1893–1951 · Welsh composer, actor and dramatist; dialogue credit on Tarzan the Ape Man (1932)
Ivor Novello — born David Ivor Davies in Cardiff — was one of the biggest British entertainers of the first half of the twentieth century: a matinee idol who played the title role in Hitchcock’s The Lodger, and the composer, at twenty-one, of “Keep the Home Fires Burning,” the song that defined the British home front in the First World War. An MGM contract took him to Hollywood in the early 1930s and gave him strikingly little to do; writing the dialogue for Tarzan the Ape Man was essentially the sum of it, after which he returned to London and produced the string of hit musicals he is actually remembered for. The Ivor Novello Awards, named for him in 1955, still carry his name through British songwriting.