Prince ever so Charming

Jonathan Cecil

IVOR NOVELLO by Paul Webb Stage Directions, f10, pp. 157

Towards the end of his lively study of the light composer and matinee idol Ivor Novella, Paul Webb all but apologises for using the word 'niceness': once in connec- tion with one of Novella's leading ladies and again when describing Novello's coun- try retreat Redroofs. 'Niceness', he writes 'is a word one was taught (at school) never to use but which ideally suits certain atmo- spheres and occasions.'

The word perfectly suits Novella himself: his on-stage charm, his ingratiating melodies. In life his goodness of heart was legendary and 'niceness' his greatest strength: in art it seems to me his chief weakness.

The photographs show a perfect male pin-up with Grecian profile, thick dark hair and soulful eyes. No wonder, one thinks at first, he was often cast as exotic princes or Apaches. But, looking further, one discerns a softer, cosier personality, still easily imag- inable as the pure-voiced boy soprano who reduced audiences to tears of rapture back in Wales, where he was born in 1893. Here was no Heathcliff, no insolent Valentino whom for a time he rivalled in screen popularity. Likewise in his music he tamed and domesticated the Viennese waltz, so passionate in the hands of Strauss and Lehar.

The only Novella shows I saw were untypical. The first was a curious hybrid of a kind briefly popular in the 1950s, The Dancing Years on Ice — a deeply lowering experience. The second was Gay's the Word — a title unusable today. This was a musi- cal farce, genuinely funny thanks to a titan- ic performance by the comedienne Cicely Courtneidge and clever lyrics by Alan Melville. There were two admirable show- business numbers, 'Vitality' and the bitter 'Right on the Night', and a touching ballad, 'If Only He'd Looked My Way', rightly sin- gled out as neglected by Paul Webb. I have always preferred Novella's simpler songs like the very early 'And Her Mother Came Too', written for Jack Buchanan — to his heavily upholstered arias.

The show had a moment of heroic self- parody — a show within a show guying Novella's Ruritanian musicals associated with Drury Lane. An ability to laugh at himself was one of Novella's many attrac- tive qualities, not one always shared by his friend and sometimes slightly jealous rival Noel Coward.

Novello's seemingly effortless rise to the top and ability to stay there were certainly enviable. As with so many show-business success stories this one featured a formidable mother, Madame Clara Novella Davies, something of a celebrity in her own right with her Royal Welsh ladies' choir. Fearless, unconventional and bibulous, she appears both magnificent and embarrass- ing.

She sent Ivor on a scholarship to Mag- dalen College Choir School in pre-1914 Oxford. He soon showed a facility for com- posing and wrote perhaps the greatest hit of the first world war, 'Keep the Home Fires Burning'. Thus launched, he became a popular social figure and contributed to many musical shows. His photograph was spotted by a French film director. With no acting experience Novella became the heart-throb star of a series of mostly mediocre movies, including Hitchcock's The Lodger.

Then he became a stage actor and wrote a number of successful plays with good parts for himself and assorted elegant actresses. When, after a series of flops, Drury Lane Theatre seemed doomed, Nov- ella offered to write a spectacular musical play for it, and his own genre was born.

From Glamorous Night (1934) to King's Rhapsody (1950) Novella musicals were a byword for lavish escapism, though The Dancing Years (1939) actually touched on the plight of the Jews in Nazi Germany. The shows had ambitious special effects shipwrecks, train crashes, even an earth- quake; also long operatic and balletic inter- ludes. Unusually, in most of them the male lead, when it was Novella himself, neither sang nor danced but still captivated a thou- sand fans. He employed certain leading ladies regularly, some established stars, some his personal discoveries. They became part of a devoted circle.

Having served in the RAF in the first world war, he confined himself to enter- taining in the second. The blackest moment in his life came from an innocent infringe- ment of the petrol rationing laws, which led to a vindictive, possibly homophobic month's prison sentence. This obvious injustice made Novella, if anything, more popular with his public than ever, but pos- sibly contributed to the gradual deteriora- tion of his health. He was only 57 when he died in 1951, mourned by millions.

Paul Webb's book is admirably well researched and highly entertaining.- Although a labour of love, it does not treat its subject with undue reverence, any more than Novella did himself. There is plenty of humour, not least in the recounting of pre- posterous film and theatre plots. Novella's cheerfully active homosexual life is acknowledged but we are spared psycho-

logical speculation and tedious lists of for- gotten lovers.

Webb's writing can be clumsy, with too many not always relevant facts crammed into ugly parentheses. Occasionally cliches appear, one rich mix telling us that Ivor's kind, ineffectual father put his foot down, but his wife afterwards wore the trousers while he played second fiddle.

About Webb's main mission — to encourage Novella revivals — I have mixed feelings. The plots would need simplifying and the dialogue old-fashioned even in its heyday — would need pruning. Yet one has only to look at Phantom of the Opera to see that there is still a public for spectacu- lar effects embellishing unabashed senti- mentality. However, it would be hard to find suitable operetta sopranos and harder still to find a new Ivor to glide glamorously through the plot. Perhaps sadly the Novella brand of mass entertainment — never chic like Coward's — died with him.

This modest but shrewdly commercial man once said, 'I am not a highbrow. I am an entertainer. Empty seats and good opin- ions mean nothing to me.' And I fancy that might go for posterity as well.