Volume 23, Number 21 & 22 · January 20, 1977
Mad About the Boy
By Nigel Dennis
Remembered Laughter: The Life of Noel Coward
by Cole Lesley
Knopf, 501 pp., $12.95
Noel Coward was 'capable of entertaining anybody who would watch or listen to him from the age of three.' By exercising this ability unceasingly, he became entirely unique, for, his biographer asks, 'What young man had ever before—or has since—attempted and succeeded in so many branches of theatrical endeavor? No wonder he became society's hero and so quickly accepted as the darling of the 'twenties….' Indeed, Mr. Lesley adds, it is true to say that 'he was the 'twenties embodied, writing and speaking for his generation with wit, penetration, and a brave use of sentiment of which he was never afraid, even in that supposedly cynical era.'
Review, 1765 words
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