Chalet Covar,

Les Avants Les Avants is a village in the canton of Vaud in Switzerland. It is located in the municipality of Montreux, in the east of the canton, in the district of Riviera-Pays-d'Enhaut. It lies north-east of the town of Montreux and east of Lausann ...

, in the

Vaud Vaud ( ; , ), more formally Canton of Vaud, is one of the Cantons of Switzerland, 26 cantons forming the Switzerland, Swiss Confederation. It is composed of Subdivisions of the canton of Vaud, ten districts; its capital city is Lausanne. Its coat ...

canton of Switzerland was the European home of

Noël Coward Sir Noël Peirce Coward (16 December 189926 March 1973) was an English playwright, composer, director, actor, and singer, known for his wit, flamboyance, and what ''Time (magazine), Time'' called "a sense of personal style, a combination of c ...

from 1958 until his death in 1973.

History and description

Sir Noël Peirce Coward (16 December 189926 March 1973) was an English playwright. Achieving great success in the decades between the

First First most commonly refers to: * First, the ordinal form of the number 1 First or 1st may also refer to: Acronyms * Faint Images of the Radio Sky at Twenty-Centimeters, an astronomical survey carried out by the Very Large Array * Far Infrared a ...

and the

Second World War World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...

s, in 1926 he bought a country house in

Kent Kent is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in South East England. It is bordered by Essex across the Thames Estuary to the north, the Strait of Dover to the south-east, East Sussex to the south-west, Surrey to the west, and Gr ...

Goldenhurst Farm Goldenhurst Farm (now Goldenhurst Manor and The Old House, Goldenhurst) is a country house of 17th-century origins in the village of Aldington, Kent, England. From 1926 to 1956, it was the country home of Noël Coward. It is a Grade II listed ...

, in Aldington, making it his home for most of the next thirty years. By the 1950s, changing tastes led to a falling off in the popularity of Coward's work. At the same time, the post-war tax regime made the expense of running a large country house increasingly burdensome and in 1956 Coward sold the farm and his London home. In a letter to

Laurence Olivier Laurence Kerr Olivier, Baron Olivier ( ; 22 May 1907 – 11 July 1989) was an English actor and director. He and his contemporaries Ralph Richardson and John Gielgud made up a trio of male actors who dominated the British stage of the m ...

the following year, he explained; "Goldenhurst (five gardeners all year round, lighting, heat etc.) was costing a fortune." He determined to move abroad as a tax-exile, a step which, while saving him money, brought him considerable public opprobrium. He made his winter home in the Caribbean, firstly in Bermuda, and then at

Firefly The Lampyridae are a family of elateroid beetles with more than 2,000 described species, many of which are light-emitting. They are soft-bodied beetles commonly called fireflies, lightning bugs, or glowworms for their conspicuous production ...

, an estate in Jamaica; while his summers were spent in Switzerland. The chalet at

was bought from an English couple, the Petries, in 1958, after Coward saw the property advertised in ''

The Times ''The Times'' is a British Newspaper#Daily, daily Newspaper#National, national newspaper based in London. It began in 1785 under the title ''The Daily Universal Register'', adopting its modern name on 1 January 1788. ''The Times'' and its si ...

''. He toyed with the idea of calling the house Shilly Chalet, but finally adopted the local rendition of his own name, Chalet Covar. Coward entertained many friends at the chalet; guests included

Marlene Dietrich Marie Magdalene "Marlene" DietrichBorn as Maria Magdalena, not Marie Magdalene, according to Dietrich's biography by her daughter, Maria Riva ; however, Dietrich's biography by Charlotte Chandler cites "Marie Magdalene" as her birth name . (, ; ...

Richard Burton Richard Burton (; born Richard Walter Jenkins Jr.; 10 November 1925 – 5 August 1984) was a Welsh actor. Noted for his mellifluous baritone voice, Burton established himself as a formidable Shakespearean actor in the 1950s and gave a memor ...

and

Elizabeth Taylor Dame Elizabeth Rosemond Taylor (February 27, 1932 – March 23, 2011) was an English and American actress. She began her career as a child actress in the early 1940s and was one of the most popular stars of classical Hollywood cinema in the 19 ...

Charlie Chaplin Sir Charles Spencer Chaplin (16 April 188925 December 1977) was an English comic actor, filmmaker, and composer who rose to fame in the era of silent film. He became a worldwide icon through his screen persona, the Tramp, and is considered o ...

Lady Diana Cooper Diana Cooper, Viscountess Norwich (née Lady Diana Olivia Winifred Maud Manners; 29 August 1892 – 16 June 1986) was an English silent film actress and aristocrat who was a well-known social figure in London and Paris. As a young woman, she ...

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Roger Moore Sir Roger George Moore (14 October 192723 May 2017) was an English actor. He was the actor to portray Ian Fleming's fictional secret agent James Bond (literary character), James Bond in the Eon Productions/MGM Studios film series, playing the ...

and

David Niven James David Graham Niven (; 1 March 1910 – 29 July 1983) was an English actor, soldier, raconteur, memoirist and novelist. Niven was known as a handsome and debonair leading man in Classic Hollywood films. His accolades include an Academ ...

. A frequent visitor was Dame

Joan Sutherland Dame Joan Alston Sutherland, (7 November 1926 – 10 October 2010) was an Australian dramatic coloratura soprano known for her contribution to the renaissance of the bel canto repertoire from the late 1950s to the 1980s. She possessed a voice ...

, who became a neighbour after Coward found her a home, the next house up the road, Chalet Monet. The style of the chalet was homely, rather than luxurious; Coward himself described it as "a fairly hideous chalet in the mountains" and

Gyles Brandreth Gyles Daubeney Brandreth (born 8 March 1948) is a British broadcaster, writer and former politician. He has worked as a television presenter, theatre producer, journalist, author and publisher. He was a presenter for TV-am's '' Good Morning Bri ...

, who interviewed Coward's partner,

Graham Payn Graham Payn (25 April 1918 – 4 November 2005) was a South African-born English actor and singer, also known for being the life partner of the playwright Noël Coward. Beginning as a boy soprano, Payn later made a career as a singer and actor i ...

, at the house in 1999, recalled, "its architecture, furnishings, feel – are (dare I say it?) positively mundane". After Coward's death at Firefly in 1973, Payn lived at the chalet until his own death in 2005.

References

External links

Chalet Coward
via YouTube

Sources

* * * {{cite book , last = Lesley , first = Cole , year = 1976 , title = The Life of Noël Coward , location = London , publisher = Cape , isbn = 978-0-224-01288-1 Noël Coward Swiss chalet architecture

History and description

References

See also

External links

Sources