If I tried to list all the accomplishments of Sir Noël Coward, this paragraph would stretch to several pages. Even the short version is long: leading man on Broadway, London’s West End, and Hollywood; author of over 60 plays including perennials like Private Lives and Blithe Spirit as well as more daring material like The Vortex; screenwriter of films as varied as the patriotic In Which We Serve and the romantic slow burner Brief Encounter; author of over 300 songs including popular standards like Mad About the Boy as well as novels, short stories, and a 3-volume autobiography; cabaret artist of stage and television; and agent of the British Secret Intelligence Service.
The single most impressive thing Coward may have done, however, was to create a public persona which he sold so well and so consistently that no one gave a thought to the possibility that the casually cultured and ever so charming upper-crust English gentleman who delighted them on stage was a creation of a man who was born to an unhappy and sometimes barely solvent family, left school at age 9, and was gay.
Coward’s public persona figures large in Barnaby Thompson’s documentary Mad About the Boy: The Noël Coward Story, a choice which saves it from becoming a mere collection of celebratory clips and quotes (although that could also be fun). The result is that instead of yet another celebrity hype doc, Thompson delivers a serious film with an intelligent script (also by Thompson, and read by Alan Cumming) that never forgets that there was a man behind the public image, a man who perfected his ability to invent create a cover persona and to re-invent himself as needed simply as a means of survival.
Of course Coward had to hide his sexual preference (homosexuality was a criminal offense in Great Britain for most of his life), a necessity for which his genteel public persona provided the perfect cover. But he also had to adapt his creative work to the changing times order to continue making a living. Coward’s early plays were huge hits, for instance, but after WW II public taste had shifted toward kitchen sink realism and he had one failure after another. In response, he invented an entire new career for himself: that of a cabaret performer, playing first in Las Vegas and then touring the world, embodying his sophisticated persona so effectively that he became, in the mind of many people, the quintessential Englishman.
Although Mad About the Boy is not just a clips and talking heads mélange it does include a lot of interesting performance snippets as well as excerpts from Coward’s writings (voiced by Rupert Everett). Some are very familiar but some I’ve not seen before, and I’m a longtime Coward fan. So you’ll see a lot of Nöel Coward performances in this doc and also hear some intelligent commentary on his life and work.
Mad About the Boy is a celebration of Nöel Coward, but it’s not a hagiography. Coward had his unlovely moments, as when he dealt with the commercial failure of his plays by attacking the Angry Young Man crowd, a choice that only served make him look like an old man yelling at the clouds. Some may put his choice to leave England in order to escape the burden of a 90% tax rate in the same category. However you come down on that or any other particular issue, you can enjoy Mad About the Boy: it will be a delight to Coward fans and a revelation to newcomers. | Sarah Boslaugh
Mad About the Boy: The Noël Coward Story is distributed on DVD by Kino Lorber. The only extras on the disc are the trailer to this and four other films.
