Novello

There has been talk here in Cardiff for some time about a statue to honour Ivor Novello who was born in Cardiff and whose only commemorative artifact is a small plaque, hardly visible, on the house where he was born - and there's some doubt about that being the right house.
Now Peter Nichols has been commissioned to make a statue of Novello to stand outside the Millenium Centre, but £25000 more is needed to ensure the 12 foot high statue will be completed.
I have the feeling that Ivor Novello has never been all that popular in these parts: he was born here in Cardiff but shot off to London to live when quite young. As far as I know he never returned and seemed to have no allegiance to Cardiff or Wales (many people are surprised to know that he was, in fact, Welsh - he dropped his real name of Ivor Davies for Ivor Novello, Novello being his mother's maiden name).
If you ask young people, as I did when I wrote a short booklet on him, if they have ever heard of Ivor Novello, they'll say "Is he something to do with the Ivor Novello awards?" They don't know how famous he was - film star, composer, playwright, creator of many musicals.
An actor played the part of Novello in one of Robert Altman's later films: he arrives at a country house, goes to the piano and plays and sings some of his most famous numbers.
Ivor Novello never sang. He couldn't sing. He could play alright but if he did have to deliver some lyrics he talked them through the song.
His first big success was the First World War song "Keep the Home Fires Burning" which made him a fortune (it also made the tenor John McCormack a millionaire when he recorded it); he always said that when he died he would like to do so just as the curtain came down on one of his shows. This he nearly achieved, dying soon after the end of one of his biggest successes, "King's Rhapsody".