True Confession

New Zealand Listener, Volume 16, Issue 395, 17 January 1947, Page 8

True Confession

T the age of 14 I fell in love with Gertrude Lawrence. Competition was pretty tough; there were queues of elegant gentlemen outside her stage doors and Noel Coward swore eternal devotion,

so it was fortunate that my ambition leaped no higher than being allowed to listen to her records. These ,included excerpts from Private Lives, with Coward, and scenes from Mooniight is Silver, with Douglas Faitbanks jrr., large twelveinch discs full of words and music, delivered in the warm, thrilling Lawrence voice. Her singing voice, as an instrument, is admittedly no great shakes, but whatever qualities it possessed, or didn’t possess, were sufficient to send delightful chills through my vertebrae as she sang "The Physician" ("he said my appendix vermiformous was positively enormous, but he never said he loved me"), or "Do, Do, Do" on that double-sided medley record where a delicious laugh catches her voice in the middle of a phrase. Last week I heard her sing some of the songs from Lady in the Dark, which 3YA had headed "Music of Glamour." It must be reported that the years have done their work; the magic has gone, and that affaire is terminated. I can only hope now that Miss Lawrence will act honourably and return the diamond tiara, the sapphire collar, and the ruby pendant I always meant to give her.