Ivor NOVELLO (David Ivor Davies)
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Welsh composer, singer and actor who became one of the most popular British entertainers of the early 20th century. Born Cardiff January 15, 1893: died London March 6, 1951
He was born at Llwyn-yr-Eos (Grove of Nightingales), Cowbridge Road East, Cardiff, Wales, to the well-known singer and teacher, Dame Clara Novello Davies, and David Davies, a tax collector. A blue plaque commemorating his birth can be seen on the side of the house. He attended Magdalen College School Oxford for some time.
He first became well known as a result of the song, Keep the Home Fires Burning, which he composed during World War I. After the war, he began a film career, and also appeared on stage in the West End, in musical shows of his own devising; the best known of these was The Dancing Years (1939). Novello starred in two early films directed by Alfred Hitchcock, The Lodger (1927) and Downhill (1927). He later went to Hollywood and appeared in numerous successful films, but the stage remained his first love and the medium for his major successes.
Novello wrote his musical shows in the style of operetta, and was one of the last major composers in this form. He generally composed his music to the librettos of Christopher Hassall.
Novello was homosexual, well known for some of his more glamorous gay affairs. For 35 years, he was the lover of the British actor Bobbie Andrews,[1] and he had an affair with the British poet and writer Siegfried Sassoon.[2]
During World War II, Novello was sentenced to eight weeks in prison (he served four) for misuse of petrol coupons, a serious offence in wartime Britain. (Serving a sentence alongside him was Frankie Fraser.) This downfall from Novello's luxurious lifestyle completely broke his spirit, and he was never the same man after his release. However, he continued to appear on stage until the day before his sudden death from a coronary thrombosis on March 6, 1951, aged 58.
The Ivor Novello Awards for songwriting, are awarded each year by the record industry to songwriters and arrangers as well as the performing artistes.
Novello was portrayed in Robert Altman's fictional film Gosford Park (2001) by Jeremy Northam and several of his songs were used for the film's soundtrack. However, Novello's homosexuality was subtly played in the film.
His memory continues to be promoted by The Ivor Novello Appreciation Bureau, who hold annual events around Britain, including an annual pilgrimage to Redroofs in Littlewick Green in June.
In 2005 The Strand Theatre in London, above which Novello lived for many years, was renamed the Novello Theatre.
Stage Works:
- Theodore & Co - collaboration with Jerome Kern (1916)
- The Golden Moth (1921)
- Glamorous Nights (1935)
- Careless Rapture (1936)
- Crest of the Wave (1937)
- The Dancing Years (1939) revised version (1968)
- Arc de Triomphe (1943)
- Perchance to Dream (1945)
- Kings Rhapsody (1949)
- Gay's the Word (lyrics by Alan Melville) (1950)