Born On This Day- July 4th... Gertrude Alice Dagmar Klasen

Gertrude Lawrence had hordes of adoring audiences in both Britain & the USA. She was the first true international superstar, a cockney who conquered adoring audiences on both sides of the Atlantic.

Lawrence’s appeal went far beyond the sophisticated international elite, she lived in the USA through most of her career, & toured the country so widely as to be a front-page celebrity from coast to coast. The Gershwins wrote Oh, Kay!, for her, where she was the first to sing Someone To Watch Over Me. Noel Coward wrote Private Lives, one of the greatest comedies of the 20^th century for her, & together they created the sparkling characters of Elyot & Amanda. Kurt Weill & Moss Hart wrote Lady in the Dark for her; Rogers & Hammerstein wrote The King & I for her, & most theater people agree that Joe Mankiewicz wrote the movie All About Eve, about her.

But by the time of her early death at the age of 54, she had made only a handful of films, now seldom seen, in which the camera failed to capture her allure. Those who never saw her magic light up a stage are left with only the recordings of her haunting & precarious singing voice as proof to her greatness.

She was Noel Coward’s best buddy for 40 years. Coward, who met her when they worked together on stage when she was 14, describes her face as “far from pretty, but tremendously alive”. Lawrence was lifelong friends & a frequent collaborator with lesbian & comic genius-  Beatrice Lillie.

Without her theatrical make-up, she was quite plain, one reason, perhaps, why her success was confined to the stage & never repeated on screen. When the curtain went up, a strange transformation would occur. Coward: “Sometimes, in Private Lives, I would look at her across the stage & she would simply take my breath away.”

At their first meeting, Lawrence told the 13-year-old Coward a few 'mildly dirty stories' & later took him into a bedroom and introduced him to the facts of life. It has been suggested that Lawrence may have been the homosexual Coward's only heterosexual experience. Coward denied this vehemently & told Gore Vidal that he had never had sex with a woman.

Vidal: “Not even with Gertie Lawrence?”

Coward: “Particularly not with Miss Lawrence.”

Lawrence had one short-lived marriage & there was a long succession of lovers, male & female, including the married actor/manager Sir Gerald du Maurier. His daughter, novelist Daphne du Maurier, bitterly resented Lawrence's role in her father's life because of the distress it caused her mother & extracted a sort of revenge by becoming Lawrence's lover.

Another love affair was with Douglas Fairbanks Jr. Fairbanks: “She was very temperamental, very jealous, could be exhausting, moody, difficult - but also enchanting & alive & very funny.”

But the most controversial relationship of all was her fling with the Prince of Wales - the future Edward VIII & Duke of Windsor. Their affair infuriated his mother, Queen Mary, who disapproved of Lawrence for ever after.

By the peak of her fame in the 1930s, Lawrence was massively in debt. Her NYC lawyer observed that she spent money “like an entire fleet of drunken sailors”. To the amazement of her friends, she married the wealthy American impresario & theatre owner, Richard Aldrich.

Coward disliked him, but cabled with his customary wit: “Dear Mrs A, Hooray Hooray. At last you are deflowered. On this as every other day I love you. Noel Coward.”

Like other friends, he doubted she really loved Aldrich, but the marriage gave her financial security. Lawrence continued to have affairs with members of both sexes while a married lady.

One of her last lovers was Yul Brynner, 35 & married, was virtually unknown when he was cast in The King & I, with the 52 year old Lawrence’s name above the title & his below it.

Throughout rehearsals, there were many complaints from Richard Rodgers & Oscar Hammerstein about her singing flat. She became increasingly temperamental, & the director, the very gayJohn Van Druten, was not tough enough to handle her.

Brynner exuded masculine authority & sexual magnetism. When he spoke, Lawrence listened. Largely due to his influence, the show became a hit. But the complaints about Lawrence’s singing increased. Rodgers & Hammerstein wanted her out of the show.

Lawrence, who was in love with Brynner, had no intention of quitting, but 18 months into the run, during the heat of a NYC summer, she collapsed. She was dying from cancer of the liver. 

She told her lawyer from her hospital bed: “I don't think I'm going to get out of this place. See that Yul gets star billing. He has earned it.” She wasn't just talking about his acting.

When Lawrence died on September 6, 1952, they dimmed the lights on Broadway & in London's West End.

When Oscar Hammerstein told Brynner he would now receive top billing, he started to cry. Hammerstein : “He told me, & I believed him, that losing Lawrence was a tremendous price to pay for advancement. It was the only time I ever saw him cry.”

There is a rather good film based on Lawrence’s life that is filled with first rate musical numbers- Star!, with Julie Andrews as Lawrence. The 1968 film, directed by Robert Wise, mostly gets it right.