IVOR NOVELLO “Shine
Through My Dreams”
Original 1917-1950
Recordings
Ivor
Novello was, by his own reckoning, no purist highbrow. An entertainer, he was a
man of the theatre with a keen commercial sense to whom “empty seats and good
opinions” meant nothing. With its glittering, no-expense-spared sets and
costumes and unabashed air of sheer romance, a Novello show was fantasy theatre
of the highest calibre, the last British manifestation of Viennese-style
operetta. A typical Novello number has a seductive and haunting simplicity and
its unashamedly lush melody and highly sentimental lyrics conceal the music’s
inner strength and commercial durability.
Songwriter,
playwright, actor, matinee-idol, pianist and producer, Ivor was born David Ivor
Davies in Cardiff on 15th January, 1893, the son of a local government
accountant. His mother, Clara Novello Davies (1861-1943), a scion of the noted
London Novello family and a leading figure in the British musical scene and
pioneer choral trainer (in the 1890s she had founded the renowned Welsh Ladies
Choir), nurtured both his precocious musical talent and his latent theatrical
inclinations. As a lad Ivor accompanied her singing pupils; later, he also
taught piano and from an early age his life revolved around music and the
theatre. He met the great Patti and was a page-boy at Clara Butt’s wedding (an
occasion he marked with the “Page’s Road Song” penned for, and subsequently
recorded by, that great Dame).
After attending school first in Cardiff, then in Gloucester
(where he was a pupil of Sir Herbert Brewer, of Three Choirs’ Festival fame),
in 1903, at the age of ten, he won a scholarship to Magdalen College School,
Oxford. At first for amusement, he dabbled in one act plays and ballads, until one of the earliest, “Spring Of The
Year” (1910), dedicated to the soprano Evan Florence, was published by Boosey.
Further moderate commercial successes followed, some with words supplied by the
doyen of drawing-room ballad lyricists, the Somerset-born barrister Fred E.
Weatherly (1848-1929).
In 1911,
at eighteen, Ivor travelled first to Canada then to New York, hoping to find
fame and fortune as composer with his full-length musical, The Fickle Jade.
The attempt basically proved a failure and, after various vicissitudes, the
struggling Novello returned to London in 1913. By this time, however, he had
acquired a lucrative song-writing contract with the publishers Ascherberg and
at the outset of World War 1 was ideally placed to pen a string of jingoistic
morale-boosters, including “Keep The Home Fires Burning”, which made his name,
in 1915. With words by his friend, the resident British American Lena Guilbert
Ford, this song assumed a more international profile after the US entry into
the war in 1917 when, along with “Laddie In Khaki” (featured and recorded by
the New Zealand born Metropolitan Opera star soprano Frances Alda, 1883-1952)
it was interwoven with American war-effort rallying propaganda. More than
twenty years later, as this later recording indicates, it was chosen to play a
similar role in World War II Britain.
In 1916,
Ivor was appointed a Royal Naval Air Service sub-lieutenant aboard HMS Crystal
Palace, but as in First World War London theatre was flourishing (there were no
closures), he soon found himself commissioned to write material for Nat D.
Ayer’s The Bing Boys Are Here and George Grossmith’s Theodore &
Co., and in December of that year also wrote numbers for Charlot’s See -
Saw and, in 1917, for Cochran’s Arlette. In 1918, he penned various
items for Harry Grattan’s revue Tabs and in 1919 shared the credits with
Howard Talbot for the Clifford Grey revue Who’s Hooper?
1919 also
saw Novello’s first flowering as a straight-actor in Paris, where his good
looks and charming demeanour in Louis Mercanton’s screen adaptation of the
Robert Hichens novel The Call Of The Blood soon established his
reputation as a silent matinee-idol. Already typecast as a Rudolph Valentino
clone, in 1921 he made his Hollywood screen debut (for United Artists, in
Matheson Lang’s Carnival) and, in London, played in Harley Granville-
Barker’s adaptation of Sacha Guitry’s Debureau, keeping his hand in
meanwhile as a songwriter with the witty “And Her Mother Came Too”, featured by
Jack Buchanan in the revue A - to - Z.
When, in
1923, Novello again set foot on American soil, he had two strings to his bow:
balladeer and screen Adonis. He now had many popular songs to his credit, most
recently “Thoughts Of You”, Bless You” and “Every Bit Of Loving In The World”
(all recorded by Alda). No one would pretend that these, or “The Radiance In
Your Eyes” (1916; a clear plagiarism of Lillian Ray’s more famous 1915 ballad
“The Sunshine Of Your Smile” here forthrightly delivered by the Brooklyn-born
concert and opera baritone Reinald Werrenrath, 1883-1953) are great songs, but
they are consistently melodious and lyrical in character.
In
Hollywood, in 1923, Novello played a romantic lead in The Bohemian Girl (with
Gladys Cooper and Ellen Terry, for the Knowles studio) and was singled out by
D.W.Griffith who, pairing him with Mae Marsh in The White Rose, viewed
him as a likely stand-in for Richard Barthelmess or Ramon Novarro. Among his
other silent-screen appearances were The Man Without Desire (1923), The
Rat (1925), The Constant Nymph and The Vortex (1928), all of
which secured his reputation as the leading British romantic male star of his
day. Ivor made the transition to talkies (with Once A Lady, for
Paramount, in 1931) after several seasons as a straight-actor on the London
stage. However, following the disaster of Coward’s Sirocco (1927), he
turned actor-manager for various shows and revues, including Symphony In Two
Flats (1929; filmed in 1930 by Michael Balcon, this included the
unaccountably forgotten Give Me Back My Heart, delightfully sung here by the
Brooklyn-born singing actress Peggy Wood, 1892-1978) and Murder In Mayfair (1934;
this mercifully preserved Act 1 scene amply illustrates both Novello’s playful
lampooning of the Love Scene from his friend Noël Coward’s Private Lives (1930)
and his skill as an improviser at the piano).
Glamorous
Night (1935),
however, his first full-scale musical for fourteen years, proved the real
turning-point for Novello. First conceived (he claimed during a lunch-time
meeting) with the songwriter-manager H. M. Tennent (1879-1941) to restore the
Drury Lane Theatre’s dwindling fortunes, it was grandiose and scenic in
conception (it included a shipwreck scenario), had a book of high calibre – the
first of a series – by the London-born actor and lyricist Christopher Hassall (1912-1963)
and enjoyed a record initial run of 243 performances. Over-brimming with
Novello show-stoppers (namely “Deep In My Heart”, “Fold Your Wings”, “Shine
Through My Dreams”, “When The Gypsy Played” and “The Girl I Knew” (created by
Elisabeth Welch, b.1904), its cast was headed by the New York-born
ex-Metropolitan Opera soprano Mary Ellis (1897-2001), the star of the
subsequent ABP/Walter Mycroft film-version (1936) and was essentially operatic
(i.e. it needed trained singers to do it justice) in conception.
No less
lavish, its successor Careless Rapture (1936) ran for 296 Drury Lane
performances before touring Britain during 1937-1938. Both this show and its
sequel Crest Of The Wave (1937) starred the Kansas-born singing-actress
Dorothy Dickson (b.1896) who here leads the chorus in the tuneful if rather
less well-known “If You Only Knew”. Mary Ellis returned to the fold in 1939 for
The Dancing Years and some legendary exchanges with Novello at the piano
(notably in “My Dearest Dear”). Among the last great pre-War Drury Lane shows,
it closed in late September 1939 after 187 performances following the outbreak
of World War 2, thus marking the end of Novello’s association with that great
theatre. After a British tour it returned in 1942 to the Adelphi for a further
969 performances and was filmed in England during 1949 (ABP/Warwick Ward) with
a cast headed by Dennis Price and Gisèle Préville (who here offers two of the
show’s best-loved songs: “I Can Give You The Starlight” and “Waltz Of My
Heart”.
Following
Arc De Triomphe (Phoenix Theatre, 1943; the penultimate Hassall-Novello
collaboration in which Ellis’s numbers again reflected her opera-singer
casting, but were upstaged by Elisabeth Welch’s hauntingly atmospheric “Dark
Music”) Novello wrote his own libretto for Perchance To Dream (Hippodrome,
1945). Set in Regency England, with a cast which featured contralto Olive
Gilbert (1896-1981), soprano Muriel Barron (b.1906), actress Margaret
Rutherford (1892-1972) and Novello himself, this musical, which included the
monumental “We’ll Gather Lilacs”, was the longest-running - at 1022
performances - of all his shows.
Ivor
Novello died in London, on 6th March, 1951.
Peter Dempsey, 2002
1. DEEP
IN MY HEART (Christopher Hassall, from Glamorous Night)
Mary
Ellis with the Drury Lane Theatre Orchestra, cond. Charles Prentice
(HMV 2EA
1835-2) Recorded June 1935, London 4:41
2. FOLD
YOUR WINGS (Christopher Hassall, from Glamorous Night)
Mary
Ellis & Trefor Jones with the Drury Lane Theatre Orchestra, cond. Charles
Prentice
(HMV 2EA
1838-2) Recorded June 1935, London 4:08
3. THE
RADIANCE IN YOUR EYES (lyricist unknown)
Reinald
Werrenrath with the Victor Orchestra, cond. Josef A. Pasternack
(Victor
45155-B) Recorded c.1917, Camden, New Jersey 3:28
4. EVERY
BIT OF LOVING IN THE WORLD (Douglas Furber)
Frances
Alda with the Victor Orchestra, cond. Josef A. Pasternack; Charles Linton,
celeste
(Victor B
25570-6) Recorded December 1921, Camden, New Jersey 2:57
5. THE
THOUGHT NEVER ENTERED MY HEAD (lyricist unknown, from the revue, TheHouse
That Jack Built)
Winnie
Melville & Derek Oldham with the New Mayfair Orchestra, cond. Ray Noble
(HMV Bb
18401-2) Recorded November 1929, Hayes, Middlesex 3:25
6. GIVE
ME BACK MY HEART (Douglas Furber, from Symphony In Two Flats)
Peggy
Wood with the New Mayfair Orchestra, cond. Ray Noble
(HMV Bb
18498) Recorded December 1929, Hayes, Middlesex 3:21
7. Scene
from Act 1 of Murder In Mayfair (Clemence Dane)
Edna Best
& Ivor Novello at the piano
(HMV 2EA
858) Recorded September 1934, London 4:17
8. WHEN
THE GYPSY PLAYED (Christopher Hassall, from Glamorous Night)
Mary
Ellis with the Drury Lane Theatre Orchestra, cond. Charles Prentice
(HMV 2EA
1837) Recorded June 1935, London 4:56
9. THE
GIRL I KNEW (Christopher Hassall, from Glamorous Night)
Elisabeth
Welch with the Drury Lane Theatre Orchestra, cond. Charles Prentice
(HMV 2EA
1484-2) Recorded April 1935, London 4:38
10. SHINE
THROUGH MY DREAMS (Christopher Hassall, from Glamorous Night)
Trefor
Jones with the Drury Lane Theatre Orchestra, cond. Charles Prentice
(HMV 2EA
1836-2) Recorded June 1935, London 3:19
11. IF
YOU ONLY KNEW (Christopher Hassall, from Crest Of The Wave)
Dorothy
Dickson with male chorus & the Drury Lane Theatre Orchestra, cond. Charles
Prentice
(HMV OEA
5324) Recorded September 1937, London 3:35
12. MY
DEAREST DEAR (Christopher Hassall, arr. Prentice, from The Dancing Years)
Mary
Ellis & Ivor Novello at the piano
(HMV OEA
7710-2) Recorded April 1939, London 3:43
13. THE
LEAP YEAR WALTZ (Christopher Hassall, from Glamorous Night)
The Drury
Lane Theatre Orchestra, cond. Charles Prentice
(HMV OEA
7753) Recorded May 1939, London 3:13
14. DARK
MUSIC (Christopher Hassall, from Arc de Triomphe)
Elisabeth
Welch with the Phoenix Theatre Orchestra, cond. Tom Lewis
(HMV OEA
9014) Recorded December 1943, London 3:28
15. WE’LL
GATHER LILACS (Ivor Novello, from Perchance To Dream)
Muriel
Barron & Olive Gilbert with Harry Acres & His Orchestra
(Decca AR
9293-2) Recorded April 1945, London 4:39
16. I CAN
GIVE YOU THE STARLIGHT (Christopher Hassall, from The Dancing Years)
Gisèle
Préville with chorus & orchestra
(HMV OEA
14858) Recorded c. April 1950, London 2:33
17. WALTZ
OF MY HEART (Christopher Hassall, from The Dancing Years)
Gisèle
Préville with orchestra
(HMV OEA
14859) Recorded c. April 1950, London 2:23
18. KEEP
THE HOME FIRES BURNING (Lena Guilbert Ford)
Olive
Gilbert with Chorus & Orchestra cond. Ronnie Munro
(HMV OEA
8124) Recorded October 1939, London, under the personal supervision of the
composer 3:13