Graham Payn; actor, singer & lover of Noel Coward
Hyfler/Rosner
(Filed: 09/11/2005) Telegraph
Graham Payn, the actor and singer who has died aged 87, was
an elegant exponent of the white-tie-and-tails school of
song and dance in the 1940s and 1950s; one of his earliest
triumphs was a haunting song, Matelot, which Noel Coward -
whose companion he became for the last 30 years of Coward's
life - wrote specially for him.
If Payn was never as gifted as Coward supposed or as
artistically ambitious as Coward wished - "he just wanders
through his life with no impetus" - he went on to show a
certain versatility both as a director and actor in the
legitimate theatre, though it was his singing and dancing
that gave the most general pleasure. Perhaps the most
conspicuous example of Coward's unwavering devotion to his
best friends, Payn ended up running the Coward estate from
"the Master's" last house in Switzerland, and co-edited The
Noel Coward Diaries, which were dedicated to the memory of
Coward's other lifelong friend (and former valet), Cole
Lesley.
Graham Payn was born at Pietermaritzburg, Natal, South
Africa, on April 25 1918 and educated in South Africa and
privately in England, where he made his first stage
appearance, aged 13, at the Palladium, as Curly in Peter
Pan. A year later he had two tiny parts in Coward's revue
Words and Music (Adelphi, 1932), but his first grown-up role
in the West End did not come until a fortnight before the
outbreak of war in Douglas Furber's song and dance show,
Sitting Pretty, after which all the theatres were closed.
In 1940, however, he was back in the West End in another
Douglas Furber-Manning Sherwin musical, Up and Doing
(Saville).
The wartime taste for musical entertainments kept him in
almost constant demand in song and dance shows such as Fine
and Dandy (Saville), Magic Carpet (Prince's) with Sydney
Howard, and The Lilac Domino (His Majesty's, 1944).
At the Palace for Christmas that year he appeared in Alice
in Wonderland; and then worked with Joyce Grenfell, Cyril
Ritchard and Madge Elliott in Coward's Sigh No More
(Piccadilly, 1945) in which he scored perhaps his greatest
success.
It brought him such acclaim that Coward put him into his
next three shows. In the Drury Lane musical comedy Pacific
1860 (1946) he was a handsome South Seas islander with whom
Mary Martin, as a visiting singer of world renown, fell
heavily in love.
In an American revival of To-night at 8.30 he played,
opposite Gertrude Lawrence and under Coward's direction, the
parts which Coward had created with Lawrence before the war.
Payn played Harry Hornby in Coward's musical evocation of a
post-war London underworld of gangsters and black
marketeers, Ace of Clubs (Cambridge); and after more song
and dance in The Lyric Revue, which went from Hammersmith to
the West End as The Lyric and Globe Revue (1951), he did a
"legitimate" stint with Worthing rep.
Then Coward brought him back to Shaftesbury Avenue in After
The Ball (Globe 1954), his musical version of Lady
Windermere's Fan.
Payn turned to television. His role in a Richard Hearne
comedy series struck Coward (and others) as "unsuitable". So
he turned more and more to "legitimate" roles, returning to
the West End in Brouhaha (Aldwych), in And Suddenly It's
Spring (Duke of York's) and at the same theatre in Coward's
comedy Waiting In The Wings (1960), which dealt with
actresses in retirement. Coward then gave him a chance to
direct - or at least co-direct - a musical version of his
longest-running farce, Blithe Spirit, in both New York and
London; but High Spirits, as it was renamed, failed on both
sides of the Atlantic.
Nor did Payn's return to the boards in a revival of Coward's
Present Laughter (Queen's) inspire more faith in his future.
The truth, perhaps, was that life with the Master and his
other close friend Cole Lesley, in the homes Coward
established for the three of them in Jamaica or Switzerland,
was comfortable enough for Payn's needs. He had had enough
disappointments of one sort of another through the patronage
of Coward and was content to do little else.
"He is, I fear, a born drifter," concluded Coward crossly in
the 1960s. "I know his theatrical career has been a failure
but there are other ploys to go after. He sleeps and sleeps
and the days go by. I love him dearly for ever. and am happy
to look after him for the rest of my life but he must do
something.
"If only he would take up some occupation and stick to it. I
know that he is unhappy inside but, alas, with his natural
resilience these moments of self-revelation dissipate and on
go the years and he will be an elderly man who has achieved
nothing at all.
"He has had so many chances and failed. He knows this of
course and I am sure that he has many miserable moments, but
he won't work unless he has to - then he is at it like a
tiger - but he lacks the self-discipline to force himself.
He hasn't pressed on with learning to type. He only reads
trash and that very seldom."
After Coward's death in Jamaica in 1973 Payn collaborated
with Sheridan Morley and Cole Lesley on Noel Coward and His
Friends (1979); and after Lesley's death in 1980 he edited,
with Morley, The Noel Coward Diaries (1982), which the pair
dedicated to Cole Lesley.
Payn continued to administrate Coward's estate from the
playwright's house in Switzerland.
William Brownstein
work over the last few years. I don't know too much about his plays but
enjoy his music and even have a couple of cd's of him singing his
songs.
I found a short piece with a photo:
The Stage Online
(Article has photo of Noel Coward and Graham Payne on its link)
http://www.thestage.co.uk/news/newsstory.php/10344/friend-of-noel-coward-graham-payn-dies
Text of article:
'Friend of Noel Coward' Graham Payn dies aged 87
Patrick Newley
Exclusive
Graham Payn, who was Noel Coward's companion for the last 30 years of
his life, has died at his home in Switzerland at the age of 87.
Although he enjoyed a brief career as a leading man on both the West
End and Broadway stage during the fifties and sixties, he remained best
known for his lengthy association with Coward and was the author of the
perceptive and touching memoir My Life with Noel Coward (1994).
Payn remained modest to the end about his own talent. He once
explained:
"At 45 Noel needed an alter ego, so he began writing for me the parts
he'd liked to have played himself, the songs he'd liked to have
sung, to re-live some of his pre-war glory. But I was no Noel Coward, I
wasn't as driven as Noel was, star quality was missing from my
talent."
Born in South Africa on April 25, 1918, his family moved to England in
1929 and Payn began singing in concerts and cine-variety with stars
such as Jack Warner and Tommy Handley. In 1932, when he was 14, he
successfully auditioned for Noel Coward's revue, Words and Music. In
1945 Coward wrote a leading role for him in Sigh No More (Piccadilly),
which marked the beginning of a personal and professional relationship
with 'the Master' that lasted until Coward's death in 1973. For
the next 20 years Payn was rarely off the West End stage.
Payn also made several films, the best known being The Italian Job
(1969), in which he shared some comic scenes with Coward himself. He
lived with Coward in their lavish homes in Jamaica and Switzerland,
together with Coward's secretary Cole Lesley. The three of them
regularly entertained numerous leading figures in entertainment and
royalty. Coward died suddenly in March 1973 aged 73 and Lesley in 1980,
after which Payn became the executor of the Coward estate. He co-edited
Coward's diaries with Sheridan Morley in 1982 and wrote his own
autobiography in 1994. He often travelled the world giving talks about
Coward and was a welcome visitor to London on many occasions at the
Noel Coward Society.
Summing up his life with Coward, Payn said: "I loved the man totally.
I realised that I wanted nothing more than to share my life with this
remarkable man, to help and protect him as best I could. If I had to
write my epitaph it would read 'Friend of Noel Coward'."
Monday 7 November 2005 04:10 PM
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