Women’s History Month
To celebrate Women’s History Month, Robert Hazle shines the archive spotlight on three women who gave Coward’s early career a boost, including his first professional job, his first performed lyric and his first West End production.
Lila Field
Of the women we meet in this blog post, Lila Field is the earliest name you will come across in the Coward biographies. It was she who gave Coward is first professional job.
Coward c. 1905 (c) NCAT
Field was born Lilia Scholefield in Peru (according to Philip Hoare) and wrote short stories under the name Lila Field. By 1909 she was already a ‘well-known writer of fiction’ (Acton Gazette) but she first made a name for herself in the theatre producing elegant matinee performances at the homes of society ladies, under the royal patronage from HRH Princess Christian. The performances themselves were a mix of classical music (sung partly by her sister Bertha) and one-act plays. They became such a popular social event that repeat performances were immediately booked and began to appear in theatres.
Field contributed several of the plays included in the programmes. The first matinee, at the home of Viscountess Helmesley, Field presented Plain Fare, a piece about an aunt who, endeavouring to find a husband for her niece, invites someone to visit. He returns often but it transpires he is there to win the love of the aunt herself, not the niece. The role of Lady Rivers was played by Ernestine Bowes-Lyon, cousin of Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother, demonstrating quite how ‘high’ the ‘society’ was.
Later matinees in the series were presented at the Playhouse Theatre. One notable addition on 3rd March 1910 was a fairy play performed by children called The Goldfish. This proved such a hit that later in the year, Field planned to establish a children’s theatre to train them professionally.
The following year, Violet Coward answered a newspaper advert for boys to appear in new production of The Goldfish. In his autobiography, Coward recalled the audition, describing Field as “smart and attractive with a charming voice, her her large brown eyes smiled kindly at us over highly-rouged cheeks and a beauty spot.”
Field continued to produce and write, including a 1913 presentation of Wonder Children, featuring Ninette de Valois (later Dame Ninette, founder of the Royal Ballet School) and established the Lila Field Academy.
Works include:
Stage: Plain Fair (1909), The Goldfish (1910), Wonder Children (1913) , Here We Are (revue, 1915)
Prose: One of A Legion, Reaping the Harvest, Countess Vera’s Flight
Doris Joel
The first time a Coward lyric was heard on a London stage was to the music of Doris Joel.
Cutting of Doris Joel in costume (author’s own collection)
Doris Joel (sometimes published as Doris Doris) is known today for writing the music for Coward’s first performed song, The Story Of Peter Pan. Almost nothing is written now about her outside of her collaborations with Coward.
Born in South Africa, Joel’s father Solomon ‘Solly’ Joel became a renowned millionaire racehorse owner. The family lived near Reading at Maiden Erlegh (the site of which is now the school where I did my teacher training!). The family name lives on in two parks: Sol Joel Park in Earley and also Joel Park in Wokingham.
detail, sheet music of Love In A Cottage (author’s own collection)
Very much part of rich high society, when she was youngJoel was the youngest vice-president of the League of Mercy and in 1905 ‘hosted’ with a friend a charity fancy dress ball at which she also danced. She later moved into amateur dramatics while continuing charitable events. In In 1912 she organised a concert at St Peter’s in Earley, adjacent to what is now Sol Joel Park. Playing at that concert was the young musical prodigy Max Darewski (brother of Herman, the music publisher) with whom she would establish a creative partnership. A notable example is the incidental music for Marie Lohr’s 1918 play Love in a Cottage, at the Globe Theatre.
Coward had met Max Darewski in or prior to 1917, the year they collaborated on an unpublished song called When You Come Home On Leave. The same year, a dream ballet for screen called “White Wings” was announced which would have featured Phillis Monkman (later one of The Co-Optimists) about, according to the Kinematograph and Lantern Weekly, “a young airman, whose adventures begin in a London hospital and end in the Emperor Claudius's Palace”
The three collaborated on a number of songs and other projects, including a never-realised ‘Sicilian’ opera Chrissa but more successful was his pairing with Joel, leading to his first performed song The Story of Peter Pan, and the first published, The Baseball Rag, both with his lyrics and Joel’s music.
The Story Of Peter Pan was included in a revue called Tails up!. The production had music by Philip Braham and Novello as well as Joel with lyrics by Dave Burnaby, also later of The Co-Optimists, with whom Coward would work a few years later.
It was Doris Joel who was instrumental in presenting Coward for audition in front of Charlot, the producer, who had previously dismissed and forgotten Coward but bought Peter Pan on the spot, launching a songwriting career and further collaborations with Charlot in subsequent years. Without Doris Joel, several of those early doors would not have opened for the young Coward.
At home, Doris was by all accounts her father’s favourite. He named his prize yacht after her and gave her a pearl for her birthday very year. This all changed in 1913, when she secretly married Arthur Walter a 35-year old stockbroker and friend of the family. The news was revealed at Goodwood and caused a scandal. Solly Joel did not approve and renamed his yacht.
Perhaps he was right to disapprove; in 1920 they were divorced after Arthur Walter walked out of the marriage in 1916. Joel died in 1944.
Other Works:
Love In A Cottage. (piano solo), Max Darewski and Doris Joel (1918)
Edentide, for the Comedy Revue (1916)
Mary Moore, Lady Wyndham
In 2020 we celebrated the centenary of Coward’s first West End play, I’ll Leave It To You, but without Lady Wyndham, it would not have happened.
She was well-known to theatre audiences of the day as the recently-retired actress Mary Moore and following the death of her husband, fellow actor Sir Charles Wyndham, managed Wyndham’s Theatre and The New Theatre. I’ll Leave It To You had had a moderately successful run in Manchester, but producers Gilbert Miller and Charles Hawtrey cancelled plans for a London transfer to the West End. Step forward Lady Wyndham who funded the production that launched Coward’s career as a playwright. She already knew Kate Cutler, who played Mrs Dermott, from her recent final professional stage appearance, Our Mr Hepplewhite and was supportive of the play, even going so far as to remove half the lighting to save money when ticket sales dropped.
Mary Moore began her professional career at the age of fifteen in The Bohemian Girl at the Gaiety Theatre before retiring for the first time when she married James Albery. From 1885 she became associated with Sir Charles Wyndham, taking the lead female roles for him. She became associated with a certain time of role, typified by Mrs Baxter in The Mollusc: that of a foolish comic foil to the more serious parts taken by Sir Charles. Their professional partnership became very successful thanks to Moore’s business skill and in 1916, they were married.
As well as her presidency of the Actors Benevolent Fund, she continued to manage Wyndham’s and the New Theatre until her death at the age of 69 in 1931.
