Noel Coward Bares Secret Formula for Successful Stage Stars-Disposes of Critics and Censors With Few Words

You've either got to be a first-rate actor and know your business, or else have tremendous personal charm," said Noel Coward, the young English actor playwright composer, whose most recent production. "Bitter-Sweet" is playing a two weeks engagement at the Tremont Theatre in Boston.

"There are on the stage now a number of players who have one or the other of these qualities, but the number of those who possess both is small. But when you get an actress who has both-well, she is an actress!

"The only way a star can keep going is by working hard all the time, and never stopping," he said. "Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne never cease working, even when they are preparing a play six months in advance. They are my ideal of two real, genuine artists."

"By the way," he added. "The Lunts suggested the title of "Bitter-Sweet" for my operetta."

"Why did I choose Boston to open in 'Bitter-Sweet'? Well, Boston is essentially a town of tradition, a town it the sort of atmosphere which makes appreciation of 'Bitter-Sweet' possible.

He was emphatic in his statement of his belief in the commercial theatre. "The theatre is the place for entertainment and if it can be intelligent entertainment so much the better.

Mr. Coward will open "Bitter-Sweet" in New York City the first week of November. Then he will travel around the world until next May when he expects to return to New York to play in a new production.

"It's awfully hard to have critics reading into plays what I never intended to be in them. But most critics are like that.

"But you'd better not ask me when I think of censorship because I don't think of censorship."