Ruth Leon Recommends: Noel Coward's Greatest Hits on 1957 Ed Sullivan Film

A December 1957 episode of The Ed Sullivan Show, preserved on video, shows Noel Coward performing a selection of his most famous songs. Ruth Leon surfaced the recording this week on Slippedisc and urged readers to watch it. She points to the quality of the lyrics, the music and Coward's performance as the reason the clip deserves renewed attention.

Coward was born on 16 December 1899 and died on 26 March 1973. He worked as an English playwright, composer, director, actor and singer, and Time magazine once described him as having "a sense of personal style, a combination of cheek and chic, pose and poise." Leon writes that she knew him well and loved him dearly, and acknowledges that without the filmed evidence readers might take her recommendation for special pleading.

What survives on the recording?

The clip captures Coward singing several of his best-known songs in what Leon calls his inimitable diction. She notes an unusual origin for that famous clarity of speech: Coward developed it because his mother was deaf and needed his speech to be clear. The performance stands on its own, she argues, and requires no prior knowledge of the man or his catalogue to be enjoyed.

How large was Coward's output?

The figures Leon assembles are considerable:

• 50 plays, including Hay Fever, Private Lives, Design for Living, Present Laughter and Blithe Spirit — works she counts among the most enduring comedies in the history of the theatre
• Hundreds of songs
• More than a dozen musical theatre works, among them the operetta Bitter Sweet and a series of comic revues
• Screenplays, poetry and several volumes of short stories
• The novel Pomp and Circumstance
• A three-volume autobiography

Leon adds, simply, that there was much more beyond this list.

Why does a 1957 clip matter now?

Leon frames the find in what she calls the "they-don't-make-'em-like-that-anymore" department. The video is the proof she offers for that claim: a first-hand document of Coward delivering his own material, in his own voice, at the height of his powers as a performer. For a writer who died in 1973, and whose reputation rests largely on texts and scores, a moving-image record of the man himself carries particular weight.

What does this change for audiences? It gives anyone curious about Coward a direct route into his work — not through biography or revival productions, but through the performer's own delivery, recorded live on American network television and now a click away. Leon's full recommendation appears on her Substack, Ruthleon.substack.com, linked from the Slippedisc post. Whether the clip sends new listeners back to the plays and operettas remains to be seen, but the material, as she presents it, makes a strong case for trying.