David Ivor Davies was born on 15 January 1893 in Cardiff but, taking his mother's middle name as a surname, he changed his name to Ivor Novello by deed poll in 1927.
With his matinee idol looks, Novello was in demand as an actor on the London stage throughout the 1920s and also starred as the romantic lead in several silent films: DW Griffith's The White Rose (1923), Hitchcock's The Lodger (1926), Noel Coward's melodrama The Vortex (1927) and The Constant Nymph (1928).
In 1917 he was introduced through his patron Sir Edward Marsh to Robert (Bobbie) Andrews and the two became lovers and lifelong companions.
A brief foray into screenwriting for MGM in Hollywood was not a success and he returned to London where, in 1932, his play I Lived with You was produced in the West End. Novello enjoyed continued success as an actor and prolific playwright during the 1930s.
Though his first major success writing musical theatre was Theodore & Co (1916), a collaboration with Jerome Kern, it was during the 1930s and 40s, the golden age of British musical comedy, that he produced the string of hit musicals in which he himself starred: Glamorous Night (1935), Careless Rapture (1936), The Dancing Years (1939), Perchance to Dream (1945), King's Rhapsody (1949) and finally Gay's the Word (1950). Glamorous Night, The Dancing Years and King's Rhapsody were also filmed.
Apart from writing the music (words by the American poet Lina Guilbert Ford) for the WWI patriotic hit Till the Boys Come Home (aka Keep the Home Fires Burning) which marked him as a gifted composer of popular melodies, it is the much-loved romantic ballads from his musicals that are his lasting legacy, such as We'll Gather Lilacs from Perchance to Dream, the classic Waltz of my Heart from The Dancing Years, still his most popular musical stage work, and Some Day My Heart Will Awake from King's Rhapsody.
Novello died on 6 March 1951 of a heart attack at his London home. A memorial service at St Martin-in-the-Fields on 28 May was relayed on loudspeakers to thousands of mourners outside.
The number of commemorative tributes after his death testify to Novello's importance as an actor, writer and composer: the annual awards of the Performing Rights Society are named after him; there is a Novello Scholarship at RADA (Royal Academy of Dramatic Art); there is a plaque in the actors' church of St Paul's Covent Garden; in 1952 a bronze bust sculpted by Clemence Dane was unveiled in the rotunda of the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, a theatre with which Novello had developed a close association and where many of his musicals were premiered and in 1972 a memorial stone was unveiled in St Paul's Cathedral.
Novello's connection with the borough
He bought Munro Lodge, Littlewick Green, near Maidenhead and renamed it Redroofs. It remained his residence outside London for the rest of his life. On his death Redroofs was sold at auction and became a convalescent home for actors.
Eventually, June Rose, the Principal of Redroofs Theatre School, bought the house and moved her London-based theatre school out to Littlewick Green. Redroofs Theatre School subsequently acquired a building on the Bath Road in Maidenhead and converted a cinema in Sunninghill into the Novello Theatre, but the Rose family still own and use Redroofs to train future generations of performers.
Commemorative Blue Plaque
Novello has been commemorated by a blue plaque placed at his home in Littlewick Green -
Redroofs
Littlewick Green
Maidenhead
Berkshire
SL6 3QY