Ivor Novello
Acting
Biography
Ivor Novello (born David Ivor Davies; 15 January 1893 – 6 March 1951) was a Welsh composer and actor who became one of the most popular British entertainers of the first half of the 20th century, on both screen and stage. He was born into a musical Cardiff family and his mother, Clara Novello Davies, was an internationally known singing teacher and choral conductor. As a child, Novello was a successful singer in various eisteddfodau throughout the country. He was educated privately in Cardiff and then in Gloucester and later won a scholarship to Magdalen College School in Oxford. The family moved to London in 1913 and here Novello's career flourished. In 1914, at the start of World War II, he wrote the words to his most popular song, "Keep the Home Fires Burning". Novello lived in a flat above the Strand Theatre, where he remained until his death in 1951. Since 1955 the internationally prestigious The Ivor Novello Awards ("The Ivors") for songwriting and composing are annually awarded by the British Academy of Songwriters, Composers and Authors (BASCA).
Known For
James Parker and Harry Holt are on an expedition in Africa in search of the elephant burial grounds that will provide enough ivory to make them rich. Parker's beautiful daughter Jane arrives unexpectedly to join them. Jane is terrified when Tarzan and his ape friends abduct her, but when she returns to her father's expedition she has second thoughts about leaving Tarzan.
Tarzan the Ape Man
London. A mysterious serial killer brutally murders young blond women by stalking them in the night fog. One foggy, sinister night, a young man who claims his name is Jonathan Drew arrives at the guest house run by the Bunting family and rents a room.
The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog
When school captain Roddy Berwick takes the blame for his friend’s scandal, he is expelled and disowned by his family. Cast out of his privileged world, Roddy drifts through a series of humiliations—from waiter to penniless actor to gigolo—descending ever further into ruin and self-disgust.
Downhill
A wealthy young Southern aristocrat, Joseph, graduates from a seminary and, before he takes charge of his assigned parish, decides to go out and see what "the real world" is all about. He winds up in New Orleans and finds himself attracted to a poor, unsophisticated orphan girl, Bessie. One thing leads to another, and before long Bessie finds that she is pregnant with Joseph's child.
The White Rose
Jean Boucheron the cat burglar is the darling of the Montmartre whores--and catches the eye of slumming socialite Zelia de Chaumont, who decides to "reform" him. A complication is his lovely young ward Odile... murder and a grand courtoom scene ensue.
The Rat
This MGM B-picture was adapted from Ivor Novello's play The Truth Game. Max and Florian Clemington pretend to be members of the landed gentry. Max romances the much-older Lady Joan Culver before finding true love in the form of pretty heiress Martha Gray.
Free and Easy
Flynn plays the exciled Ruritanian king who leaves his mistress to return home to a political marriage. Love versus duty in this enjoyable romantic film.
King's Rhapsody
A French sleeping-car attending with an eye for the ladies hooks up with a wealthy widow and they get married. What he doesn't know is that she married him because she wants to stay in France. Complications ensue.
Sleeping Car
The episodic story of a composer of operettas, Rudi Kleiber, in in old Viennese days, and the two women in his life; Maria Zeitler, his sweetheart, later mistress, lost love, an operetta star, and his first patron, and the mother of a son he did not know he had; and of Greta, his first love and companion in later years
The Dancing Years
Based on Ivor Novello's hit stage play: an opera singer and her gypsy friends try to rescue their king from the clutches of a would-be dictator.
Glamorous Night
An actor playing Othello in a stage production of Shakespeare's play becomes jealous of his wife's supposed infidelity and seems bound to kill her in the scene in which she, enacting Othello's falsely accused wife Desdemona, is murdered by her jealous husband.
Carnival
A young Russian woman marries a wealthy Englishman, and has a daughter with him. After she has an affair with one of his friends, she is forced to leave Britain and moves to Paris. Many years later, her daughter approaches her, needing her help.
Once a Lady
An elderly couple's lodger, a British musician (Ivor Novello), becomes the suspect in a series of killings.
The Lodger
A poor-but-charming father and son try to enter high society by marrying rich English widows.
But the Flesh Is Weak
In London a young lady meets a homeless and apparently penniless Russian prince. She introduces him to her middle-class Fulham family and he moves in. It turns out he still has a number of diamonds given him by the last czar, and he is persuaded to start selling them. The resulting money, and his princely notoriety, soon cause changes in everyone's lives.
I Lived with You
Sanger, an eccentric expatriate composer, dies in his house in the Austrian Alps, leaving his daughters penniless. The young composer Lewis Dodd, a longstanding friend of the family, falls in love with their cousin Florence when she comes to take the girls back to England. But little Tessa Sanger is in love with Lewis herself, and when she runs away from school and comes to live with Florence and her husband, their already-shaky marriage is further undermined
The Constant Nymph
A young composer goes blind, and shortly afterward enters his most recent work in a competition. He believes he's won, but doesn't know that his wife couldn't bear to tell him that he didn't. Complications ensue.
Symphony in Two Flats
'Girl reporter and insane fiancé join pirate's descendant in treasure hunt.' (British Film Catalogue)
A South Sea Bubble
When bored courtesan Zelie de Chaumet begs her lover, the corrupt and powerful Stetz, to take her slumming, the pair encounter Pierre Boucheron, alias 'The Rat' , boy-king of the Paris underworld, and the innocent Odile. Love, life and jewels are risked and lost in this powerful romantic melodrama as the four characters' lives are changed by this chance encounter for ever.
The Rat
1957 BBC Television production of Ivor Novello’s musical featuring Vanessa Lee, reprising the role of Princess Cristiane which she took in the 1949 stage premiere at the Palace Theatre, London.