Ivor Novello Remembered
"No Cardiff-born screen actor has ever been remotely as popular at the British box office as Ivor Novello," says author Dave Berry (Wales and Cinema: The First 100 Years) in the article "Novello Could Have Been a Hollywood Star."
A leading star on the London stage, Ivor Novello was brought to Hollywood by D. W. Griffith for the leading romantic role in the 1923 drama The White Rose, starring one of Griffith’s favorites, Mae Marsh. Unfortunately, things didn’t go too well between the Father of the American Cinema and his Welsh import even though The White Rose is one of the best — possibly the best — Griffith film of the 1920s.
Among Novello’s best-known British vehicles are The Rat (1925), also opposite Mae Marsh; and two 1927 Alfred Hitchcock thrillers: The Lodger and Downhill.
Actor Bobby Andrews was Novello’s off-screen, off-stage companion.
After suffering a coronary thrombosis, Ivor Novello died at age 57 on March 6, 1951.
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Tags: Alfred Hitchcock, Bobby Andrews, Classic Movies, D. W. Griffith, Dave Berry, Gay Interest, Ivor Novello, Silent Films, The Lodger, The White Rose
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