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unearths some literary gems.
From The Privilege of His Company, a biography of Noel Coward by William Marchant:***[Kenneth Tynan on John Gielgud's performance in Noel Coward's Nude with Violin]"Sir John never acts seriously in modern dress; it is the lounging attire in which he relaxes between classical bookings, and his present performance as a simpering valet is an act of boyish mischief, carried out with extreme elegance and the general aspect of a tight, smart, walking umbrella."***[Said Coward]"One night I expanded the line. 'Of George IV there is absolutely nothing to be said,' and paused, and added in a sort of stricken voice, 'except that there is nothing to be said.' It was greeted with a shout of laughter, as it was at every performance thereafter until I threw the sketch out of the show."***[Marchant refers to a line, "Everything smells like something else... it's so dreadfully confusing," from one of Coward's plays, and describes Noël's attitudes in that vein, and in related areas]The lobby of the St. Regis Hotel in New York smelled to him uncomfortably like the piano department at Harrod's.  [...] In America all sirloin steaks looked like bedroom slippers to him, and if the film showing at the old Roxy movie palace was no good, one could always look away and pretend one was rather drunk at the post office at Granada. [...] Beverly Hills looked like an uncommonly bad Raoul Dufy. [...] Strangers on the street or at restaurant tables were studied carefully to determine exactly whose twins they were. If the resemblance was only partial, or limited to a single feature, it was seen to have been an exchange of some kind: "That waiter has wickedly stolen Lilli Palmer's nose," or "Whatever can have possessed poor Margaret Rutherford to lend her chin to the Princess Murat?" [...] Faces were also understood to be in a transitory state and frequently seemed to be in a dreadful rush to look like someone else or to be marking time until the right original came along who might be copied. [He said of a Truman Capote photo], "What will this face be like twenty years from now? ... At the moment it isn't so much a face as a pre-face." [...]***
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unearths some literary gems.
From Blessings in Disguise, by Alec Guinness:[I don't encounter "bed-fluff" in print very often, but it showed up twice in the first fifteen pages of Alec Guinness's memoir, Blessings in Disguise. What's interesting is that while the first instance is a literal one (the child Guinness borrows a household implement from his mother to clean the bed-fluff out from under the bed of an elderly lady he visits downstairs), the second one is figurative!]To [Sybil Thorndike's] statements, though, about the greatness of Ibsen--how he cleared the air, got rid of all the bed-fluff, gave women their proper due, and so on--I could only nod in a way which I hoped looked intelligent.[As you can see, it's not clear whether Thorndike actually used the word "bed-fluff," or that was simply Guinness's "go to" word when paraphrasing.][Meanwhile,* a little later in the book]'So sorry I was late,' [Dame Flora Robson] said. 'My train is from Brighton. And at Victoria Station a plank fell on my head. Is my hat in good shape?' I reassured her: I wasn't quite sure what the shape should be.[*Because, of course, all pages in a book exist simultaneously.]***[sbj: a record from the Guinness bookThe Alec Guinness book, that is]Tyrone Guthrie was ... quite the tallest enfant terrible to be found in the English-speaking world--standing six foot four in his socks.***[Alec Guinness speaks of Edith Sitwell's "arched eyebrows like faint pencil lines querying the tiny eyes."][Guinness speaks of some actors at the makeup table "not knowing their elbow from a crimson-lake liner."Until I looked it up, I thought he was referring to some kind of inland passenger vessel!]***[sbj: the office cutupAlec Guinness, on first meeting his friend Ernie Kovacs]The first day Ernie and I worked together he deliberately got his head stuck in the clapper-board...***
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unearths some literary gems.
From Don't Cry for Me, Hot Pastrami, by Sharon Kahn:***"Do you all swear not to tell, not ever to tell what I'm going to tell you, so help you God?"This is too much. "I'm not swearing to God on this, Essie Sue.""Okay, Ruby, so we'll swear on my copy of the Jewish Forward--it has a national circulation. Good enough for you?"
***
From Up Front, by Victor Spinetti:
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'You behave yourself when you're in Rome,' said Alan Webb, the old character actor. 'You be careful what you do here. We're representing Great Britain. Don't forget that.' The next day, he came to work in rather a state. He'd been found drunk wandering around Rome with no trousers on.'
***
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unearths some literary gems.
***
Mr. White retired behind his formidable eyebrows and sulked there.
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"Life, as somebody has remarked, is like a pack of cards. I have forgotten the precise argument; but the aphorism, I think, is sound."
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"I am fascinated by your monocle, Mr. Holderness," she said. "What would you do if it were broken?"
The eye that gripped the monocle relaxed; the glass wafer fell crashing to the deck. Ford Holderness kicked the broken pieces into the water. From his waistcoat pocket he brought up a second patch of crystal and stuck it firmly in his eye. No smile accompanied the transaction.
"I carry spares, Miss Oliver," he bowed. "Your question is such a popular one, when I am out of England, that I never venture out without a pocketful."
[The more I study that scene, the more I find to enjoy. The basic premise is wonderful, of course, and then there's the "observer effect" implied by the fact that what makes his monocles break is, in effect, people asking about his monocles breaking. I love the precursing of Schroeder's closet full of spare Beethoven busts; and I'm also impressed at how the author avoids saying "monocle" too often by resorting to the phrases "glass wafer" and "patch of crystal."]
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"Marbles!" said Blackwood profanely.
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Here again was the big black car...strolling along with its hands in its pockets, having no difficulty at all in keeping just the right distance in the rear.
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He hoped that he would never see another adjectival tree. The poet who could sing of trees was full of bats and mice and fleas.
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Her words were now tumbling out and piling up on top of one another like the letters of a typewriter.
***
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unearths some literary gems.
From Eliza, by Barry Pain:
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Eliza, entirely misunderstanding the word that I next used, got up and said that she would not stop in the room to hear her poor mother sworn at.
"The word I used," I said, calmly, "was alabaster, and not what you suppose."
"You pronounced it just like the other thing."
"I pronounced it in an exclamatory manner," I replied, "from contempt! You seem to me very ready to think evil. This is not the first time!"
Eliza apologized. As a matter of fact, I really did say alabaster. But I said it emphatically, and I own that it relieved my feelings.
***
How true it is, as one of our English poets has remarked, that it is always darkest before the silver lining!
***
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