"I Went to a Marvellous Party" is a 1938 song — I guess it's a rap song, no? — by Noël Coward.
Noël Coward composed this song after he and Beatrice Lillie attended a beach party given by Elsa Maxwell in the south of France, an event which his memory placed in either 1937 or 1938. The lyrics in the first stanza are based on a real life experience of Coward and Lillie: The two were invited to "come as they were," but on arriving they discovered the other guests were formally dressed....I encountered that song again this morning as I was looking back on my "homophobia politics" tag and reread "Romney, the man who says 'marvelous.'" Excerpt:
Obama mocked Romney this way: "He said that he's 'very supportive' of this new budget, and he even called it 'marvelous' — which is a word you don't often hear when it comes to describing a budget." Comic pause. "It's a word you don't often hear generally."...
My first association, on hearing one man mock another for saying "marvelous," was: Gay. It's an I'm-more-manly move. I heard a smidgeon of homophobia....
I Googled "gay men say marvelous." Sorry, to be so crude, but research can be so easy and I got the most marvelous return. It's Noël Coward's "I've Been To A Marvellous Party," in which male homosexuality and excessive wealth are merged marvelously...
I went to a marvellous party we didn't sit down til tenI'm just waiting for young Paul Ryan to do a stunt at the bar with a lot of extraordinary men and then for Mitt Romney to suddenly cry "fiddle-de-de" and rip off his trousers and jump in the sea. And then Obama arrives with a turtle...
Y'know young Bobby Carr did a stunt at the bar with a lot of extraordinary men
And then Freda arrived with a turtle which shattered us all to the core
And then the Duchess passed out at a quarter to three
And suddenly Cyril cried 'fiddle-de-de'
And he ripped off his trousers and jumped in the sea
I couldn't have liked it more...
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55 comments:
I've been waiting for the return of "splendid." Waiting and waiting.
"FanTAStic" had a pretty good run.
Fernando Lamas felt marvelous, or at least Billy Crystal's version did.
It reminds me of "fabulous". Whenever i hear either word i think of zsa zsa gabor or Tallulah Bankhead.
"I'm feeling marvelous, darling. Absolutely fabulous."
"My first association, on hearing one man mock another for saying "marvelous," was: Gay."
You mean, Gaye? As in Marvelous Marvin?
I mean, you couldn't be thinking of Marvelous Marvin Hagler, could you?
@Sebastian
I didn't say my first association with the word "marvelous" was "gay." I said "My first association, on hearing one man mock another for saying "marvelous," was: Gay." I'm judging the motivation to mock. That's the context.
Nirvana
"Come As You Are"
Come as you are, as you were
As I want you to be
As a friend, as a friend
As an old enemy
Take your time, hurry up
Choice is yours, don't be late
Take a rest, as a friend
As an old memoria
Memoria
Memoria
Memoria
Come doused in mud, soaked in bleach...
Well, it's pretty clear who Althouse is going to vote for in 2020, even if she has to write him in.
Anti-elitism has long been intertwined with accusations of effeminacy. Of course, populism isn't always associated with attacks on homosexuals, but there's a thin line between attacks on elites for being soft and weak and addicted to easy and luxury and attacks on them for being insufficently masculine, one step away from more serious allegations. The Jacksonians attacked John Quincy Adams for effeminacy and luxuriousness. Was that a dog whistle? The Whigs took that same approach against Jackson's heir and successor Martin Van Buren.
Is it "homophobia," though? There's always been a preference for fighters over non-combatants. The man who can fight over the man who can write. Eisenhower over Stevenson. Bush One used that against Dukakis, though it was hardly Dukakis's fault that the Korean War was over by the time he got there. Kerry tried to use it against Bush Two, but it didn't work, because John Kerry was ... John Kerry.
Maybe it's just a natural preference for the candidate who's demonstrated the required toughness and a disdain for those who haven't? Just as Margaret Thatcher could make people's disdain for the feminine work in her favor, someday a gay candidate will be able to claim the mantle of toughness.
It's funny to hear Obama play the masculinity card, when for so many people he was anything but macho. It was a cheap shot, but also a poke in the eye of people who made the same cheap shot against him. It's silly to think of either Obama or Romney as tough guys. As with Biden, tough talk is used to hide the absence of real toughness.
"My first association, on hearing one man mock another for saying "marvelous," was: Gay. It's an I'm-more-manly move. I heard a smidgeon of homophobia...."
That interpretation might (might*) fly if the speaker wasn't Obama. It's impossible for anyone not far gone in dog-whistle hallucinations to imagine Obama capable of an "I'm more manly move" that wouldn't be an immediate, obvious, farcical fail. (Which his mockery of Romney was not. It was just quotidian Obama lame.) Come oooon, Prof.
*but probably not.
wild chicken said...
I've been waiting for the return of "splendid." Waiting and waiting.
Not gay enough. The world has moved on to "splendiferous."
"Lovely"?
My first association, on hearing one man mock another for saying "marvelous" was: snooty landed gentry British women, as in "You must come visit us at la cote, darling, our little hovel down there is simply marvelous."
Thanks, Althouse! Now I've got a Ricky Nelson earwig!
Went to a garden party to reminisce with my old friends
A chance to share old memories and play our songs again
When I got to the garden party, they all knew my name
No one recognized me, I didn't look the same
I thought “fabulous” was the Gay Word.
I have noticed Trump being mocked for effeminate gestures, manner of speech, and tone. When he riffed on Steve Scalise in his post acquittal reverie being better looking now than before he was shot I literally LOLed. Trump is so comfortable in his sexuality he can talk about men the same way gays do and it’s hilarious. Not sure how this fits the topic except to illustrate Trump seems the least homophobic of anybody running except Bootygig.
Coward kept adding verses to that song over the years; here's my favorite:
Oh my God, we talked about growing old gracefully,
and Elsie, Elsie who is 74, well she said:
"A) it's a question of being sincere."
and "B) if you're supple, you've nothing to fear."
Then she swung upside down from a glass chandelier.
I couldn't have liked it more!
Ann, this may be your best.
I see the lyric I quoted actually was in that "rap" performance, but if you didn't know it already I doubt you would have been able to decipher it.
Actually Ann's calling it a rap song isn't really that far off; like many of Coward's cabaret songs, this is typically half-sung, half-spoken. But the wit in the words is meant to be appreciated far more than the actually very intricate musicality. Flawless diction really is required.
"I didn't say my first association with the word "marvelous" was "gay." I said . . . "
OMG.
For a creative writer, you are marvelously predictable.
Coward had one of those saggy bloodhound faces and downturned smiles that fairly shouts, in an Englishman, a dissolute character and a decadent lifestyle. Even when I was too young to know or understand much of anything about homosexuality he struck me as creepy and dangerous like the weirdos who hung out at the schoolyard and parks.
,,, who hung out at schoolyards and parks and offered to push your swing for you and buy you ice cream.
Someone had a thread about "marvelous" --
Guess who
It's a marvelous night for a moon dance.
Isn't she lovely.
There you go...some earworms.
I have never heard another man say "fabulous" or "marvelous". That Mittens would use the word, just shows the cut of his jib.
Geez Roughcoat, you knew Noel Coward? I didn't even hear the name until I was in college, much less anything about him.
I'm no nusicologist, but isn't this something of a "patter" song? Long British tradition.
Also, I heard "Freda arrived with a Churchill"! As noted, diction counts.
Narr
I'm reviving "Delightful!" Please help.
Old gay joke:
"The question is, was Jesus divine--or simply marvelous?"
baddabish
Drunk at 8:41 AM--on a Sunday!
There is a movie, one or more of the Dirty Harry flicks, where Clint Eastwwood says "marvelous" quite often. I wouldn't consider Clint to be gay.
Sometimes a word like marvelous is just a word, kinda like the word cigar, unless BJ Clinton has one in his hand.
Coward was able to have a career as a leading man, something of a heartthrob even, in his early days - or maybe that was Ivor Novello. He was campy when he wanted to be and the larger public wasn't watching, but I didn't find Coward creepy. It's subjective of course, but old Coward was able to play the solid, reliable, stiff-upper-lip Englishman well enough.
I don't think I have ever used the word marvellous outside the context of referring to Marvin Hagler.
It is hilarious to remember that bit from Obama, our first gay president.
AllenS,
I think when Clint Eastwood used "marvelous" in Dirty Harry, he was being sarcastic.
The thing this post reminded me of was "party songs", not songs which one would play at a party, but songs about parties. Eric Clapton's Wonderful Tonight comes to mind, no link, we've all heard it. But this one is a little obscure and is marvelous:
https://youtu.be/UtBIgZ1IVFQ
but old Coward was able to play the solid, reliable, stiff-upper-lip Englishman well enough.
He played a WWII Royal Navy destroyer captain loosely based on Louis Mountbatten, who allegedly played on both sides of the fence.
Bing and Frank give Cole Porter's take on a party song in High Society (1955):
What a Swell Party This Is
Yes, I knew about Coward when I was a kid. He would appear occasionally on talk shows hosted by the likes of erudite fellows like Jack Paar, Steve Allen, and Dick Cavett. I was allowed to watch those show, and I did. And he was sometimes seen in old movies broadcast on Channel 9 in Chicago at 4:00 PM ("The Early Show") just after I got home from school. Ralph I., above, referenced one such movie: "In Which We Serve."
I knew he was gay even before I knew what gay was.
I'm just giving you my impression of Coward. YMMV; there's no accounting for taste. In my view, all those "stiff-upper-lip" English aristocrat actor types from the old movies I grew up on had a gay quality to them that I found (still find) by turns off-putting and creepy.
“Right, kick ass. Well, don't want to sound like a dick or nothin', but, ah... it says on your chart that you're fucked up. Ah, you talk like a fag, and your shit's all retarded. What I'd do, is just like... like... you know, like, you know what I mean, like...”
Idiocracy is real.
Let us progress to exonerate ourselves with gay abandon.
I was almost 50 years old when I learned that the Lewis Carroll poem Jabberwocky was not a string of nonsense words, but instead consisted of obscure but perfectly sensible language.
This event led me to re-evaluate a lot of what passes for communication these days, because misunderstandings are so very, very easy and often occur without either side in a conversation knowing it.
Beware the Jabberwock, my son.
Marvelous Mark in, I think, Even Cowgirls Get The Blues. Self-applied, because it was the least masculine adjective he could think of. Still not sure why he felt that was important as he wasn't gay. Maybe some nascent Prog self-hating and signaling.
I suppose the marvelousity of any party, from now on, will depend on whether the freed royal couple is available to attend.
the jabberwocky was a particularly horrifying creature, if memory serves,
Roughcoat, that's delightful. You probably had more TV choices than I did, or at least, were allowed more choice.
I did see the WWII RNDD SUL movie, without any inkling of who Coward was.
Narr
'Twas a man's ship, with a man's crew . . .
At Bangkok at 12 o'clock they foam at the mouth and run but mad dogs and Englishmen go out to the midday sun.
In Hong Kong, they strike a gong, and fire off a noonday gun.
Narr:
Yes, I was very lucky indeed to grow up watching old movies broadcast on the local station (WGN Channel 9). There was "The Early Show" (4-6 pm), "The Late Show" (10:30 PM to c. 12:00 AM or later) and, on weekends, "The Late Late Show (about 1:30 AM to whenever). It was great, all old movies all the time. Old movies were also shown on Saturday mornings, although that's when I usually watched cartoon shows, "Fury," "Sky King," "Whirlybirds," and the like. In the event, I saw all the classics and much, much more by the time I was 15. I'm talking about movies from the 1930s through the 1940s; and even a bunch of silent movies from the 20s, like the Chaplin films. Curiously, watching old movies spurred my interest in reading. I'd see an historical movie and if I liked it I'd go to the public library and check out the book it was based on as well as books on the subject. It was like getting a parallel education, and who's to say it was not equal in some ways to the education in the humanities (e.g., history and literature) I got in public schools? For instance, all those Italian-made English-dubbed "sword and sandal" epics fascinated me; and now, still, even late in life, I'm writing articles and books about warfare in the ancient world. My interest in the subject was sparked and fueled by the movies I watched as a kid on black-and-white TVs in the family room of a 3-story walk-up tenement apartment.
Yancey Ward said...
It is hilarious to remember that bit from Obama, our first gay president.
That is my take away from this. Obama can play the same stupid sissy-baiting game that people who hate him play. Brothers under the skin.
I don't know what it is about them, but I like "The Divine Comedy."
Better than Noël Coward, even.
From How Gay Came to Mean Homosexual
Fast-forward to the 19th century and the word gay referred to a woman who was a prostitute and a gay man was someone who slept with a lot of women (ironically enough), often prostitutes. Also at this time, the phrase “gay it” meant to have sex.
With these new definitions, the original meanings of “carefree”, “joyful”, and “bright and showy” were still around; so the word was not exclusively used to refer to prostitutes or a promiscuous man. Those were just accepted definitions, along with the other meanings of the word.
Around the 1920s and 1930s, however, the word started to have a new meaning. In terms of the sexual meaning of the word, a “gay man” no longer just meant a man who had sex with a lot of women, but now started to refer to men who had sex with other men. There was also another word “gey cat” at this time which meant a homosexual boy.
By 1955, the word gay now officially acquired the new added definition of meaning homosexual males. Gay men themselves seem to have been behind the driving thrust for this new definition as they felt (and many still do), that “homosexual” is much too clinical, sounding like a disorder.
So - in other words - the homosexual community adopted the word gay as their own name. Interestingly, the spelling "gey" was not selected. Perhaps a secondary reason might have been to avoid the anti-homosexual references cited by those who are now Trump's religious right supporters. But - please do not misinterpret my meaning here. I need someone to vote for in November and the overwhelming majority of Dem candidates are extreme leftists - while Buttigieg and Klobuchar are the only centrists .
Whoa, "gay men were the driving thrust"?!?
Roughcoat, I'll say flatly that the education I got in history and literature in the public schools here was far inferior to the education I gave myself from the school and public libraries (and a few bookish friends). Teachers didn't catch up to me until I got to college, when I was challenged, but well read.
Not all the male history teachers were coaches, but most were, and they were a dim lot--it's probably best that they could be easily distracted by others with game-talk.
Narr
Some were gay too, we now know
Transgender (e.g. homosexual, bisexual, neosexual) politics, and exploitation of projected conditions (e.g. transphobia, diversity) for sociopolitical leverage. Curiously, trans/homos have purity tests for others in the spectrum, and seek social and/or political exclusion/isolation of members that exhibit impurities (e.g. trans/bis) and who indulge medical corruption that emphasize gender (i.e. physical and mental sex-correlated attributes including sexual orientation) divergence. Cultural appropriation (e.g. semantic spaces) are perceived and constructed ("=") as a bridge to normalization.
As AllenS said...” sometimes marvelous is just a word...”
Indeed, I use it regularly, both as sarcasm (something has gone fubar) and as in a more literal sense.
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