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Ivor Novello
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Composer and actor Ivor Novello is to be immortalised in the West End when the Strand Theatre, above which he used to live, is renamed in his honour. Paul Webb looks back at the fame and fortune of one of the stage’s biggest stars
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From the beginning, the overwhelming influence in Novello's life was his formidable mother. Clara - named after Clara Novello, an Italian singer - came from a fiercely musical Welsh family. This was a talent that she was convinced her baby had inherited, pointing, if proof were demanded, to the "not at all inharmonious" manner in which he cried "in perfect thirds". Her maternal instincts were correct: in 1903, at the age of ten, Ivor won a choral scholarship to Magdalen College Choir School.
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In an era before there existed such a social construct as "openly gay," Ivor Novello ... lived a life of undisguised authenticity. How perfect then that his last play, staged in 1951, would be called Gay's the Word.
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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.
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Not content with fame as a composer, Novello harboured acting ambitions. In 1919, his Mediterranean looks won him the attention of the film director Louis Mercanton, who cast him as a Sicilian cad in The Call of the Blood. Novello's performance received glowing reviews (Sarah Bernhardt thought him thrilling) and ... was launched a film career that would last until 1934. Novello used his celluloid cachet to create an opening on stage. He made his theatrical debut aged 28 in 1921. Early reviewers picked up on his tendency to lose "the heroic in the effeminate", but even though it was no secret that the exquisite Mr Novello was gay, nothing could dim his popular-ity with his growing legion of fans.
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This J.D.Wetherspoon pub is named after the actor, songwriter, and composer known as Ivor Novello. He was born Ivor Davies, in 1893, at 95 Cowbridge Road East, where a plaque bears the inscription: "This boy became a Ruritanian King, who gave his people dreams and songs to sing".
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Ivor Novello