After beginning the 1930s with a series of non-musical plays, I Lived With You ( 1932 ), Fresh Fields, Proscenium, Sunshine Sisters, Flies in the Sun ( all 1933 ) and Murder in Mayfair ( 1934 ), Novello returned to composition in 1935 with Glamorous Night, which was the first of a series of enormously popular musicals.

Not everybody was supportive ; Coward's sympathy was limited: " He's been fighting like a steer to keep going as before the war and hasn't done a thing for the general effort ", but when Novello returned to The Dancing Years after his release, he received " a rapturous ovation " on his first entrance.

Novello was hired as a writer for the show's third season in 1977-1978 where he remained through the fifth season, and returned as a writer in the eleventh season.

They supplemented their win by opening the show with " Take Your Mama " on a set made by The Jim Henson Company and returned in 2007, opening the ceremony with " I Don't Feel Like Dancin '" which later won the Ivor Novello Award for Most Performed Work.

This production returned for a season at the Novello Theatre in London's West End in 2010.

For the latter song, Davis along with co-writer Cathy Dennis, received an Ivor Novello Award for composing the most performed song of the year.

They were awarded an Ivor Novello Award for " Outstanding Contribution to British Music " in 1977, as well as a " Lifetime Achievement Award " at the 42nd Annual Ivor Novello awards ceremony in 1997.

* Ivor Novello Award for Outstanding Contribution to British Music ( 2007 )

Novello was born in Cardiff, Wales, to David Davies ( c. 1852 — 1931 ), a rent collector for the city council, and his wife, Clara Novello Davies, an internationally-known singing teacher and choral conductor.

Although Brewer had told him he would not have a career in music, Novello from his early youth showed a facility for writing songs, and when he was only 15, one of his songs was published.

In 1914, at the start of the First World War, Novello wrote " Keep the Home Fires Burning ", a song that expressed the feelings of innumerable families sundered by World War I. Novello composed the music for the song to a lyric by the American Lena Guilbert-Ford, and it became a huge popular success, bringing Novello money and fame at the age of 21.

In 1918 and after the war, Novello continued to write successfully for musical comedy and revue.

Wodehouse ( 1921 ), for which Novello provided the entire score.

The Times considered that it was for these that Novello would be popularly remembered.

Careless Rapture ran from 11 September 1936 for 296 performances, with Novello, Dorothy Dickson and Zena Dare in the leading roles.

Crest of the Wave starred Novello, Dickson and Gilbert, and ran from 1 September 1937 for 203 performances.

The last of Novello's pre-war musicals was The Dancing Years, which starred Novello, Ellis and Gilbert, opened at Drury Lane, closed on the outbreak of the Second World War, and re-opened at the Adelphi Theatre, running for a combined total of 696 performances, closing on 8 July 1944.

This show was the closest Novello came to fulfilling his mother's early ambitions for him to write operas ; he played an Austrian composer-conductor at the Wiener Hofoper.

In between the two shows, Novello had been in serious legal trouble and served four weeks in prison for misuse of petrol coupons, a serious offence in wartime Britain.

Novello had written no role for himself ; the show starred the comedy actress Cicely Courtneidge and was a departure from his established pattern, balancing the contrasting styles of European operetta and post-war American musicals.

The Ivor Novello Awards for songwriting, established in 1955 in Novello's memory, are awarded each year by the British Academy of Songwriters, Composers and Authors ( BASCA ) to British songwriters and composers as well as to an outstanding international music writer.

In 2005, the Strand Theatre, above which Novello lived for many years, was renamed the Novello Theatre.

Novello was portrayed in Robert Altman's 2001 film, Gosford Park, by Jeremy Northam, and several of his songs were used for the film's soundtrack, including " Waltz of My Heart ", " And Her Mother Came Too ", " I Can Give You the Starlight ", " What a Duke Should Be ", " Why Isn't It You?

Novello later went to Hollywood and appeared in numerous successful films, but at the same time he continued to have successes on stage.

He had his first stage success with Theodore & Co in 1916, a production by George Grossmith, Jr. and Edward Laurillard with a score composed by Novello and the young Jerome Kern.

Novello made his stage debut in 1921 in Deburau by Sacha Guitry with Robert Loraine, Madge Titheradge and Bobbie Andrews, and among other stage engagements, in the next years he played Bingley in an adaptation of Pride and Prejudice with Ben Webster as D ' Arcy and Mary Jerrold as Elizabeth, in a cast that included Ellen Terry, May Whitty and Joyce Carey.

Edwardian musical comedy held the London stage ( together with foreign operetta imports ) until World War I and was then supplanted by increasingly popular American musical theatre and comedies by Noël Coward, Ivor Novello and their contemporaries.

Four of his daughters ( of whom the youngest, Mary, married Charles Cowden Clarke ) were gifted singers ; but the most famous was Clara Novello ( 1818 – 1908 ), whose beautiful high soprano and pure style made her one of the greatest vocalists, in opera as well as in oratorio and on the concert stage, from 1833 onwards.

In 2007, Paige made a return to the West End stage for the first time in six years, as the Chaperone / Beatrice Stockwell in The Drowsy Chaperone at the Novello Theatre.

The film has been developed into a stage musical which received its world premiere at London's Novello Theatre on November 15, 2007, following previews from October 16, 2007.

She re-teamed with Novello for the film version of his hit stage play, The Rat ( 1925 ).

Another model was Coward's 1929 musical Bitter Sweet, which Novello called " a lovely, lovely thing … sheer joy from beginning to end ".

Geldof and Ure have been honoured with two Ivor Novello awards for writing the song.

In May 2010 Weller was presented with the Ivor Novello Lifetime Achievement award, saying " I've enjoyed the last 33 years I've been writing songs and hopefully, with God's good grace, I'll do some more.

The song went on to win the Ivor Novello Award for the biggest selling single of 2001, however despite finding renewed success by writing for other artists, Clarkson did not care for the audition based manufactured pop process which spawned them ;

) Other major contributors included Harry Shearer as well as writers Al Franken and Tom Davis ( longtime writing partners who had given themselves meatier roles as the heavyweights departed ) and Don Novello, a writer whose " Father Guido Sarducci " character was especially popular and appeared repeatedly during the fifth season.

In 1880 she turned her attention towards writing large-scale cantatas, all published by Novello and Co.

After the war, Novello contributed numbers to several successful musical comedies and was eventually commissioned to write the scores of complete shows.

In the same year, Novello contributed to André Charlot's revue See-Saw.

" Novello appears in many other scenes as well shadowing George Hamilton and is included in the climactic scene on the steps of the Palermo Opera House.

The supporting cast included Ted Osborne as hospital administrator Dr. Carew, Jane Webb as nurse Mary Lamont and Virginia Gregg as Nurse Parker, labeled " Nosy Parker " by Gillespie, with appearances by William Conrad, Stacy Harris, Jay Novello, Isabel Jewell and Jack Webb.

Over the years, Jack was played by Michael Raffetto, Russell Thorson, Jay Novello, Jim Bannon and John McIntire.

Other performers, and the villains and victims they portrayed, included Jack Kruschen ( as William Burke and Trotsky assassin Ramón Mercader ), Jay Novello ( as William Hare and Dr. William Palmer ), Mary Jane Croft ( as Bathsheba Spooner and Madame de Brinvilliers ), Betty Lou Gerson ( as Agrippina and Lucrezia Borgia ), Edgar Barrier ( as Julius Caesar ), Harry Bartell ( as Brutus ), Hans Conried ( as Ali Pasha ), Herb Butterfield ( as Lincoln, Trotsky, and Thomas Edwin Bartlett ), Jack Edwards ( as John Wilkes Booth and Cole Younger ), Irene Tedrow ( as Lizzie Borden ), William Johnstone ( as Robert Knox ), Betty Harford ( as Madeleine Smith and Ripper victim Mary Jane Kelly ), Clayton Post ( as Jesse James ), and Sam Edwards ( as Billy the Kid and Bob Younger ).

Born in Chicago, Illinois, as Michael Romano, of Italian descent, Novello began his career as a radio actor, having played Jack Packard on the Hollywood version of I Love a Mystery for a brief period in the middle 1940s.

The mob of townspeople attack and destroy Jack and Max's limousine, much to the chagrin of the company limo driver Sal ( Don Novello ).