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[0:00] Paul Lazarus: Hi, this is Paul Lazarus. In the 1980s, I produced and hosted a radio series called Anything Goes, a celebration of the American musical theater. Now the Broadway Podcast Network is bringing back these shows. This is the conclusion of a three-part program devoted to turn-of-the-century composer, matinee idol, and occasional lyricist Ivor Novello. My guest is noted operetta historian Richard Traubner. This program originally aired in March of 1982 and featured commentary by Traubner and a detailed survey of Novello's distinguished career.

[0:42] Richard Traubner: Ivor Novello. In olden days, a glimpse of stocking was a look on at something shocking. But now God knows, anything goes. The next show was in 1943. It was called Arc de Triomphe, and it had a French background about romance during World War I. It was not a success. It starred Mary Ellis and Elizabeth Welch. Within it again, she stocked the show with a song called Dark Music.

[1:32] ♪ Musical number: "Dark Music" — performed by Elizabeth Welch ♪

[4:27] Paul Lazarus: Dark Music, a song from a 1943 show, Arc de Triomphe, by Ivor Novello and Christopher Hassell. I'm writing the lyrics, and that was performed by the original cast member, Elizabeth Welch. And this is Anything Goes with a look at the work of Ivor Novello. And I'm your host, Paul Lazarus, with my guest today, Richard Traubner. He wrote a show after World War II called Perchance to Dream in 1945. Well, it was written right near the end of World War II. It was really one of the biggest hits of all. It ran over a thousand performances at the Hippodrome, which is now, I believe, the talk of the town nightclub. And I think, personally, it's his most satisfactory story and score.

[5:08] Richard Traubner: You had a hard time picking the songs to play from this show.

[5:11] Paul Lazarus: Yeah, it's lovely. One wonderful song after another. And it was very much, at the time, a victory musical. The end of the war, the victory in Europe, was a celebration, really. It's a story of a house, again. This time it's called Hunter's Moon. And it goes over three generations, the Regency period, the Victorian period, and the modern 1930s, late 30s period. So this let Ivor play three different parts, and the rest of the cast also. One of the songs is in the first of the 18th century, or the Regency period, anyway, is the Highwaymen Love song. And you have to explain that in this period, British films were churning out these gothic thrillers and melodramas, like The Wicked Lady and films like that.

And these highwaymen and bandits, masked bandits, were very populous, and that's probably why they had a story like this as the first section. And we should mention that this show has music and lyrics by Ivor Novello, and the recording we're going to play featuring Olive Gilbert with a male chorus singing Highwaymen Love was actually supervised by Ivor Novello in the studio, I believe. And we'll follow that directly with Muriel Barron, another original cast member, singing This Is My Wedding Day.

[6:32] ♪ Musical number: "Highwaymen Love" — performed by Olive Gilbert and male chorus ♪

[9:55] Paul Lazarus: Two songs from Perchance to Dream, the 1945 show with music and lyrics by Ivor Novello. You heard Highwaymen Love and This Is My Wedding Day, sung by members of the original cast. He wrote perhaps his most famous song in Perchance to Dream, Richard Will Gather Lilacs. And you were explaining that this is probably the culmination of his writing in this style.

[10:19] Richard Traubner: Yes, it was really a sort of World War II answer to Till the Boys Come Home from World War I. It was a song of longing for the peace of rural England. And he wrote it actually during the war, ahead of time, and performed it on the piano for troop concerts and troop plays that he did. And they seemed to like it, so he fitted it in to the show. In the show, it's sung by two women as a sort of Victorian rehearsal again for a musicale. It really works best this way with two women. And it was recorded by many performers as a male-female duet, but it's not quite as effective. You lose a sort of Victorian schmaltz about it, which is really necessary for the song. And it's the kind of thing that even Noel Coward was attempted to do in his show from the same period, another Jewelry Lane show after the war, which was Pacific 1860, in a song called This is a Night for Lovers, in which he used three women singing in part harmony.

[11:21] Paul Lazarus: Right, and we thought we'd play the two songs together. The original cast members, Muriel Barron and Olive Gilbert, singing Ivor Novello's song, We'll Gather Lilacs, followed immediately by Noel Coward's song, This is a Night for Lovers, performed by Sylvia Cecil, Maria Pirelli.

[11:37] Richard Traubner: Am I pronouncing these correctly?

[11:39] Paul Lazarus: I guess so, yes. And, difficult names, Anne Winifred Ingham. Whatever happened to her, I don't know.

[11:45] Richard Traubner: Yeah, she's dropped out. But it's interesting to see Noel Coward trying to outdo Ivor Novello. In a very similar type of a show, Pacific 1860, a very Jewelry Lane operetta.

[11:56] ♪ Musical number: "We'll Gather Lilacs" — performed by Muriel Barron and Olive Gilbert ♪

[14:26] Paul Lazarus: We'll gather diamonds till the spring again and walk together down an insolent trail until our hearts have learned to sing again when you are home once more.

[14:59] Richard Traubner: This is a night for lovers. A night to be set apart. Forever in somebody's heart. This is a moment forever and ever. This is a night for love. Soon when the dawn discovers, secrets of night conceal. There's a bright new hill and a calm sea. It's a land of delicate mystery that the holy have revealed. When dawn is lighting up the sky, the air will be free.

[16:37] Richard Traubner: Rather interesting comparison between two composers, don't you think? Noel Coward's song, This is a Night for Lovers, and Ivor Novello's perhaps most famous number, Will Gather Lilacs, clearly reflecting one another. Noel Coward obviously trying to enter into some kind of battle with Ivor. Actually, they were good friends. Not close, but good friends. Yeah, the same kind of rivalry of Cole Porter and Noel Coward. I think Noel would have liked to have done more successful operettas of this romantic type, because an operetta was such a failure and a conversation piece was not really a great hit as far as money is concerned. So I'm sure he envied Ivor these successes.

[17:18] Paul Lazarus: You're listening to Anything Goes with a look at the work of Ivor Novello. As always, we're running out of time, Richard. And thank you for being my guest today and discussing Ivor Novello, who we've really never dealt with before on Anything Goes. We're up to the 50s in his career, aren't we?

[17:35] Richard Traubner: Well, 49, yes. King's Rhapsody. And that was his last big romantic operetta. It was basically an elaboration of the plot to Glamorous Night. It opened at the Palace Theatre and had Ivor playing Prince Nicky of Murania. And opposite him were both the Dare sisters, Phyllis Dare and Zina Dare. Zina Dare, some people may remember as Mrs. Higgins in the London cast of My Fair Lady, the original London cast. And they were both great postcard favorites and musical comedy stars from the turn of the century, from Edwardian days. And it was sort of a nice tie-up to a career that really was so rooted in Edwardian musicals. And it played 839 performances. And he died during the run on the 6th of March, 1951.

[18:29] Richard Traubner: But he still had one more show.

[18:31] Paul Lazarus: Yeah, right after one performance, right?

[18:33] Richard Traubner: Yeah, four hours later, he had a heart attack in his flat on top of the Stram Theatre. There's a plaque still there on the side of the theatre which says, composer and author lived here. You can see it. The other show that he had was Gaze the Word, which is more of a musical comedy. And it was written for the great musical and film star, Cicely Courtnidge. And that opened in 1951 and was a big hit. And she had a really terrific show-stopping number called Vitality in that.

[19:36] ♪ Musical number: "Vitality" — performed by Cicely Courtnidge and the Chorus ♪

[22:27] Richard Traubner: Cicely Courtnidge and the Chorus singing Vitality from Ivor Novello's last show Gaze the Word in 1951. We have extra time, so we're going to include a recording of Novello's Fold Your Wings from the 1935 show Glamorous Night. Lyrics by Christopher Hassel, who wrote numerous shows with Novello. Here performed by Robert Thomas and Ray Woodland.

[22:52] ♪ Musical number: "Fold Your Wings" — performed by Robert Thomas and Ray Woodland ♪