Ivor Novello...

[fajrdrako]

I finished reading Ivor Novello: A Biography by James Harding, though the copy I read had this as the most attractive cover picture of its subject. A fascinating book. How did I not know about this man till a few weeks ago, when he was so famous - at least in England - in the first half of the twentieth century?

I got curious about him when I heard one of his songs at a concert, "And Her Mother Came Too". I reminded me of a Noel Coward song. Turns out that Noel Coward and Ivor Novello were good friends. Intrigued and curious, I picked up this biography.

It's a fascinating description of a glamorous movie-star life in a time of glamour. When Novello was born in 1893, the family was horrified by his large nose - they thought he would be as ugly as his Uncle Ebenezer. That was probably the last time anyone thought Ivor was anything but preternaturally gorgeous. At an early age, he set out to charm everyone, and continued to do so till the day he died, in 1951. It seems that everyone who knew him loved him, except for those who loved or adored him. One commentator described him as "the least pretentious person I have ever met" - and personally, I can't think of higher praise.

He was also multi-talented and first gained fame as the composer of "Keep the Home Fires Burning", a song so famous even I have heard of it. He was a successful playwright who usually played the leading man in his own plays, and the public flocked to his shows - as long as he played the lead. He was a movie-star of both the silent screen and talking movies - starring in one of Hitchcock's first, in fact. He was a leading actor, playwright, and producer. He composed, wrote, and starred in many lavish musicals, with titles like "Glamorous Night" and "King's Rhapsody", and even one charmingly entitled "Gay's the Word" - charming because he was bisexual. "Eighty years later one of bis choirboy lovers [from his days in the boy's choir at Cambridge] could still remember Ivor's irresistible methods of seduction. No one that he knew of, he recalled, had ever said no." Ivor once had sex with Winston Churchill, who, late in his life, told Noel Coward about it. I wished this biography had said more about his private life, but probably lacked information. An actor called Bobbie Andrews was with him most of his life.

No one's life is perfect, and Ivor had his difficult times - but there little of the tragedy and temperament typical of actors, and the touch of melancholy is ephemeral. One of his plays was about a composer who wanted to write great classical music but was condemned to make a fortune writing pop music - clearly the comment was autobiographical. I'd never heard of any of his plays, for all they were blockbusters of his time.