What if Noël had said Yes to Dr. No?

I’ve yet to find anyone who thinks having Noël Coward play Dr. No would have been even a vaguely good idea, and that included the man himself. So what did Ian Fleming see in Coward - friend, neighbour, best man, godfather to his son - which the rest of us have missed?

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When Fleming sent his friend Noël Coward a telegram asking him to play the villain in the first Bond film, his response was a retort typical of the exceptionally witty man: "Dr. No? No! No! No!" 

You get a similarly negative response if you ask many James Bond fans today to imagine Noël Coward in the role. This is due in part to Joseph Wiseman’s indelible performance as the character. But it’s also because most of us - and I include myself here, until very recently - have a very fixed idea of what kind of person Noel Coward was. But the bon vivant with an acid tongue was, in large part, a carefully-constructed public persona. Coward was, in actuality: a workaholic who earned his social position; a master of the arts; a philanthropist who helped to raise generations of orphaned children; an unflaggingly loyal friend and lover. And he was also a World War II spy who exagerrated his public persona as an effette (overtly coded but officially closeted) homosexual to avert the enemy’s suspicion.

‘Work is much more fun than fun’ - Noël Coward

In 1964, the theatre critic Kenneth Tynan reflected: “Even the youngest of us will know, in fifty years' time, exactly what we mean by 'a very Noël Coward sort of person’.” Now that more than fifty years has elapsed, it’s even harder to divorce the mental image that’s immediately conjured upon hearing a mention of Coward’s name from the actual truth of the man himself.

When Fleming asked Coward to play Dr. No, he had decades of experience cultivating this image of loucheness: to outward appearances, Coward spent most of his time sitting around swilling Martinis while attired in garishly-patterned dressing gowns. In reality, he rarely stopped working, turning his hand to almost all of the creative arts and triumphing at all of them. Queers often have to work harder to succeed in their industries, but Coward was extraordinarily driven. One of his most famous epigrams was “work is much more fun than fun”.  

Despite appearances to the contrary, Coward more than earned his life of luxury. His lower-middle class upbringing was quite different to that of the upper class Fleming and yet the two became firm friends in Jamaica. Coward even nursed Fleming when he was seriously ill towards the end of his life, although Fleming’s wife - who was not a fan of Coward’s - snidely suggested it was just so he got to see her husband naked. 

‘Wit ought to be a glorious treat like caviar; never spread it about like marmalade.’ - Noël Coward (again)

Despite Coward’s considerable body of work in almost every conceivable artistic medium, he’s best remembered for his verbal wit. Specifically: a gay man’s wit. It’s of course a stereotype that gay men are always ready with a perfectly timed put down. But Coward did more than most to embody the stereotype in popular consciousness. His only serious rival for the crown (or, if you’re feeling frivolous, tiara) is Oscar Wilde - and Oscar Wilde’s wit is far less serious. Beneath the apparent inconsequentiality of many of Coward’s most famous sayings there’s a sense that he’s imparting something profound. In other words, perfect for a Bond villain whose verbal dexterity coats their deadly intent in a civilised veneer. I make no apologies for my own preference for Bond villains with a propensity for pontificating Bond to death: Elliot Carver, Hugo Drax and Charles Gray’s interpretation of Blofeld are three of my favourites. Some believe the latter character to be at least partly inspired by Coward, or even Ian Fleming. And incidentally, Michael Lonsdale’s Hugo Drax is not averse to quoting from gay wits: “How would have Oscar Wilde have put it? ‘To lose one aircraft would be an accident. To lose two would seem like carelessness.’”

If Coward had been cast as Dr. No, would he have brought his off-screen image to the role or put it to one side? Earlier in his career, he had shown himself to be a credible actor, capable of turning up or down the ‘Noël Coward’ public persona audiences would have been familiar with. He had several authoritarian roles under his belt, including his commanding role as a British Navy captain from 1942’s In Which We Serve, a propaganda piece which is still highly watchable today. Coward not only starred in the film (spending a great deal of it looking very unglamorous, covered in engine oil, being shot at by enemy planes) but wrote and produced it, aiding the war effort. A few years before Dr. No, he appeared in Carol Reed’s film of the Graham Greene semi-comic spy thriller Our Man In Havana. His character, Hawthorne, is closer to what we associate with Noël Coward’s offscreen life, although there are dark undercurrents to his character, coercing Alec Guinness’s vacuum cleaner salesman character into becoming an agent for Britain. There’s an fascinating scene early in the film where Coward recruits Guinness in a gentlemen’s lavatory, playing up the idea that they are cruising each other. This might have cut a little close to home for the bisexual Guinness whose career almost came to a very premature end after he was arrested and charged for having sex with a man in a toilet in 1946.

The scene may have resonated with Coward as well, albeit for different reasons. We now know that Coward was a spy for the British government during the Second World War. When travelling abroad, he was encouraged to exaggerate his flamboyant image so no one would suspect his true intelligence-gathering intentions. While his homosexuality was well known to his close friends - which included the British Royal Family - he was more circumspect with his public. Even so, it was probably tacitly understood by most and the perceived-to-be-unmasculine harmlessness of homosexuals was exploited by British Intelligence. After the war, Coward himself said “Celebrity was wonderful cover… my disguise would be my own reputation…”. It’s not clear why it took so long for Sir Noël to be knighted. It finally happened in 1970. Some have suggested it was because Winston Churchill personally disliked him, others that it was homophobia, or perhaps a combination of the two.

Coward’s final film appearance brings together many of his apparently contradictory qualities. As The Italian Job’s Mr Bridger, Coward is both urbane and intimidating. A perfect fit for the role, he even gets to act alongside his real-life long-term partner Graham Payn. The film was directed by Peter Collinson, one of the children who had been raised in the orphanage of which Coward was the devoted president.

Both sides of Coward - his public image and the reality - would have made him an interesting Dr. No. According to some sources, Coward was vehemently opposed to taking the role because he didn’t want to wear metal hands (although Joseph Wiseman didn’t do this either, just pretending to have metal hands). I think it’s likely he also felt a degree of nervousness about portraying a character who is at least partly Chinese, something which did not prevent Canadian-American Wiseman from taking the role. Licence to Queer reader Crarb says: “As an Asian I have really mixed opinions about the character and casting… It’s obvious he’s based on Fu Manchu and the archetypes created by said character… but unlike them he does not prey on the main character’s love interest… see Ming from Flash Gordon as an example.”

Private Lives and Brief Encounters

It’s hard to imagine someone less Fu Manchu-like than Noël Coward, who epitomises mid-20th Century stiff-upper-lipped Britishness in both appearance and manner. Although Coward had an active sex life, he kept it very much behind closed doors. He found his time in Jamaica particularly sexually liberating: his sketch books are full of depictions of the naked male form. Although homosexual acts had been illegal in Jamaica since the British colonial government made it so in 1864 (and still are to this day), the activities of wealthy expatriates were (and probably still are) overlooked.

Objects from Coward’s life in Jamaica, on display at the Art & Style exhibition (see below)

Whether in Jamaica or at home, Coward never felt compelled to ‘come out’, even after England’s partial decriminalisation in 1967 and 1969’s Stonewall Riots igniting the gay civil rights movement. He reportedly told friends he had no plans to come out because "There are still a few old ladies in Worthing who don't know." Coward was adept at affecting prudishness. Upon reading Dr. No Coward told Fleming he was “slightly shocked by the lascivious announcement that Honeychile’s bottom was like a boy’s! I know that we are all becoming progressively more broadminded nowadays, but really old chap, what could you have been thinking of?” 

Although there are a few explicitly lesbian, gay and bisexual characters in Coward’s works, his whole ouevre is wide open for queer readings. My own first encounter with Coward was through the film Brief Encounter (adapted from his play Still Life), which I first watched as a teenager and immediately connected with, despite the story being about a romance between a middle aged man and woman. That the romance is forbidden undoubedtely stirred queer longings in me and as soon as I started reading up about the film, I found out I wasn’t alone (gay academic and critic Richard Dyer has written a brilliant book about it).

I could credit Coward for my coming out. In fact, I could even credit Coward - indirectly - with my marriage, which I have no doubt Coward would have found very amusing. Emma’s Rice’s stage version of Brief Encounter was one of the first dates I went on with the man who would become my husband, back when we were both closeted. This started a chain of events which led to us both making significant life decisions which, ultimately, led to us getting hitched. The story of Brief Encounter is so dear to us that, one Valentine’s Day, I bundled my husband in the car without telling him where we were going and drove us to the railway station where the film was shot. It’s a testament to how much we’re on the same page that he guessed where we were going about halfway through the 90 minute journey.

Above: The refreshment room at Carnforth Station, location for Brief Encounter.

Below: Recreating an iconic scene from the film, with me as the deeply repressed Laura (obviously).

Perhaps it was Coward’s relatively private queerness which Fleming thought made him a good fit for Dr. No. If the Dr. No character has any sexual or romantic interest in anyone, he keeps it to himself. His peeking at Bond while he’s asleep allows us to extrapolate that he may be more into his own sex. But there are no witnesses.

Or perhaps Fleming was merely attempting to include him in his work, returning the ‘favour’ Coward had recently done him. In Coward’s only novel, 1960’s Pomp and Circumstance, he included a caricature of Fleming as an “unscrupulous, egocentric, perennial bachelor” who convinces the protagonist (a female stand-in for Coward himself) to have his new girlfriend - a married woman - to stay with her, to deflect suspicion of an affair. Fleming apparently didn’t mind being affectionately lampooned in Coward’s works. A few years before, Coward had depicted Fleming’s love life even more explicitly in his 1956 play Volcano. Unproduced in his lifetime (but staged more recently), the play might have made the real life counterparts of the lightly fictionalised protagonists squirm had it seen the light of day when they were alive.

‘If you’re a star, you should behave like one. I always have.’ - Guess who?

As well as being a friend of Fleming, Coward was also well acquainted with Dr. No’s director, Terence Young, who stayed with Coward in his house in Jamaica on several occasions.

So why didn’t he say Yes to playing Dr. No? Was it just a reluctance to act as if he had metal hands? Did he think that his acting range would not extend to playing an out-and-out villain, especially one who was a different race? By the time Dr. No was in production, Coward’s image was lodged in the public consciousness and he stood little chance of shifting it. Maybe he thought his typecasting would damage the film.

Maybe he was being charitable, realising that he was just too famous and his star persona would have stolen the limelight from the film’s emerging star, Sean Connery. This is certainly the view of TV and theatre writer Martin Sterling.

If you can get past picturing the imposing Joseph Wiseman in the role, I believe it is possible to see the quite wonderful Coward in his place, ensconced in his comfortable mink-lined surroundings one moment and diligently orchestrating geopolitical chaos in his control room the next. Some of the character’s best lines even sound just like the withering put downs Coward was famous for. When Dr. No chastises Bond for his choice of improvised weapon - “That’s a Dom Perignon ‘55. It would be a pity to break it.” - it’s not that much of stretch to imagine what would have happened if Coward had said ‘Yes’.

References and further reading

‘009’ (2019) ‘Master and Commander: Noel Coward and Ian Fleming’ Artistic Licence Renewed Available at: https://literary007.com/2019/10/06/master-and-commander-noel-coward-and-ian-fleming/ 

Chowdhury, A and Field, M (2015) Some Kind of Hero: The Remarkable Story of the James Bond Films Cheltenham: The History Press

Coward, N (1960) Pomp and Circumstance London: Heinemann

Day, B (2008) Noel Coward in His Own Words: A Life In Quotes London: Methuen Drama

Dover Museum (2021) ‘Noel Coward and Ian Fleming’ Available at: https://www.dovermuseum.co.uk/Information-Resources/Articles--Factsheets/Coward--Flemming.aspx 

Hoare, P (2012) ‘Volcano: Noël Coward's Caribbean Play’ The Arts Desk Available at: https://theartsdesk.com/theatre/volcano-no%C3%ABl-cowards-caribbean-play

Lycett, A (1995) Ian Fleming New York: St. Martin’s Press

Noel Coward Foundation (2021) Available at: https://www.noelcoward.com/home 

Sinfield, A (1991) ‘Private Lives/Public Theater: Noel Coward and the Politics of Homosexual Representation’ Representations No. 36 (Autumn, 1991), pp. 43-63

Sterling, M (2021) Personal correspondence over Instagram

Noël Coward: Art & Style
Guildhall Art Gallery in London is hosting the world premiere of a new exhibition to mark the centennial of Coward’s West End debut. Tickets are free: https://www.cityoflondon.gov.uk/things-to-do/attractions-museums-entertainment/guildhall-galleries/guildhall-art-gallery/noel-coward 

It runs until 23rd December 2021.

We went to see it not long after opening and it is strongly recommended: even if you don’t know much about Coward before you go you will by the time you depart.

Although I did not use it as a source in the article, I greatly enjoyed Our Main In Jamaica, a radio drama from 2007 which imagines Fleming luring Coward back into espionage with hilariously farcical results. Malcolm Sinclair makes a perfect Coward. Bond fans will recognise his voice as that of Dryden from Casino Royale. Thank you to Caroline Shenton (@dustshoveller) for bringing it to my attention.

Thank you to Edward Biddulph for the discussion about Ian Fleming’s thinly-veiled characterisations in Coward’s novel Pomp and Circumstance and playVolcano. Also, thank you for the Negronis!

Thank you to @SpiesVespers for the quotes about Coward’s wartime ‘cover’ as a gay man.

Thank you to crarb on Instagram for the ongoing discussion. Check out their art here: https://www.instagram.com/crarb/?hl=en-gb