Meet Me Tonight

In 1936, Noel Coward was at the crest of his fame and power on both sides of the Atlantic as a multi-hyphenate stage talent when he opened a production on Broadway that was audacious even by his lights. Coward had crafted a slate of nine one-act plays - each dissimilar from the next in topic and tone - that his company had to be versed in and ready to play at a moment's notice, as every show would involve a pre-curtain random choice of three of the stories for that given performance. While the cycle, collectively known as Tonight at 8:30, was a success of its season, the scope of Coward's premise has understandably made it an unlikely candidate for revival as originally conceived. Its component parts have lent themselves to frequent stage production; the most famous of them, Still Life, owes that status to its having been expanded for the screen by David Lean into the enduringly popular Trevor Howard-Celia Johnson romance Brief Encounter (1945). The noted producer Anthony Havelock-Allan had a hand in Brief Encounter, as well as many of the most acclaimed Coward adaptations by the British film industry [In Which We Serve (1942), This Happy Breed (1944), Blithe Spirit (1945)]. In 1952, he opted to preserve the experience of Coward's daring cycle by committing three of the one-acts to the screen. The result, Meet Me Tonight (1952) (renamed the more familiar Tonight at 8:30 for American release) did an enduringly diverting job of capturing the breadth of Coward's skill and wit. The first of the playlets, Red Peppers, can be fairly described as meandering, but best accepted when taken as a love note from Coward to the long-since vanished world of British low theater that helped hone his craft. The narrative opens on the rather hopelessly hokey song-and-dance act of George and Lily Pepper (Ted Ray, Kay Walsh), and finds them engaged in dressing-room bickering over their billing and their future prospects. For all of their sniping, they do pull together when confronted by their mooching orchestra conductor (Bill Fraser) and overbearing stage manager (Frank Pettingell), as well as a faded grand dame (Martita Hunt). While their nemeses try to make a point by sabotaging their late show, the Peppers decide to up the ante for a full slapstick climax. It's pleasant enough, and the stage-refined skills of veteran dancer Walsh (by then Lean's ex-wife) and radio comic Ray effectively aid them in credibly portraying broken-down vaudevillians. Next up is the acridly cynical Fumed Oak, which gives Stanley Holloway (best known as Alfred Doolittle in My Fair Lady, 1964), an opportunity for tour-de-force work. He essentially spends the first half of the narrative in enforced silence as Henry Gow, an unassuming shop clerk living an unendurable working-class home life in the company of three wickedly-delineated harpies: his shrewish wife (Betty Ann Davies), imperious mother-in-law (Mary Merrall) and simpering teenaged daughter (Dorothy Gordon). The story turns when Henry unexpectedly backhands the trio with the matter-of-fact pronouncement that he's abandoning them, and proceeds with a prolonged and incisive verbal twisting of the knife regarding the living hell they've made of his existence, and his long-gestated plan of escape. Finishing the troika is Ways and Means, a familiar Coward slice of high-toned drawing room farce. Here, the setting is the French Riviera, and the story concerns the travails of Stella and Toby Cartwright (Valerie Hobson, Nigel Patrick), a glib, attractive and financially overextended couple who are down to their last possessions worth pawning, and who've worn out their welcome as villa guests of the dithering, wealthy American widow Olive Lloyd Ransome (Jessie Royce Landis). Hoping for one last change of his luck at the baccarat tables, Toby finds his seat (and favorable turns of the cards) commandeered by the overbearing Olive. The Cartwrights are on the edge of being handed their hats when Olive's doting chauffeur Murdoch (Jack Warner) reveals himself as a professional burglar - and gets conscripted by the conniving couple in a scheme to fleece their host. The playlets were ably presented for the cinema by director Anthony Pelissier, whose intimacy with the material dated back to when he had been in the original Broadway company of Tonight at 8:30 with Coward and Gertrude Lawrence. Hobson's thirteen-year marriage to Havelock-Allan ended the year of Meet Me Tonight's release. Within two years, she had retired from performing to concentrate on her new union with British politician John Profumo. She stood by her man during the notorious 1963 Parliamentary sex scandal that cost him his position of Secretary of War, and they remained together until her death in 1998 at age 81. Producer: Anthony Havelock-Allan Director: Anthony Pelissier Screenplay: Noel Coward (play "Tonight at 8: 30") Cinematography: Desmond Dickinson Art Direction: Carmen Dillon Film Editing: Clive Donner Cast: Valerie Hobson (Stella Cartwright: Ways and Means), Nigel Patrick (Toby Cartwright: Ways and Means), Jack Warner (Murdoch: Ways and Means), Jessie Royce Landis (Olive: Ways and Means), Michael Trubshawe (Chaps: Ways and Means), Mary Jerrold (Nanny: Ways and Means), Yvonne Furneaux (Elena: Ways and Means), Kay Walsh (Lily Pepper: Red Peppers), Ted Ray (George Pepper: Red Peppers), Martita Hunt (Mabel Grace: Red Peppers), Frank Pettingell (Mr. Edwards: Red Peppers), Bill Fraser (Bert Bentley: Red Peppers). C-81m. by Jay S. Steinberg