staged in the US in 1946; after an out-of-town tour it opened on 29 October 1946 at the Plymouth Theatre on Broadway. It featured Clifton Webb as Garry and closed in March 1947 after 158 performances. In 1958 Coward appeared in New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles as Garry with Eva Gabor as Joanna. American successors in the role of Garry Essendine have included Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. (1975), George C. Scott (1982), Frank Langella (1996),, Victor Garber (2010), and Kevin Kline (2017). Adaptations Paris Coward directed and starred in a French translation, Joyeux Chagrins, with the central character renamed Max Aramont. The production toured, beginning in Brussels, before opening at the Théâtre Édouard VII in Paris in 1948. In September 1996 a new French adaptation, titled Bagatelle was presented at the Théâtre de Paris, starring Michel Sardou in the lead role, now named Jean Delecour. Radio In September 1956 the BBC broadcast a radio production with John Gielgud as Garry, Nora Swinburne as Liz and Mary Wimbush as Joanna. In 1974, Paul Scofield played the lead role for the BBC, with Fenella Fielding as Joanna, Patricia Routledge as Monica, Miriam Margolyes as Daphne, and Joy Parker (Scofield's real wife) as Liz. In April 2013, a radio adaptation was broadcast on BBC Radio 4, starring Samuel West as Garry. Television As part of the "Play of the Week" series in August 1964 four Coward plays directed and produced by Joan Kemp-Welch were transmitted on ITV, including Present Laughter, with Peter Wyngarde as Garry Essendine, Ursula Howells as Liz, Barbara Murray as Joanna and James Bolam as Roland Maule. In 1967 ITV broadcast a production starring Peter O'Toole as Garry, with Honor Blackman as Liz. The 1981 West End production starring Donald Sinden was filmed for BBC Television. Autobiographical references Coward acknowledged that the central character, the egocentric actor Garry Essendine, was a self-caricature. Ben Brantley called the play "among the most shameless, if liveliest, self-addressed valentines in theater history." Coward repeats one of his signature theatrical devices at the end of the play, where the main characters tiptoe out as the curtain falls – a device that he also used in Private Lives, Hay Fever and Blithe Spirit. In the 1970s the director Peter Hall wrote, "what a wonderful play it would be if – as Coward must have wanted – all those love affairs were about homosexuals". Whether or