Noel Coward Made Honorary Member Of Dramatic Club; Won't Talk of King

Twenty minutes before the curtain rose last Saturday night on his current production "Tonight at 8.30", Noel Coward, arch-wit and epigrammatist of the English and American stages, was made an honorary member of the Advisory Board of the Harvard Dramatic Club, backstage at the National Theatre in New York.

Coward discussed plays and players, novels and novelists, poetry and poets, in his characteristically crisp British accent, until there were but five minutes left before the rising of the curtain.

When he was asked, as one Briton to another, what he thought of Wally Simpson's constitutional crisis, he suddenly grew pale and clutched the edge of the table with his hands. After a pause, he spoke, haltingly.

"Other than mentioning that Edward should have made a very good king, I have nothing more to say about the matter." The reporters then asked his opinion of George Bernard Shaw's recent satirical play on the crown situation, which appeared in the Hearst papers.

Said Noel, "I think that Mr. Shaw showed execrable taste in writing and publishing the play."

Just then Gertrude Lawrence, who is playing opposite Mr. Coward in "Tonight at 8.30", shouted down, "Oh, Noel, hurry! There's something about the king on the radio!"

Coward hastily donned a dressing-gown and excused himself, and when he returned, it was merely to mention that the king had notified the Herman L. Rogers' at Cannes of Mrs. Simpson's arrival. At that point, the playwright refused to comment further. He was obviously laboring under emotional stress of some kind.

Before bringing the interview to a close, the reporters could not resist the temptation to ask Mr. Coward's opinion of the Two Women parietal rule. In his suave and characteristically witty manner, he replied, "Why, I should think that one woman at a time should be sufficient for any Harvard student."