LETTERS OF NOEL COWARD, THE

C2007 VERY GOOD HARDBACK IN VG DUST JACKET, MINOR WEAR KNOPF [COWARD, NOEL EDITED BY BARRY DAY]

From Publisher:

A publishing event The first and definitive collection of letters (most of them previously unpublished) both from and to the incomparable Noel Coward, a unique and irresistible portrait of a society and age--from the Blitz to the Ritz and beyond.
The range, charm, and vitality of his talents--he was a playwright, actor, composer, librettist, lyricist, director, painter, writer, cabaret singer, wit--brought him into close encounters, and often close friendship, with the great and the gifted. He knew everybody who was anybody in the theater and in the movies, in literature and in politics, on both sides of the Atlantic.
Among those at his "marvelous party" George Bernard Shaw . . . T. E. Lawrence . . . Virginia Woolf . . . the Churchills . . . Daphne Du Maurier . . . Greta Garbo (she wrote asking him to marry her; he wrote back saying he almost accepted) . . . Ian Fleming . . . W. Somerset Maugham . . . Marlene Dietrich (he advised her, "To hell with God damned 'L'Amour.' It always causes far more trouble than it is worth") . . . Tallulah Bankhead . . . Edith Sitwell . . . FDR . . . Gertrude Lawrence (in a cable about "Private Lives" "Have written delightful new comedy stop good part for you stop wonderful one for me stop"), and many more.
There are letters about his productions of "Bitter Sweet" . . . "Cavalcade" . . . "In Which We Serve" . . . "Brief Encounter" . . . "Private Lives, " etc. . . . about his activities during World War II (he was a spy for the British government along with co-conspirator Cary Grant) . . . about the move to make him a knight that was endorsed in a personal letter from King George VI and blocked by Winston Churchill. Here are letters to and from his beloved mother, Violet . . . his longtime set and costume designer, Gladys Calthrop . . . his traveling companion from the 1930s on, Lord Amherst . . . and his business manager and onetime lover, Jack Wilson, in which he reveals his "secret heart."
Profoundly savvy, witty, loving, bitchy, and often surprisingly moving, "The Letters of Noel Coward" gives us "Destiny's Tot" at his crackling best. An irresistible portrait of a time, of the man himself, and of the world he lived in and enchanted.

Product Info

ISBN: 0375423036

ISBN-13: 9780375423031

Publisher: KNOPF

Type: Used

Binding: Hardcover

Seller Info

BluestockingBooks

Address: 3817 Fifth Ave San Diego, California

Website: https://www.bluestockingbooks.com

Country: United States