Show Business: Noel Coward at 70

INTERVIEWER: Mr. Coward, you've referred to the days of festivity surrounding your 70th birthday as "Holy Week." Are you looking forward to it?

NOEL COWARD: It will be a week of hell, not only for me but also for the people who have to sing my praises. I'll be sitting there wearing my tribute-accepting face, which shows me proud but unspoiled by my own success. It is a face I have used since 1920.

It was also, as he has said, the face of a "heavily doped Chinese illusionist" —a perfect Noel Coward characterization of...