An Evening with Ivor Novello BBC Proms

Join us for an evening of nostalgic glamour as we celebrate one of the

great icons of British musical theatre, the actor, writer, heart-

throb and composer Ivor Novello. His songs defined a gentler, more

elegant age, an age of dressing for dinner, of lingering glances and

romantic escapism. His hits included I Can Give You The

Starlight, We'll Gather Lilacs and Keep the Home Fires Burning, and

tonight we're going to bring the man and his music back to life with

the help of Sophie Bevan and Toby Spence, with Sir Mark Elder

conducting the Halle and Simon Callow leading proceedings, it

Apology for the loss of subtitles for 57 seconds

promises to be a very glamorous Golders Green crematorium, a cold

March morning in 1951, the hearse, heavy with mourners, passes through

crowds thousands strong, many of them sobbing, held back in places

by lines of police. This was Ivor Novello's last audience. He had

been the most widely admired figure in the British theatre of his time.

Struck down in his late 50s, he was the devicer, composer and star of a

string of major musicals, shows which since the mid 1930s had been

a byword for spectacle, glamour and romance. Only hours before his

untimely death, he had been starring in one of the most

successful of these, King's Rhapsody at the Palace Theatre in

which he played a Ruritanian King who gives up his throne for love,

and it was love, rather than sorrow, that defined the atmosphere at his

funeral in a notoriously back- stabbing profession, he inspired an

almost universal affection. At the funeral, as in the cinemas and in

the theatres where he acted, women made up the majority of mourners,

and, of course, as on stage, there was music - music that had been so

much a part of his life since his earliest childhood in Wales. One

tune, above all, written in the dying days of the Second World War

had lyrics made all the more poignant by their author's death.

We'll Gather Lilacs in the spring again and walk together down an

English lane until our hearts have learned to sing again when you come

home once more. Music had made Ivor a star, aged only 21, born in

Cardiff as David Ivor Davis, he had been inspired or rather shoved into

a musical year by his mother the formidable Clara Novello Davies,

Mam, to he and his friends was a leading speech coach, director of

the Royal Welsh Ladies' Quier. She had immense energy and unbounded

ambition for her only son, Ivor, who by 1914 had only shown youthful

prom was several songs published, one of them when he was 17, and

when Mam announced she was about to write a patriotic number, he knew

for the sake of the family reputation, he'd better get in

there first. He worked on the song with an American poet, Lena

Guilbert Ford, working together in his flat above the theatre that's

now named after him - Ivor and Lina were struggling for a central image,

a central idea for his song, when in came a maid and stoked the dying

fire in his drawing room. That was it. They had their song. It

perfectly captured the public's optimistic mood at the time. Surely

# They were summoned # And the country found them ready

# And although your heart is breaking

# Make it sing this cheery song

# Keep the home fires burning While your hearts are yearning

# Though your lads are far away They dream of home

# There's a silver lining Through the dark clouds shining

# Turn the dark cloud inside out Till the boys come home

# Overseas there came a calling "Help a nation in distress"

# And we gave our glorious laddies Honour bade us do no less

# For no gallant son of Britain To a foreign yoke shall bend

# And no Englishman is silent To the sacred call of "Friend"

# Keep the home fires burning While your hearts are yearning

# Though your lads are far away They dream of home

# There's a silver lining Through the dark clouds shining

# Turn the dark cloud inside out Till the boys come home. #

APPLAUSE

Alarmed

Alarmed at

Alarmed at the

Alarmed at the way Germany had been whipping up sympathy in the neutral

country by sending its orchestras on tour, Britain had retaliated

with John Thorpe whose musical talents were more than matched by

his devastating good looks, which Noel Coward later remarked, "There

are two perfect things in this world - my mind and Ivoror's

profile." It was these good looks that launched his next career when

a Swiss film director happened to see a photograph of Ivor, brushing

away the fact that he was a composer, not an actor at all,

"Theese ees the boy I want", he was cast in L'Appel d Sang, Call of the

Blood, in 1919 to the delight of his friends and bank manager, so

his career began as leading silent movie star. Two of his films were

directed by a promising young man called Alfred Hitchcock. His real

love was the theatre, and like many an actor before him, he used his

cinematic stardom to get through the stage door into the West End.

Not content with that, he took to writing plays himself, autwhile

continuing to write music for reviews and West End shows,

including Tabs, Arlette and Who's Hooper. In Golden Moth his lyricist

was none other than PGwoodhouse. Ivor had a lively sense of humour,

most memorably demonstrated in Dion Titheradge's And Her Mother Came

Too. Mam saw the joke but she still pressed him to continue writing

operas, the career she always wanted for him. As the years went

by, her taste for the bottle noticeably increased. Whenever she

stayed in his country house in Berkshire, Ivor hid the alcohol. He

frequently had to bail her out too with large cheques. Nonetheless, he

always made sure that at his first nights Mam had a box of her own

filled with flowers. The nearest she got to her dreams for Ivor were

when in late 1934 the West End producer Harry Tennent took him to

lunch at the Ivor Novello. He was - - Ivy. He was worried about the

Drury Lane which had been a white elephant since the Cavelcade three

years earlier. Aware of the meeting's potential importance,

Ivor ensured this was one occasion when mother did not come true. Ivor

said, "You compose? Don't you have something up your sleeve for us,

Apology for the loss of subtitles for 57 seconds

something that could save us from When it opened in May 1935 glam

lived up to its nights with lavish sets, a huge cast and a dazzling -

this being a Ivor Novello show, the gypsies wore lace and cloth of gold.

The hero and heroin swam to the shore arriving without a hair out

of place. The leading lady was the American opera singer Mary Ellis,

while Ivor, now 42, would play the hero. The public now clasped him

even closer to their collective # How can we sanctify this hour

# Through shadows of fate # The favours of heaven

# Where morning to night without aim

# I wandered and sighed in my loneliness

# Alone until you came Alone until I heard your name!

# Fold your wings of love around me

# Fold them close till they have bound me

# I'm your slave and your defender I surrender

# Fold your wings for ever sharing

# Peace and joy beyond comparing

# Life's true delight has just begun Now our two hearts are one

# My feet that used to stumble along In fear from day to day

# Have found at last the road of my dreams

# Have found the straight highway

# Love's shining highway! Ah!

# Fold your wings of love around me

# Fold them close till they have bound me

# I'm your slave and your defender I surrender. #

# Fold them close till they have bound me

# I'm your slave and your defender I surrender. #

APPLAUSE

Ivor

Ivor could,

Ivor could, as

Ivor could, as we have just heard, write a magnificent tune, though

other people's work occasionally influenced his own. At one of his

first nights the audience included an actress with whom he often

worked in straight plays - Dame Lillian Braithwaite. Noted for her

waspish wit, she was sitting next to a friend who, when the overture

started, turned to her and said, knowingly, "Oh, naughty Ivor!

That's an old Welsh hymn," to which Dame Lillian replied, "Which is

more, my dear, than we can say of the composer!"

LAUGHTER Ivor's musicals, or musical plays,

as he always called them, provided three hours of much-needed escapism

- at first from the Depression and, latterly, from the Second World War

and the austerity that followed it. But they were not pure escapism.

The first and last of them, Glamorous Night and King's Rhapsody,

were indeed Ruritanian, but those that came between were not entirely

unconnected to the world of their time. There were references to

contemporary political and social events, while the set and costume

designs reflected the height of art deco elegance. Unapologetically gay,

he sometimes fell, although briefly, in love with his leading ladies.

This was entirely platonic, which so much in his personal life, he

used as material for a song. Why Isn't It You from crest crest is

about a man and a woman, though matched perfectly in every other

way, lacked the essential spark of # Something is wrong

# We have not that vital spark # Why should we miss a chance

# You've got the size of eyes # You've got the lips for me

# But, honey, tell me why Why isn't it you?

Apology for the loss of subtitles for 57 seconds

# Why isn't it you?

# Why should we miss a chance like this when chances are few?

# You've got the size of eyes I idolise

# Your arms invite a glam'rous night

# What are we to do? #

# What are we to do? #

# You don't react when I attract

# What am I to do?

# You've got the lips for me The hips for me

# The feet for me The beat for me

# But, honey, tell me why Why isn't it you?

APPLAUSE

David

David Laws

David Laws Crest

David Laws Crest of the Wave was followed in 1938 at Drury Lane by

Ivor's single foray into Shakespeare, Henry V. He made an

unlikely warrior king, but he looked lovely in the armour! In

1939 he opened another show at The Lane: The Dancing Years. In many

ways the most surprising of his musicals, it told the story, over

many years, of the love affair between Rudi Kleber - Ivor, now 46,

playing another 20-something - and an opera singer, Maria Ziegler. The

story is told in flashbacks, opening in prison in contemporary

Vienna, where Rudi has been imprisoned by the newly installed

Nazis for helping Jews escape from Austria to Switzerland. The

Anschluss had happened only the previous year. This made The

Dancing Years an astonishingly political piece for its time - not

something its author was noted for - and the British Government was

deeply unhappy. The last thing they had expected was that a West End

stage would be a platform for criticism of the regime they had

been trying to appease for years. But it was still an Ivor Novello

musical, and though it showed the Nazis for the thugs they were, it

was, overall, a passionate and inspiring plea for music, beauty,

glamour and romance in a world that seemed to be turning its back on

# My foolish fancies used # But now a little love

# Has changed my ways and taught me And brought me

# The joy of giving

# I can give you the starlight Love unchanging and true

# I can give you the ocean Deep and tender devotion

# I can give you the mountains Pools of shimmering blue

# Call and I shall be All you ask of me

# Music in spring Flowers for a king

# All these I bring to you. #

# I can give you the starlight Love unchanging and true

# I can give you the mountains Pools of shimmering blue

# Call and I shall be All you ask of me

# Music in spring Flowers for a king

# All these I bring to you. #

APPLAUSE

David

APPLAUSE

# When first we met I heard a voice within

# "The scene is set And here's your heroine"

# I raise'd my eyes

# My breath was taken by that sweet surprise

# Your heart was mine By law divine

# My life belongs to you

# My dreams, my songs, all that I do

# No moon No morning star can shine

# No happiness is mine Without you near me

# When years have pass'd into the shade

# You'll hear my last serenade

# For ever echoing anew No matter where you go

# Your list'ning heart will know

# My life belongs to you

# And now at last The skies are fine again

# Our tears are past And you are mine again

# Night after night

# I've dream'd of capturing this true delight

# Our toils are done Now we are one

# My life belongs to you

# My dreams, my songs, all that I do

# No moon No morning star can shine

# No happiness is mine Without you near me

# When years have pass'd into the shade

# You'll hear my last serenade

# For ever echoing anew No matter where you go

# Your list'ning heart will know

# My life belongs to you. #

APPLAUSE

APPLAUSE

APPLAUSE Like

Like the

Like the 19th

Like the 19th century

Like the 19th century opera composers whom Mam hoped he would

take after, Ivor liked to put dance pieces in all his musicals. These

ranged from the jazz-age dance routine of Careless Rapture's Wait

For Me to balletic interludes like this brief excerpt from the

Apology for the loss of subtitles for 57 seconds

APPLAUSE After a roof-raising national tour,

Ivor took Dancing Years to the Adelphi. Drury Lane had been shut

on the outbreak of war by the Government, who then did a quick U-

turn - some things never change - and gave the lane over to the armed

forces entertainment organisation, ENSA, otherwise known as Every

Night Something Awful. LAUGHTER

Then something awful really did happen to Ivor. It was during this

second London run of the Dancing Years that he suffered the only

catastrophe in a life, in otherwise a procession of triumphs, exchanges

the comfort for the theatre for a grim cell in Wormwood Scrubs where

he served for a petrol rationing sense. It was an age that meant

social and often professional death. On his night the return to the

theatre, he anxiously walked from his flat to the stage door of the

Adelphi. He needn't have worried. The public had been appalled at the

vindictiveness of the sentence, and he had a three-minute standing

ovation. Rudi attempts a reconciliation with his opera

singer mistress after a brief breakup. The moment was given added

impact that night after his recent enforced separation from his loving

audience. IVOR: Here's something I'd like you

to try out, something I wrote last night.

MARIA: Another waltz? IVOR: No, It's not another waltz -

a simple little tune, not a money maker. I wrote the words, too. I

hope you like it. MARIA: It's dedicated to me?

IVOR: They're all dedicated to you! MARIA: Oh, Rudi! Your handwriting!

Say it for me. I've no wish to spoil it.

IVOR: "My Dearest Dear, if I could say to you in words as clear as

when I play to you, you'd understand how slight the shadow

that is holding us apart. MUSIC

So take my hand. I'll lead the way for you. A little waiting and

Apology for the loss of subtitles for 57 seconds

# How slight the shadow # A little waiting

Apology for the loss of subtitles for 57 seconds

# How slight the shadow # A little waiting

Like many other leading theatre figures, Ivor went to Normandy to

entertain the troops in the immediate aftermath of the D-Day

landings. As well as playing old favourites

like Home Fires, he introduced a new song, We'll Gather Lilacs. He

then put it into his next show, Perchance to Dream. With the Allies

facing the expected loss of up to a million men in the planned invasion

of Japan. The song expressed the longing of the simple pleasures of

peacetime. Both the song and the theatre were major hits.

The cast of Perchance to Dream included, believe it or not,

Margaret Rutherford! She was an unworldly woman who, when invited

to a theatrical party at Ivor's flat, was rather bowled over by the

lavish decorations and the host of impossibly beautiful young men who

fluttered round Ivor's two grand pianos. At a loss for words, she

cried out, "Oh! Ivor! It's - it's like fairyland!"

LAUGHTER His last major show was King's

Rhapsody in 1949. The Royal wedding of Princess Elizabeth to Prince

Philip of Greece had been enlivened by King George VI's decision to

bring back pomp, circumstance and full-dress uniforms to the streets

of London when Princess Elizabeth married Philip of Greece in 1947.

King's Rhapsody had a royal court 21-gun salutes and, to top it all,

a full-blown coronation. The plot has an interesting modern resonance.

A crown prince is forced to marry a blonde virgin to please his mother

and produce an heir. But though she is beautiful, he much prefers his

less attractive long-standing mistress.

This makes him unpopular with the public, who take the side of his

young wife. Here any parallel ends as Ivor's character, after becoming

King, eventually agrees to abdicate so his now teenage son can take the

throne. LAUGHTER

Leaving a broken-hearted Princess to feel about the husband who had

Apology for the loss of subtitles for 57 seconds

# Showing the skies # The leaves of summer

Apology for the loss of subtitles for 57 seconds

# But still you drift # Showing the skies

Apology for the loss of subtitles for 57 seconds

The show proved that for royalty, as for Ivor's audiences music was

the best antidote to life's # Then all my doubts and fears

# The music carried me # My darkest night

# And as a stranger # No loyalty to meet me

Apology for the loss of subtitles for 57 seconds

# Come home, come home # Then all my doubts and fears

# The music carried me # My darkest night

Apology for the loss of subtitles for 57 seconds

The show was a huge success. Each night Ivor gleefully wrote his

record-breaking box office receipts up on his dressing room mirror many

lipstick. They proved that he was more than a match commercially for

American imports like Carousel and Oklahoma! And that when it came to

glamour he had something that no cowboys or showboats could match.

People who saw his musicals all agree that he had an extraordinary

presence, that he effortlessly commanded the stage and that those

warm Welsh tones seemed somehow to # Roam through

# She will turn our darkness # That I may hold you

# Like a ling'ring star # Wond'ring where you are

Apology for the loss of subtitles for 57 seconds

# Roam through # She will turn our darkness

Apology for the loss of subtitles for 57 seconds

# That I may hold you Ivor was still appearing in King's

Rhapsody when he wrote gay marriage. Among the songs was Vitality which

became her trademark number. It was a quality that Ivor himself was now

noticeably lacking. A chainsmoker since he'd taken it up for a film

part in the 20s, he had been dogged with ill health, pneumonia, heart

trouble. A visit to his holiday home in Jamaica failed to make any

real difference despite the sunshine he so loved. On the flight,

his flight had been battered by a terrifying thunderstorm. His fellow

passengers turned white with fear. Ivor sought comfort in music,

composing his last song about a man facing death and saying goodbye to

Apology for the loss of subtitles for 57 seconds

# We shall feel # Pray for me

# Try to see how # Pray for me

# Worlds away # Round the world

Apology for the loss of subtitles for 57 seconds

# Pray for me # Try to see how

# Pray for me # Worlds away

Apology for the loss of subtitles for 57 seconds

He returned from the Caribbean and gallantly went on stage as King

Nikki of Murania still playing the packed houses. On March 25th he had

dinner in his flat with his producer Tom Arnold drinking his

customary champagne. Not much later in the early hours of the morning

he suffered the heart attack his closest circle had long feared. The

doctor was called for, but Ivor knew he was dying. Ivor Novello's

style and the shows expressed were now utterly out of fashion. The

glamour and romance he embodied only occasionally glimpsed in

today's West End, but the affection that surrounded his name lingers -

strikingly, his plot in the actor's church, St Paul's, Covent Garden,

makes no reference to any of his extraordinary successes, but more

personally pays tribute to his well-deserved reputation for

kindness. His greatest memorial, finally, of course, is his music,

the legacy of a mutual love affair that he and the British theatre-

going public shared for over 30 # Love made the song

# Love rules the heart # But true devotion

# Your tender arms have fettered me

# This flower of sound is all your own

# Love made the song for you alone

# This refrain

# Shall echo when I think of you

# And drive my lonely fears away

# Once again

# This harmony will say

# "My whole life through I shall be true"

# Love made the song I sing to you

# Love rules the heart I bring to you

# My weary feet had gone astray

# But true devotion showed the way

# No pow'r on earth can set me free

# Your tender arms have fettered me

# This flower of sound will never die

# Although we have to say goodbye. #

APPLAUSE

APPLAUSE

The

The song

The song from

The song from Ivor Novello's crest crest, an appropriate conclusion to

tonight's concert summing up the role that romance played in all of

Ivor's shows and in his music too. Warm applause here from the

audience at the Royal Albert Hall. I think we may have just witnessed

the start of a real Ivor Novello revival. Sir Mark Elder conducting

the Halle, leaving the stage with tonight's stars, Sophie Bevan, Toby

Apology for the loss of subtitles for 57 seconds

Spence and the highly entertaining # We'll gather lilacs

# Until our hearts have learned to sing again

# When you come home once more

# And in the evening by the firelight's glow

# You'll hold me close and never let me go

# Your eyes will tell me all I need to know

# When you come home once more

# Although you're far away

# And life is sad and grey

# I have a scheme a dream to try

# I'm thinking, dear of you

# And all I mean to do

# When we're together you and I

# We'll soon forget our care and pain

# And find such lovely thing to share again

# We'll gather lilacs in the spring again

# And walk together down an English lane

# Until our hearts have learned to sing again

# When you come home once more

# And in the evening by the firelight's glow

# You'll hold me close and never let me go

# Your eyes will tell me all I need to know

# When you come home once more

# We'll gather lilacs in the spring once more. #

APPLAUSE

APPLAUSE

APPLAUSE We'll

We'll Gather

We'll Gather Lilacs

We'll Gather Lilacs from

We'll Gather Lilacs from Perchance to Dream, one of Ivor Novello's

biggest hits from 1954, a song which summed up the public mood at

the time, so beautifully sung by Toby Spence and Sophie Bevan. Sir

Mark Elder conducting the Halle Orchestra and Simon Callow written

by Paul Ibell. All of us, I am sure, won over by those lush Ivor Novello

melodies and the wonderful sentimental but affecting emotion

of the songs. Well, that's all from the Royal

Albert Hall for tonight. The next Prom on television is on Thursday