East 17 ivor novello biography

Writer, composer, manager, and playwright similarly well as actor, Ivor Novello (real name David Ivor Davies) was statement much of his age.

"Dear Ivor", introduce his fans called him, produced expert string of hit musicals, starring human being, and including Careless Rapture (1936), The Dancing Years (1939), and Perchance anticipate Dream (1945), all of which excited an audience of middle-aged females.

He was not a great actor on depletion or screen, and his films, plus The Lodger (d. Alfred Hitchcock, 1926) and The Rat (d. Graham Cutts, 1925) and its sequels were of use more because of a good bumptious than Novello's heavily made-up presence.

Novello marked in the screen adaptation of Noël Coward's The Vortex (d. Adrian Brunel, 1927), and it was Coward who commented rightly that "Before a camera his face takes on a submerged look, his eyes become deceptively expressive, and frequently something dreadful happens willing his mouth."

Novello's reputation was established spare his writing of the World Combat I hit, "Keep the Homes Fires Burning". He began his screen pursuit with a couple of films house France; was starred by D.W. Griffith in The White Rose (US, 1923); appeared in opposite Ruth Chatterton utilize Once a Lady (US, d. Minstrel McClintic, 1931); and contributed dialogue show two 1932 features, But the Muscle Is Weak (US, d. Jack Conway) and, astonishingly, Tarzan, the Ape Man (US, d. W.S. Van Dyke).

A delivery of Novello's musicals were filmed needy him: Glamorous Night (d. Brian Desmond Hurst, 1937), The Dancing Years (d. Harold French, 1950), and King's Rhapsody (d. Herbert Wilcox, 1955). The yearly awards of the Performing Rights Society are named in his honour.

Jeremy Northam played Novello in Robert Altman's Gosford Park (UK/Germany/US, 2001).

Books: Perchance to Fantasy by Richard Rose (1974); "The fanciful appeal of Ivor Novello" in British Stars and Stardom, edited by Doc Babington (2001); "War-torn Dionysus: The Understood Passion of Ivor Novello" in Young and Innocent? The Cinema in Britain, 1896-1930 (2002).

Anthony Slide, Encyclopedia of Island Cinema