August 17th, 2011

Champagne was a silent film, directed by Alfred Hitchcock in 1928. The film follows spolit heiress Betty (played by Betty Balfour) who leads a life of luxury on the profits from her father’s champagne business. To bring her back down to earth her father tells her that all the money has been lost so she goes to seek her fortune. So ensues a story of ocean-liners, mysterious strangers and jewel thieves. The silent film sees Betty’s Father (Gordon Harker) and boyfriend (Jean Bradin) follow her as she embarks on a journey of self-discovery and new-found independence, and her relationship with young Jean is tested almost to breaking point.

When asked about the film Hitchcock said: “What happened, I think, is that someone said, “Let’s do a picture with the title Champagne,” and I thought of beginning it in a certain way, which was rather old-fashioned and a little like that very old picture of Griffith’s, Way Down East. The story of a young girl going to the big city. My idea was to show a girl, working in Reims, whose job is to nail down the crates of champagne. And always, the champagne is put on the train. She never drinks any – just looks at it.

“But eventually she would go to the city herself, and she would follow the route of the champagne – the night clubs, the parties. And naturally she would get to drink some. In the end, thoroughly disillusioned, she would return to her old job at Reims, by then hating champagne. I dropped the whole idea – probably because of the moralizing aspect.”

The film was not received well – critics were scathing and consequently Champagne came to be known as the worst work of Hitchcock’s career.

Photo credit: twm1340

July 21st, 2011

“Why do I drink Champagne for breakfast? Doesn’t everyone?” – Noel Coward

Noel Coward (born December 16, 1899 Teddington, Middlesex – died March 26, 1973, St. Mary, Jamaica) was an English playwright, actor, and composer known for his stage and screenplays and often controversial eccentricities and prolific homosexuality.

Coward appeared professionally as an actor from the age of 12. As he matured and between acting engagements he wrote such light comedies as I’ll Leave It to You (1920) and The Young Idea (1923), but his reputation as a playwright was not established until the play The Vortex (1924); a controversially searing look at the debauchery of the upper classes which was highly successful in London. In 1925 the first of his comedies, Hay Fever, opened in London. Coward ended the decade with what is arguably his most popular musical play, Bitter Sweet (1929).

Another of his classic comedies, Private Lives (1930), is often revived. It shares with Design for Living (1933) a worldly milieu and characters unable to live with or without one another. Other successes included Tonight at Eight-Thirty (1936), a group of one-act plays performed by Coward and Gertrude Lawrence, with whom he often played. He rewrote one of the short plays, Still Life, as the film Brief Encounter (1946). Present Laughter (1939) and Blithe Spirit (1941; filmed 1945; musical version, High Spirits, 1964) are usually listed among his better comedies.

Coward performed almost every function in the theatre including producing, directing, dancing and signing and acted in, wrote, and also went on to direct motion pictures.

Coward’s Collected Short Stories appeared in 1962, followed by a further selection, Bon Voyage, in 1967. Pomp and Circumstance (1960) is a light novel, and Not Yet the Dodo (1967) is a collection of verse. His autobiography through 1931 appeared as Present Indicative (1937) and was extended through his wartime years in Future Indefinite (1954); a third volume, Past Conditional, was incomplete at his death.

Coward spent his last years in the Caribbean and Switzerland. He was knighted in 1970.

One of his previously unpublished plays, The Better Half, last performed in 1922 and previously thought to have been lost, was rediscovered in 2007, the same year a collection of his letters was published as The Letters of Noël Coward.

Photo credit: Classic Film Scans

June 9th, 2011

And here it is…photographic proof that the spirit of PG Wodehouse is very much alive and well in 21st century Britain! Many thanks to Kushla Pope who sent in this winning photo of a thoroughly stylish and unquestionably modern Bertie Wooster: her 12-year old son Charlie. Watch out Charlie, you may have a few style conscious Ascot fans after that rather splendid hat next week…!

June 8th, 2011

Congratulations to Kushla Pope, winner of our Modern Bertie competition with her choice of her twelve-year old son Charlie to be the Bertie Wooster of 2011.

Here’s what she said “My son charlie. He’s eccentric to the point of odd! He’s only 12 yet he loves to wear a full suit, a tie, a battered old top hat and, if I’d let him, a bloody monocle! What have I spawned???!?!?!”

We’d love to see a photograph.

Kushla can enjoy a Summer of great reading with the entire Bollinger sponsored Everyman Wodehouse prize for comic fiction shortlist and a bottle of Grande Année with which to accompany it.

June 7th, 2011

The annual celebration of the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for Comic Fiction was a little different this year.  A highlight of the Hay Festival is the naming of a local Gloucestershire Old Spot pig after the winning novel.   However, this year, the pig refused to leave its idyll on Hay Bluff and could not be persuaded into its trailer, let alone to make an appearance at the Festival.

But help was at hand in the shape of artist Gary Woods’ wonderful ceramic sculpture of a pig peeking through a wooden frame.

And winning author, Gary Shteyngart, was then introduced to a much more willing beast, a New Zealand Kunekune, at a local farm just over the Welsh border. The pig, formerly known as Bluebell, is now the proud bearer of the name, Super Sad True Love Story.

May 26th, 2011

With the Hay Festival upon us, and in the spirit of literary legend P.G Wodehouse himself, we’re asking you to tell us who you consider to be the living embodiment of Bertie Wooster – and why.

The wittiest entry will receive a signed copy of every book on the Bollinger Sponsored Everyman Wodehouse Prize for Comic Fiction Shortlist and a bottle of Bollinger Grande Année with which to celebrate.
Entries close Friday 3rd June.  Please see here for Terms and Conditions.