This Happy Breed

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This Happy Breed was a stage play written by Noel Coward, first staged in 1939 as part of a double bill with the same author's Present Laughter. In 1941, the two plays became part of a triple bill, having been joined by Coward's new play Blithe Spirit. The title is a well-known phrase from Shakespeare's Richard II, Act ii, Sc. 1, and refers to the English people.

The action of the play is centred on the fortunes of the lower middle-class Gibbons family in the suburbs of South London between 1919 and the outbreak of World War II in September 1939; it is one of very few Coward plays to deal entirely with domestic events outside an upper-class or upper middle-class setting. A number of scenes are nonetheless reminiscent of previous Coward works, such as the Bridges scenes in Cavalcade (1931) or the short play Fumed Oak from Tonight at 8:30 (1936).

The play very subtly hints at the non-violent ways in which social justice issues might be incorporated into post-war national reconstruction, examines the personal trauma caused by the sudden death of sons and daughters, and also hints at the forthcoming return of English men from the war. It is also an intimate portrait of the economy and politics of Great Britain in the 1920s and 30s, as well as showing the advances in technology - we see the arrival of primitive crystal radio sets, home gas lights being replaced by electric lights, the arrival of telephones and mass broadcast radio.

[edit] Film Version

This Happy Breed

Directed by	David Lean
Produced by	Noel Coward Ronald Neame
Written by	Noel Coward Anthony Havelock-Allan David Lean Ronald Neame
Starring	Robert Newton
Distributed by	Universal Pictures
Release date(s)	1944
Running time	115 min
Language	English
IMDb profile

The play was the subject of a highly successful feature-film adaptation in 1944. Directed by David Lean as his first major movie as sole director, it was the most successful cinema film of 1944, and was shot in colour. The cast included Robert Newton, Celia Johnson, Stanley Holloway, John Mills, and Alison Leggatt. The film included narration by Sir Laurence Olivier.

The film version of This Happy Breed was an influence on Mike Leigh's Life is Sweet (1990), another intimate and sympathetic study of a south London family, in which the This Happy Breed line "Capitalist!" is re-used by the Nicola character and delivered in exactly the same way as in This Happy Breed.

David Lean
1940s	In Which We Serve (with Noel Coward) \| This Happy Breed \| Blithe Spirit \| Brief Encounter \| Great Expectations \| Oliver Twist \| The Passionate Friends
1950s	Madeleine \| The Sound Barrier \| Hobson's Choice \| Summertime \| The Bridge on the River Kwai
1960s	Lawrence of Arabia \| Doctor Zhivago
1970s	Ryan's Daughter
1980s	A Passage to India
Television	Lost and Found: The Story of Cook's Anchor (1979)

[edit] Further reading

Andrew Higson. "Re-constructing the nation: This Happy Breed, 1944", Film Criticism, Vol.XVI, No's.1-2, 1991-92, pp.95-110.

David Ravit. "'Everything in the Garden is Lovely': Male Friendship, the Great War and the British Far Right in Noel Coward's This Happy Breed". (2006, forthcoming).