Film Review by Harry Mount - Mad About the Boy: The Noël Coward Story (12)

The best insight in this engaging documentary comes from Sir Anthony Havelock-Allan (1904-2003). Havelock-Allan, who produced Blithe Spirit, In Which We Serve and Brief Encounter, said of Noël Coward (1899-1973) that he was ‘not very secure. His armour is his super-sophisticated façade.’ He combined syntax, vocabulary and exaggerated facial expressions to sublime comic effect. His Las Vegas accompanist, Peter Matz, particularly admired the small gestures Coward made to show a joke was coming. But all those characteristics come not from arrogance – as they might at first seem to – but from what Coward called his ‘talent to amuse’, honed with a ferocious work ethic from childhood. As his accompanist Norman Hackforth put it, ‘He wouldn’t suffer anything but perfection.’ Born into humble circumstances in Teddington, he was in amateur concerts by the age of seven, boosted by his adored mother Violet. His overwhelming sadness at her death in 195...

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