This Happy Breed

"This Happy Breed" is a stage play written by Noel Coward, first staged in 1939 as part of a double bill with the same author's "Present Laughter". In 1941, the two plays became part of a triple bill, having been joined by Coward's new play "Blithe Spirit". The title is a well-known phrase from Shakespeare's "Richard II", Act ii, Sc. 1, and refers to the English people.

Plot

The action of the play is centred on the fortunes of the lower middle class Gibbons family in the suburbs of south London between the demobilisation after the First World War in 1919 and the outbreak of World War II in September 1939; it is one of very few Coward plays to deal entirely with domestic events outside an upper class or upper middle class setting. A number of scenes are nonetheless reminiscent of previous Coward works, such as the Bridges scenes in "Cavalcade" (1931) or the short play "Fumed Oak" from "" (1936).

The play very subtly hints at the non-violent ways in which social justice issues might be incorporated into post-war national reconstruction, examines the personal trauma caused by the sudden death of sons and daughters, and also hints at the forthcoming return of English men from the war. It is also an intimate portrait of the economy and politics of Great Britain in the 1920s and 30s (such as the General Strike of 1926 and the abdication of Edward VIII), as well as showing the advances in technology - the arrival of primitive crystal radio sets, home gas lights being replaced by electric lights, the arrival of telephones and mass broadcast radio.

Film Version

Infobox_Film
name = This Happy Breed


imdb_id = 0037367
writer = Noel Coward
Anthony Havelock-Allan
David Lean
Ronald Neame
starring = Robert Newton
Celia Johnson
Kay Walsh
John Mills
Stanley Holloway
director = David Lean
producer = Noel Coward
Ronald Neame
distributor = Eagle-Lion (UK)
Universal Pictures (US)
released = June 1, 1944
runtime = 115 min
country = UK
language = English
budget = |

The play was the subject of a highly successful feature-film adaptation in 1944. Directed by David Lean as his first major film as sole director, it was the most successful cinema film of 1944. It was one of two films Lean filmed on three-strip Technicolor, which was both expensive and in limited supply in wartime England. While the interiors were filmed in the Denham studios in Buckinghamshire, Lean made extensive use of exterior locations around Clapham Common, south-west London. Noel Coward had lived at 'Ben Lomond', 50 Southside, Clapham Common. The exteriors of "Number Seventeen Sycamore Road, Clapham Common" were filmed outside 53 Alderbrook Road, just south of Clapham Common.

The cast included Robert Newton, Celia Johnson, Stanley Holloway, John Mills, Kay Walsh, and Alison Leggatt. The film included narration by Sir Laurence Olivier.

The film version of "This Happy Breed" was an influence on Mike Leigh's "Life is Sweet" (1990), another intimate and sympathetic study of a south London family, in which the "This Happy Breed" line "Capitalist!" is re-used by the Nicola character and delivered in exactly the same way as in "This Happy Breed".

References

Notes

Bibliography

*The Great British Films, pp 72-74, Jerry Vermilye, 1978, Citadel Press, ISBN 080650661X
* Andrew Higson. "Re-constructing the nation: "This Happy Breed", 1944", "Film Criticism", Vol.XVI, No's.1-2, 1991-92, pp.95-110.
* David Ravit. "'Everything in the Garden is Lovely': Male Friendship, the Great War and the British Far Right in Noel Coward's "This Happy Breed". (2006, forthcoming).

External links

*
* [http://lean.bfi.org.uk/material.php?theme=1&title=happy_breed The British Film Institute's web-site for "This Happy Breed"] .