Anthony Havelock-Allan production was a film adaptation of Coward's 1939 play This Happy Breed, which was produced by Coward, directed by Lean, and shot by Neame. All three partners — Havelock-Allan, Lean and Neame — collaborated on the script. The exact same combination of talents created the 1945 film adaptation of Coward's comedy "Blithe Spirit". The quartet then produced the classic "Brief Encounter", with Havelock-Allan and Neame sharing producing duties with Coward, with Coward helping write the script, an adaption of his 1936 one-act play "Still Life". The film won the Palme d'Or at the 1946 Cannes Film Festival while lead Celia
Noël Coward strongly influenced by them. He recalled: "I was born into a generation that still took light music seriously. The lyrics and melodies of Gilbert and Sullivan were hummed and strummed into my consciousness at an early age. My father sang them, my mother played them... my aunts and uncles, who were legion, sang them singly and in unison at the slightest provocation." His colleague Terence Rattigan wrote that as a lyricist Coward was "the best of his kind since W. S. Gilbert." Notes References Works Portals Noël Coward Sir Noël Peirce Coward (16 December 189926 March 1973) was an English