Greenwich Entertainment has acquired U.S. and Canadian distribution rights to “Mad About the Boy – The Noel Coward Story,” an intimate portrait of one of the greatest writers and minds of the 20th century.
Rare Home Movie Footage of Noël Coward
Barnaby Thompson produced, wrote and directed the documentary about Coward, using unprecedented access to Coward's legacy. The film is told in his own words and music, using his diaries, photographs and home movies, along with archive interviews with Coward and his contemporaries. Alan Cummings narrates and Rupert Everett gives Coward a voice.
Coward was a popular and acclaimed playwright, actor, director, singer, songwriter and novelist. He wrote 60 plays, 500 songs, five screenplays, 14 films adapted from his plays, nine musicals, 300 poems, 21 short stories, two novels and three autobiographies. He also appeared in over 70 plays and 12 films.
But before he became famous, he grew up in poverty and left school at the age of nine. He was also secretly homosexual at a time when it was illegal. Despite his troubled childhood, Coward’s public image cast him as a heartthrob and the epitome of the debonair upper-crust Englishman. By age 30, he was the world’s highest-paid writer and a star of the Broadway stage. He wrote, directed and acted in plays and films including “Private Lives,” “Blithe Spirit,” “Brief Encounter” and “In Which We Serve.” And despite having no formal musical training, he became a world-famous songwriter and recording artist — Frank Sinatra once said, “If you want to hear a song sung, go to Mr. Noël Coward.” He also discovered John Gielgud, Laurence Olivier and David Lean, and was a spy in World War II — don’t worry, it was for the Allies.
