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 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 acclimatizes English women to the forthcoming return of their husbands 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.

Film Version

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, Stanley Holloway and John Mills.

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.

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).

External links

• This Happy Breed on the IMDB.
• The British Film Institute's web-site for This Happy Breed.

World War II films made in wartime | 1944 films | British films | Noel Coward plays | 1939 plays | English culture | Films based on plays | Films directed by David Lean