Ivor Novello
1893 - 1951He 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).
Symphony in Two Flats
Gareth Gundrey
Ivor Novello, Benita Hume
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
The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog
Alfred Hitchcock
Ivor Novello, Marie Ault
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
The Constant Nymph
Adrian Brunel
Ivor Novello, Mabel Poulton
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
Bonnie Prince Charlie
Charles Calvert
Gladys Cooper, Ivor Novello
In the Jacobite Rising of 1745, the Young Pretender Bonnie Prince Charlie leads an insurrection to overthrow the Protestant House of Hanover and restore his family, the Catholic branch of the House of Stuart, to the British throne.
Bonnie Prince Charlie
The Rat
Graham Cutts
Ivor Novello, Mae Marsh
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
The Return of the Rat
Graham Cutts
Ivor Novello, Isabel Jeans
The rich, amoral Zelie is married to Pierre Boucheron, "The Rat" - but her interest in another man is an open secret. Forced to defend his honour, the Rat takes refuge in his old domain of the Paris underworld. But even here he has a rival - and when murder is afoot, the sinister Morel's ambition threatens to cost the Rat dear....
The Return of the Rat
Sleeping Car
Anatole Litvak
Madeleine Carroll, Ivor Novello
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
I Lived with You
Maurice Elvey
Ivor Novello, Ursula Jeans
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
The White Rose
D. W. Griffith
Mae Marsh, Carol Dempster
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
The Triumph of the Rat
Graham Cutts
Ivor Novello, Isabel Jeans
Pierre Boucheron, alias 'The Rat' and a former underworld notoriety, is now living the high life as the kept man of Zelie de Chaumet. But when she learns he is planning to marry another woman, her vengeance pursues him into the murkiest depths of Paris...
The Triumph of the Rat
Downhill
Alfred Hitchcock
Ivor Novello, Ben Webster
Roddy, first son of the rich Berwick family, is expelled from school when he takes the blame for his friend Tim's charge. His family sends him away and all of his friends leave him alone. Through many life choices that don't work out in his favor, Roddy begins to find his life slowly spiraling out of his control.
Downhill
Once a Lady
Guthrie McClintic
Ruth Chatterton, Ivor Novello
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
The Man Without Desire
Adrian Brunel
Ivor Novello, Nina Vanna
A grief-stricken 18th-century Venetian gentleman is thwarted in love and placed in suspended animation. When he wakes up 200 years later, he finds the experiment has more serious unexpected consequences.
The Man Without Desire
