The Bridges of Madison County earlier about "the dreams of a woman named Francesca," gave him the idea for the novella, which was completed in eleven days. After he had written "Bridges", Waller came to believe that he had based the character of Francesca Johnson on his wife, Georgia, whom Francesca physically resembles. According to Marc Eliot, Waller's novella is a modernization of the Noël Coward play "Still Life" (1934), which was adapted into David Lean's film "Brief Encounter" (1945). "Still Life" is about 'the desperation, guilt, and temptations of two married people who meet, fall in love, commit adultery, and then separate forever." In
Noël Coward the children's play "The Goldfish". In "Present Indicative", his first volume of memoirs, Coward wrote: The leading actor-manager Charles Hawtrey, whom the young Coward idolised and from whom he learned a great deal about the theatre, cast him in the children's play "Where the Rainbow Ends". Coward played in the piece in 1911 and 1912 at the Garrick Theatre in London's West End. In 1912 Coward also appeared at the Savoy Theatre in "An Autumn Idyll" (as a dancer in the ballet) and at the London Coliseum in "A Little Fowl Play", by Harold Owen, in which Hawtrey starred. Italia