Noel Coward
In May 1931, whilst directing his latest play Cavalcade at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, the English actor, playwright and composer of popular music Noël Coward, lost a black leather wallet. In February 1981 during pre-production of The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, American actor Henderson Forsythe found Noël Coward's missing wallet stuffed inside of a broken tuba that had fallen upon him whilst he had been rummaging in a storage cupboard. Curiously, Coward's wallet also contained a small studio photograph of Bottomley. The discovery of the wallet provoked speculation that Coward had been planning a dramatic performance about Bottomley's strange life. This speculation arose because at the time that Cavalcade was playing at the Theatre Royal, Bottomley was appearing in a music hall nearby, performing the above mentioned one-man show about himself. Horatio Bottomley died in May 1933 and no record of a Coward penned musical about his life has ever been discovered.
Read more about this topic: Horatio Bottomley
Famous quotes containing the words noel coward, noel and/or coward:
“You can make a sordid thing sound like a brilliant drawing-room comedy. Probably a fear we have of facing up to the real issues. Could you say we were guilty of Noel Cowardice?”
—Peter De Vries (b. 1910)
“I am sure my bones would not rest in an English grave, or my clay mix with the earth of that country. I believe the thought would drive me mad on my death-bed could I suppose that any of my friends would be base enough to convey my carcass back to her soil. I would not even feed her worms if I could help it.”
—George Gordon Noel Byron (1788–1824)
“Things that we do
‘Neath the Red, White and Blue,
Though they can’t be called happy or glorious,
Certainly keep us notorious.”
—Noël Coward (1899–1973)