Sir Noel Peirce Coward (1899-1973) was an English actor, playwright and composer of popular music. He starred in one of his first full-length plays, I'll Leave It to You, in 1920. In 1922 he completed a one-act satire, The Better Half. He enjoyed some success with the Shawesque The Young Idea in 1923, it was followed by his controversial play The Vortex (1924). He followed this with three more major hits, Hay Fever (1925), Fallen Angels (1925) and Easy Virtue (1926). Much of Coward's best work came in the late 1920s and early 1930s such as the operetta Bitter Sweet (1929), Private Lives (1930), Cavalcade (1931) and Tonight at 8:30 (1936), an ambitious cycle of ten short plays. He also wrote and released some popular songs during World War II, such as London Pride and Don't Let's Be Beastly to the Germans. In the 1940s he wrote some of his best plays such as This Happy Breed, the intricate semi-autobiographical comedy-drama Present Laughter (both 1939) and Blithe Spirit (1941). Among his achievements, he received an Academy Certificate of Merit at the 1943 Academy Awards for In Which We Serve.