The Stage

‘Friend of Noel Coward’ Graham Payn dies aged 87

Published Monday 7 November 2005 at 16:10 by Patrick Newley

Exclusive

Graham Payn, who was Noel Coward’s companion for the last 30 years of his life, has died at his home in Switzerland at the age of 87.

Although he enjoyed a brief career as a leading man on both the West End and Broadway stage during the fifties and sixties, he remained best known for his lengthy association with Coward and was the author of the perceptive and touching memoir My Life with Noel Coward (1994).

Payn remained modest to the end about his own talent. He once explained:

“At 45 Noel needed an alter ego, so he began writing for me the parts he’d liked to have played himself, the songs he’d liked to have sung, to re-live some of his pre-war glory. But I was no Noel Coward, I wasn’t as driven as Noel was, star quality was missing from my talent.”

Born in South Africa on April 25, 1918, his family moved to England in 1929 and Payn began singing in concerts and cine-variety with stars such as Jack Warner and Tommy Handley. In 1932, when he was 14, he successfully auditioned for Noel Coward’s revue, Words and Music. In 1945 Coward wrote a leading role for him in Sigh No More (Piccadilly), which marked the beginning of a personal and professional relationship with ‘the Master’ that lasted until Coward’s death in 1973. For the next 20 years Payn was rarely off the West End stage.

Payn also made several films, the best known being The Italian Job (1969), in which he shared some comic scenes with Coward himself. He lived with Coward in their lavish homes in Jamaica and Switzerland, together with Coward’s secretary Cole Lesley. The three of them regularly entertained numerous leading figures in entertainment and royalty. Coward died suddenly in March 1973 aged 73 and Lesley in 1980, after which Payn became the executor of the Coward estate. He co-edited Coward’s diaries with Sheridan Morley in 1982 and wrote his own autobiography in 1994. He often travelled the world giving talks about Coward and was a welcome visitor to London on many occasions at the Noel Coward Society.

Summing up his life with Coward, Payn said: “I loved the man totally. I realised that I wanted nothing more than to share my life with this remarkable man, to help and protect him as best I could. If I had to write my epitaph it would read ‘Friend of Noel Coward’.”