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The Ivors Academy is the UK’s independent professional association for music creators. As per its website, it is a “community of diverse, talented songwriters and composers across all styles. Their talent creates the music that the world loves.” As per reports, the 66th presentation of Ivor Novello Awards will take place at Grosvenor House in London on September 21.

Who was Ivor Novello?

The first Ivor Novello Awards were presented at a televised event from the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, London on March 11, 1956. The statuette is a representation of Euterpe, the Greek muse of music and lyric poetry. It was designed by Hazel Underwood, an undergraduate of St Martin’s School of Art in London, in 1955. 

The Ivor Novello Awards are named after Ivor Novello, a Welsh composer, and actor, who became one of the most popular British entertainers of the first half of the 20th century. Novello was most famous for his West End musical productions ‘Glamorous Night’ in 1935 and ‘Dancing Years’ in 1939.

As per English Heritage, a charity that manages over 400 historic monuments, buildings, and places in England, Novello was born in Cardiff as David Ivor Davies. He developed a strong interest in music and the world of theatre from his mother, Clara Novello Davies, who taught singing. In 1927, he changed his name to Ivor Novello. He made his debut as an actor in the silent film ‘The Call of the Blood’ in 1920 and enjoyed subsequent success on stage and screen. He performed in Alfred Hitchcock’s ‘The Lodger’ in 1926 and in the 1924 play ‘The Rat’, which he also co-wrote.

A 2004 feature in The Guardian noted that Novello's “homosexuality was an open secret in theatrical circles”. The feature said that Hitchcock's biographer Donald Spoto pointed out that Novello was "never, on or off the set, especially shy about his homosexual life". 

It was perhaps because of this, critics called him "effeminate" and "overly pretty". Film writer Geoffrey Macnab noted that when he was cast as an Austrian innkeeper in Basil Dean's ‘Autumn Crocus’ in 1934, one reviewer even took exception to his legs, writing that "Novello's schoolboy knees under his Tyrolean shorts make the audience, if not the players, feel bashful".

Novello died on 6 March 1951 of a heart attack at his London home. Novello's funeral at Golders Green crematorium in London, Macnab wrote, “provoked mass hysteria among female fans,” reminiscent of that at the death of silent-screen idol Rudolph Valentino.