Ivor Novello

Acting

Ivor Novello

Born 1893-01-15 · Cardiff, Wales, UK

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).

Acting credits

The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog poster
7.2

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

1927

Downhill poster
5.7

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

1927

Once a Lady poster
4.6

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

1931

The Lodger poster
5.4

An elderly couple's lodger, a British musician (Ivor Novello), becomes the suspect in a series of killings.

The Lodger

1932

I Lived with You poster
6.1

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

1933

The Bohemian Girl poster
6.8

A Polish officer posing as a gypsy loves a gypsy girl who is really the count's daughter.

The Bohemian Girl

1922

The Constant Nymph poster
10.0

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

1928

Autumn Crocus poster
7.7

A teacher falls in love with the married owner of the guest house in which she is staying during a holiday to Austria.

Autumn Crocus

1934

Sleeping Car poster
6.5

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

1933

Miarka, la fille à l'ourse poster
9.0

Miarka is to marry a gypsy chief - whereabouts unknown. She and her tame bear live upon the estate of an old gentleman who tolerates them because of his interest in gypsies, and more particularly because he has a gypsy document which he cannot decipher. One day, the gardener, who is in love with Miarka, robs the master and sets fire to the home, making it appear that she is the guilty one.

Miarka, la fille à l'ourse

1920

No artwork available
7.0

The daughter of an American millionaire falls in love with a Hungarian hussar officer during a visit to the Austrian Empire.

The Gallant Hussar

1928

Bonnie Prince Charlie poster
10.0

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

1923

The Rat poster
8.5

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

1925

The White Rose poster
7.4

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

1923

The Call of the Blood poster
NR

An Englishman commits adultery with a Sicilian woman.

The Call of the Blood

1919

The Vortex poster
7.0

A young man is shocked to discover that his fiancé is the mistress of his mother's lover.

The Vortex

1928

No artwork available
10.0

'Girl reporter and insane fiancé join pirate's descendant in treasure hunt.' (British Film Catalogue)

A South Sea Bubble

1928

The Return of the Rat poster
6.6

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

1929

Carnival poster
7.0

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

1921

The Man Without Desire poster
7.5

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

1923

The Triumph of the Rat poster
6.6

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

1926

Symphony in Two Flats poster
7.0

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

1930

Behind the camera

Tarzan the Ape Man poster
6.6

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

1932

King's Rhapsody poster
5.3

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

1955

But the Flesh Is Weak poster
6.3

A poor-but-charming father and son try to enter high society by marrying rich English widows.

But the Flesh Is Weak

1932

The Rat poster
8.5

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

1925

No artwork available
NR

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.

King's Rhapsody

1957

The Man Without Desire poster
7.5

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

1923