LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Ivor Novello: British Music
built 668 days ago
After six years as Magdalen's most feted boy soprano, Novello's voice broke and he went to live in London, where he immediately began to make a living teaching the piano and writing popular songs. In 1914, aged just 21, Novello wrote "Keep the Home Fires Burning", which was an instant hit with the British wartime public; overnight, he became a celebrity. When, in 1917, America entered the war, it was sung with gusto there, too, and his international reputation was made - as was his fortune.
Source:
Despite his outstanding success as an actor and playwright, Novello returned to writing musicals in the 1930s, casting himself as the non-singing lead in most productions. His highly successful shows for the London stage included Glamorous Night (1935), Perchance to Dream (1945), and The Dancing Years (1939): the latter ran for almost ten years. Novello died of a heart attack very shortly after appearing as the lead in a production of his King’s Rhapsody. A remarkably popular figure, his funeral was attended by over 7,000 people.
Source:
Novello knew he was better in his own shows, but reluctantly agreed to play the part of an Italian waiter in Noel Coward’s drama Sirocco (1927). This was an unmitigated disaster ending in jeers, catcalls and a scuffle at the stage door. The two men never worked together again but maintained their friendship until Novello’s death. Coward was jealous of the fact that, though he was undeniably the better playwright, Novello was vastly more successful in musical theatre, and after the composer’s death he tried to stage his own Novello-style show in After The Ball (1954). For good measure it starred two of the late writer’s leading ladies, Mary Ellis and Vanessa Lee. It was a huge flop.
Source:
Novello's popularity stemmed in no small part from his writing most of the plays and films he starred in himself from 1924 onwards. All the while he was still penning hit songs. But it was when he combined these talents that he had his greatest impact. Between 1935 and 1951, he produced seven musicals. The enormous success of such productions as Careless Rapture and The Dancing Years (or, as Novello preferred to call them, Careless Rupture and The Prancing Queers) kept the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane from closure during the impecunious times of the Second World War.
Source:
This is the second volume in Naxos’s Nostalgia series devoted to Ivor Novello’s recordings. The first spanned widely, from 1937 to 1950, but this one tightens the focus securely on two famous shows, The Dancing Years and King’s Rhapsody, in recordings made between 1939 and 1950, the year before Novello’s regrettably early death. 1935 saw Glamorous Night, Novello’s latest big musical and his first for a decade and a half. It was followed a few years later by The Dancing Years (libretto by Christopher Hassell), one of his greatest musical successes, in the intense period before the War when it closed after only 187 performances. Later on it reopened and ran for about three years leading to a celebrated 1949 film. The HMV selections were recorded in April 1939 and capture to a large degree the verve of the cast, all well versed in musical theatre and under the authoritative hand of conductor Charles Prentice.
Source:
If you're interested in Novello there's plenty of fascinating food for thought here, but don't expect a biography. It focusses on the worldwide smash hit 'Keep The Home Fires Burning' and on Novello's early silent films. Williams's thesis (which is very much what this is, in every sense, hence the need to put up with jargon like that in the title of this review) is that the two are linked via associations with the 'lost generation' of the First World War, and all kinds of themes, from shell shock to Vorticism, are examined in support of this. You get some idea of the fascination Novello held for the immediate post-War generation, but the book stops with the talkies, let alone the musical plays which he was so famous for in the 1930s and 1940s.
Source:
MORE ABOUT
British Music