conversation Piece for the uninitiated. So, yeah, what did you think of the play, Julie? What do you find about it? Speaker 2 (3:14) Well, Conversation Piece is a charming wisp of a play which combines a Regency romance and think Bridgerton with less sex and more singing. A Speaker 1 (3:22) lot less sex in fairness, actually. And Speaker 2 (3:24) a lot more singing. And a lot more singing. with a mix of soaring romantic and comedic songs. It introduced Our Follow My Secret Heart, which became a Coward classic. Frank Sinatra, Julie Andrews and Sting, among many others, have recorded it. And people really loved this musical. The film star George Sanders, who played Earl of Harringford in this, and this was before he became famous in such films as Hitchcock's Rebecca or Foreign Correspondent in the 1940s, wrote to Coward years later to tell him how his late wife, Benita Hume's favourite story score was conversation piece so it was one that really stuck with people yeah Speaker 1 (4:00) it really um it really seems to capture the public imagination in a way and i think it's reading it today it's not very it's not revived very often but reading it today, you get a real sense. I mean, there's sort of a combination of this big sweeping and sentimental European romance. But you've got this almost Shakespearean trope of someone pretending to be someone else and trying to trick people and all the chaos that ensues from that. There's more of a little bit of innuendo thrown in there as well. Yes. It's quite shocking when you're sort of seeing all these people wandering around in all these... fancy Regency-era costumes and then occasionally someone will make a sort of insinuation and you go, that's very Speaker 2 (4:42) coward Speaker 1 (4:43) -esque. Speaker 2 (4:44) And you have these two different types of women, don't you? You have sort of like the upper-class rich list, but you also have the mistresses as well who sort of wander around the place too. So, yes, and we'll see this repeated in operettes as sort of like the more loose women and then like the other women as well. Speaker 1 (5:02) Another classic coward trope. The scene is laid in Brighton-by-the-Sea, an English fishing village which became a social playground of enduring fame Speaker 2 (5:12) in the gay heyday of the age of... But just to Speaker 1 (5:14) put the play in context a little bit historically, so it was first performed in 1934. And what was going on in 1934, you may well ask, Julie. What Speaker 2 (5:25) was going on? Speaker 1 (5:25) Tell us, James. I will, I shall. So Britain in 1934, they were just sort of starting to climb out of an... economic depression. I think when I was at school I was always taught that the depression that hit Britain after the Wall Street crash wasn't quite as bad as it was in America because Britain was already in a bit of an economic slump beforehand. We just skipped the boom and went straight to birth. So by comparison, it's sort of, you know, everything, well, life couldn't get much worse anyway. So it's all fine. That's Speaker 2 (5:54) a very British attitude, isn't it? It's such a Speaker 1 (5:56) British attitude. But we were hit by the Wall Street crash in 1929. And so by 1934, you're just about starting to climb out. But unemployment's still very high, particularly in Wales and the north of England. Labour's first prime minister Ramsay MacDonald is leading at the head of a conservative dominated national government. So there's all this sense and over the last few years you've had lots of turbulence in prime ministers lasting, you know, I think nine months, I think, Ramsay MacDonald's first term. That seems Speaker 2 (6:26) quite a long time. Speaker 1 (6:27) Yes, well, yeah, by modern standards it's quite a long time. But back then there was all this sort of political chaos going on and I think everyone is basically fed up. In better news though, London Zoo's penguin pool opened in 1934. Speaker 2 (6:41) It's a beautiful pool as well. It's still there. The penguins have now moved to a new, a more kind of like a newer pool. Speaker 1 (6:47) Yes. Speaker 2 (6:47) But you can still see the architectural marvel, art deco marvel that it is. It's just empty now. You just go and look at it and go, ooh. Ooh, it's looking really Speaker 1 (6:56) penguinsy. Speaker 1 (6:58) But what was Coward up to in 1934, Julie? Speaker 2 (7:01) Well, oddly, having a busy decade. I know we always start this, you ask me this question, it's like 1920s, having a busy decade. Basically, he always has a busy decade. But he has, obviously, he's been following up from the hits of Private Lives in 1930 and then Cavalcade in 1931. And then he'd written the 1932 review, Words of Music, which included the hit songs Mad Dog and Englishman and Mad About the Boy. So, you know, it's a pretty successful few years to start. And then this was followed by Design for Living, which he'd written for his friends Lynn Fontaine and... Alfred Lunt, and he co-starred with them on Broadway. It was quite a shocking play at the time. Yes, Speaker 1 (7:40) that's about a menage a trois. Speaker 2 (7:42) It is, yes. Speaker 1 (7:44) The polite way of saying it. Speaker 2 (7:46) And in fact, they couldn't get it past the censors in Britain. So it actually wasn't done over here until much later, just before the war, in fact. Speaker 1 (7:54) So he's still been quite a controversial playwright, isn't he? He is, Speaker 2 (7:58) he is. But then after all this activity, he does what Coward tends to do. He goes off on one of his holidays. And he goes to Trinidad and he stays at Point Ballain, where he writes Point Valaine. which we'll talk about in our next episode, and Conversation Piece. And they are two wildly different pieces of work. I mean, one of them is like a Somerset Maugham type play, a bit very dramatic. And I believe somebody might throw themselves off to their death. I can't quite remember. I will have to reread it in time for our next podcast. And then you have this charming Regency play with music, which is very sweet. Speaker 1 (8:37) Yes. You'll have to wait until the next episode. That's a good cliffhanger, actually. You'll have to wait to see whether someone throws themselves to their death. I can't quite Speaker 2 (8:45) recall. Speaker 1 (8:47) So, yeah, he decides to write something on the Regency, which is quite unusual for Coward, really. So, for anyone listening who... like me, couldn't quite remember why it's called the Regency. I think everyone just, well, I think quite often you just think of Blackadder and we've already mentioned Bridgerton and Jane Austen and things and think, ah, that's the Regency without remembering what it's actually for. So just to remind you, the Regency is the period from the late 18th, early 19th century when England was ruled by the Prince Regent, who's a future George IV, after his father, George III, went mad, as in... Madness of King George. The third. Madness of King George the third, yes. So according to Coward's secretary, Cole Leslie, Coward is never much interested in the Regency era until he read a book called The Regent and His Daughter by Dormer Creston. And this seemed to inspire him so much that he decided to borrow the period for his next play. So in many ways, this is similar to his 1929 smash hit Bittersweet, which... We've covered on the podcast before. And that was set in the late 19th century and also featured a European star. So he's no stranger to these period settings. He chose the location of Brighton because of its association with the Prince Regent, Prince George. He built the famous Brighton Pavilion that you can still see today. Another architectural marvel. And he basically turned it into the seaside resort. that we know it as in the 21st century. So it became very fashionable with the Regency aristocracy because they were all pondering down. George loved it so much that he kept visiting and obviously the aristocratic hangers-on kept coming down going, ooh, what's going on here? It Speaker 2 (10:32) was Speaker 1 (10:32) just quite a Speaker 2 (10:33) sleepy seaside resort before. Yeah, Speaker 1 (10:35) it was. And we even see that in some of the conversation piece because there's, in one song, a quartet of fishermen start singing a lament about how their home has changed. featuring the lyric, we're richer than ever before, but Brighton is Brighton no more. It's very sad. Speaker 2 (10:52) Very Speaker 1 (10:52) sad for the fishermen. And this play sort of comes in at the start. I think we can sort of say it helps kick off a boom in sort of Regency stories. Speaker 2 (11:00) I think there's an argument to be made there. I think there's an argument to be made there. So Speaker 1 (11:03) early to mid-30s, this sort of escapist European romance was very fashionable. As we were saying, people are coming out of a depression. The news is a bit grim and a bit... boring. I think the key thing about economic depressions rather than wars, for example, as we'll come to later, is that people just want this escapist fantasy and they don't feel like they have to pay attention to any... It's just like, well, what can I do? It's just all the money in my account is going down and it's all a bit rubbish. So this European romance became very fashionable. There's Bittersweet, obviously. Then there's Georgette Heyer's Regency Buck, which is her first novel set in the Regency era. It comes out, I think, a few months after this one. Speaker 2 (11:42) Yes, that's right. It comes out the following year. Yes, yeah. Speaker 1 (11:45) Ivan Novello's Glamorous Night is a Ruritanian romance. Speaker 2 (11:50) Yes. And Speaker 1 (11:51) Ruritania is this sort of fictional European state that lots of books and plays and things... uses their inspiration. And Speaker 2 (12:00) although Ivan Novello, his musicals aren't revived today, they were hugely popular at the time. So this is all kind of like part Speaker 1 (12:09) of this cycle of escapism into Speaker 2 (12:14) places that aren't basically London in the midst of an economic depression. Speaker 1 (12:20) Yeah, and I think the Regency in particular becomes popular because if you're looking to do a period a period piece, your choices at that point are sort of where you go back to the Victorian era, but they're more associated with economic boom, sort of big feature of engineering and empire and all this sort of very macho, masculine boom sort of stuff. But then the Regency is more about sort of personal excess and luxury. So in Victorian, sort of stereotype of the Victorians. They're very sort of personally restrained and buttoned up. And then Regency, you've got the Prince Regent running around building pavilions and doing all these fun things. So people love the idea of the Regency in this Speaker 2 (13:01) time. Speaker 1 (13:01) And just to hammer home the idea of personal excess, there's a song in a conversation piece called Charming Charming. Oh, Speaker 2 (13:11) yes. Speaker 1 (13:11) Which is, according to the Worthing Gazette. New friend of the podcast, I've decided. Charming Charming is likely to fill a woman's heart with envy and a husband's financially inclined mind with despair for this song causes all the stars close to be discussed in lyrics. Speaker 2 (13:29) Yes, and it's sort of like they just talk about sleeves or something, don't they? And then there's a chorus of women going, charming, charming. Charming, Speaker 1 (13:35) yes. It's a little full in the sleeves for me. It's very quaint. But that never entirely made sense to me from the Worthing Gazette because... I mean, if they're talking about their clothes all the time, they're still Regency era clothes. I don't know. Speaker 2 (13:48) It was like, I mean, I... Speaker 1 (13:50) Who's going to go out and buy them? Speaker 2 (13:51) I don't know. Maybe it's like influencing fashion. Though I don't seem to recall Regency fashion being kind of like resurrected in the 1930s. Speaker 1 (13:59) No, I think we would have noticed that. Speaker 2 (14:01) Charming! Charming! Charming! Speaker 1 (14:05) But yes, so he decides to set this play in the Regency. Julie, how does the first production go and how does he write his idea? Speaker 2 (14:11) Well, he really writes it for one person in particular. He writes it for Yvon Branton. Apologies again if I have a terrible French accent. I do apologise. Who he absolutely loved. I mean, by 1934, she'd been a star of the French stage for nearly two decades. And Coward admired her so greatly that when he was in Paris, which he frankly was in the 1920s, before anything else, he would go and see her in her latest operette. Like he really utterly adored her. Coward himself said that she was for me the epitome of that so often misapplied word star. She was the true authentic article from the top of her head to the soles of her feet. So he was a fan. And although she had appeared in London before, she had never undertaken a role in English. And her English was so poor, rather like my French, that she learnt much of the script phonetically. This also probably addresses the fact that if you read the script, there actually are large chunks of it in French, which I personally found quite... and had to get Google Translate out to work out what they were talking about. And we're not just talking like a couple of sentences. It's like pages, isn't it? A couple of paragraphs, yeah. Speaker 1 (15:26) I think it's a bit like in Henry V, where they have the little bit where they skip into French. Maybe we're just terrible at languages now. Maybe we were better at languages back then, so West End audiences could be Speaker 2 (15:38) expected. Speaker 1 (15:38) Perhaps they were, because Speaker 2 (15:39) like you say, in 1930, she was on the West End stage. doing a whole part in French. And I think it's John Gielgud who writes about how amazing she is. So, I mean, maybe it was like, you know, going to the opera. You just sort of went and you might not necessarily understand what people were saying. Or maybe you did. Maybe everyone was fluent in French and I'm just an awful philistine. Speaker 1 (15:59) Which is before Duolingo as well. Exactly. Speaker 2 (16:02) So, Promptant was a star with a capital S. She wore enormous black velvet hats, three rows of pigeon egg-sized pearls, and she always had two tiny ducks with her as well. Speaker 1 (16:13) How big is a pigeon egg? Speaker 2 (16:15) Quite chunky. Bigger Speaker 1 (16:17) than you'd expect a pearl to be. Speaker 2 (16:18) Yes, exactly. This thing's heavy. Speaker 1 (16:20) It's three rows of pigeon-sized pearls. Speaker 2 (16:24) Now, opposite her was cast Romney Brent, who'd recently starred in Cow's Review, Words and Music. And he'd actually sung Mad Dogs and Englishmen. So he was one of the first people to introduce that song. Speaker 2 (16:37) But as rehearsals went on and Coward was directing this, he thought that Brent wasn't up to the part. And he did this thing, which he does later in life when he goes to see the film A Storied Heart being filmed and he thinks Michael Redgrave really isn't up to it and decides to step in. He decides to take on the lead. And