The Co-Optimists and Co-Coward
Postcard, author’s own collection
To celebrate Music Hall & Variety Day, Robert Hazle investigates Coward’s involvement with The Co-Optimists
Before the success of London Calling! and The Vortex made Coward a household name, he worked as a jobbing lyricist and songwriter (read about his collaborations with Doris Joel and Max Darewski here) during which time he also contributed songs to The Co-Optimists, a hit revue based on the seaside ‘pierrot troupes’ popular in the early 20th century. The group featured Betty Chester, Phyllis Monkman and Stanley Holloway.
Coward was very familiar with the type of concert parties The Co-Optimists recreated for London. In his autobiography, Coward recalled childhood summer seeing “Uncle George and His Merrie Men” on the sands at Bognor Regis. He described entering a singing competition and how he
“waited in a sort of pen with several aspirants… those who appeared before me were inept and clumsy. When my turn came I sang ‘Come Along with Me to the Zoo, Dear’ and ‘Liza Ann’ from The Orchid. I also danced violently. The applause was highly gratifying… At the end of the performance Uncle George made a speech and presented me with the first prize, a large box of chocolates, which, when opened in our lodgings, proved to be three parts shavings.”
3rd Programme, author’s own
It is likely that Coward became connected to The Co-Optimists through Betty Chester (1895-1943) with whom he appeared in The Knight Of the Burning Pestle. In ‘How I Write My Songs’, Coward described his experience of working with her:
Miss Betty Chester and I were engaged to appear in " The Knight of the Burning Pestle," , and as the time for preparation was so short we decided to go to Oxford, where we could study our parts without interruption. We were in a canoe one day, studying for all we were worth, when the craft upset and our manuscripts got so wet that they were useless. Result, several days' delay until we obtained new copies.
From the 1919 production (And subsequent 1920 revival) she and Coward became firm friends and in September 1921, The Daily Herald announced that Chester hoped “to go into management before long with a play by Noel Coward, in which she will play strong dramatic part”. However, days later the Weekly Dispatch was reporting that “the play which Noel Coward has written for Betty Chester is now finished, but owing to the great success of The Co-Optimists, of whom Betty Chester is one of the leading co-operators, it is unlikely that she will go into management with the new play for some months to come”. The Co-Optimists would run for years.
Published sheet music, author’s own collection
In March 1922, the Weekly Dispatch listed Coward as one of several contributors to the new programme at the Palace Theatre and in May, the ever-changing show’s ‘3rd programme’ featured the topical satire Down With The Whole Damn Lot with lyrics by Coward and performed by ‘The Co-Communists’ of Laddie Cliff, Dave Burnaby, Gilbert Childs and Stanley Holloway:
We’re men of democratic thought / And independent means,
We’re full of plans of ev-ry sort / To give old England beans.
Conscription made us go and fight / Our country’s cause to win,
And now that we’ve got back all right / We’re going to ‘do her in’!
Down with the idle rich, / The bloated upper classes.
They drive to Lord’s / In expensive Fords / With their jewelled op-ra glasses
… And so on it goes. Also coming under attack from their efforts to “bolshevise the earth” are the Police, the working man, the London Stage, the daily press, modern dance and a host of other topical references.
The Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic News reviewed the song thus:
The Co-Communist song is very laughable, and at the same time very good-natured a gradation of different-sized Bolshevists in silk hats above Phrygian caps of liberty, breathing destruction to the tune of "Down with the whole damned lot!”
Draft lyrics for Down With The Whole Damn Lot (c) NCAT
It’s possible that the song ‘You’ll Know That They Voted For Me’ (included by Barry Day in The Complete Lyrics of Noel Coward under the title ‘The Co-Communists’) was part of this same scene, though it is not mentioned in the programme. It is possible it was never used, but it had the same performers describe standing for parliament and their plans:
I’m standing as a member / For Rudeworth-on-Ooze / I’m out to get everything free—
Free living, free thinking, free love, and free booze / Is the state in which England should be
When any small trifle you wish to obtain / Is brought free of charge to your door in a train
And the Government doles out your weekly cocaine / You’ll know that they voted for me.
7th Programme, author’s own
Coward would provide Melville Gideon with further lyrics in 1923 with a song originally intended for London Calling!. Included in the 7th Programme, it was sung by the company at the start of Act 2. The Song, ‘There May Be Days’ would have taken advantage of the 3D stereoscopic shadowgraph in London Calling!’s opening act, but repurposed for the Co-Optimists, it is described in the programme as ‘A Study in black and white’ and reviewed by The Stage as “a clever… arrangement in shadowgraphy or sillouette representation”. Also contributing music to this programme was Fred Astaire, as you can see from the running order.
The notebooks in the Coward Archive indicate one or two other numbers which may have been suggested and one – called ‘The Co-Octogenerians’, which may well have been included. The chorus contains the Co-Optimists’ familiar refrain ‘Bow-wow!’. It has previously been suggested that this may have been included in the 1927 revival of the revue, retitled, The Bow-Wows, but considering they had always used the refrain in their opening numbers, it’s possible it was written for – even used – in the 8th Programme some years earlier in 1924, before the success of The Vortex meant he no longer needed the work as a lyricist.
Other songs written, but likely not included were ‘Cycling Home’, ‘Little Bundle of Dreams’ and ‘Back To Nature’ which was nearly included in This Year Of Grace.
The Co-Optimists performed their 13th and final programme in 1927, followed by the short-lived revival The Bow-Wows. The original cast returned once more for an unsuccessful film in 1929. By then, Coward had entirely outgrown his involvement and in the years to come two members of the troupe, Phyllis Monkman and Stanley Holloway would perform in Coward productions themselves.
Though they fell out of fashion in favour of London’s more polished revues and end-of-the-pier variety shows, The seaside concert parties remained a nostalgic symbol of the era, incorporated by Coward into Cavalcade’s 1910 scene which sees a troupe of six ‘Uncles’ performing in a bandstand and a character performing in a song-and-dance, just as he had as a child.
