The Dancing Years

Old Mother Riley Headmistress

The Lady Craved Excitement

A Ray of Sunshine

Soho Conspiracy

Lilli Marlene

April

Ivor Novello is the only British composer of our period to have had three of his stage musicals filmed: Glamorous Night in 1937 and King’s Rhapsody in 1955 sandwiching The Dancing Years. Generally considered Novello’s most popular work, the Viennese romance had opened in London at Drury Lane in 1939, closed because of the war, then toured before returning to London for a triumphant run. Just as The Maid of the Mountains was the standout operetta of the West End during World War I, Novello’s lush entertainment was the standout of World War II. Inspiration came when Novello saw MGM’s The Great Waltz of 1938 starring Militza Korjus, and wondered if Roma Beaumont (who had been a hit in Novello’s previous musical Perchance to Dream) could get away with playing a young girl on stage. In 1950, only one member of the original cast made it on screen for The Dancing Years, the Welsh Clara Butt-cloned, stentorian-voiced close friend and semi-housekeeper for Novello, Olive Gilbert. Now, a mercifully unsinging Dennis Price played young Viennese composer Rudi Kleiber, with Gisèle Préville as the operatic diva Maria Zeitler and Patricia Dainton in the Roma Beaumont role of young Grete. Associated British Picture Corporation believed that ‘this picture will answer the question as to whether British studios can make a successful full-length musical’.

Novello considered this his most ‘serious’ operetta, as Richard Traubner explains.

The original intention was to set the play within the framework of invaded Vienna, the old hero-composer having been condemned to death for his help in aiding Jews to escape from Austria. The romance which followed this opening prologue was to have been a flashback. In the final version, watered down by the timid Drury Lane management, the prologue appeared at the end of the play, and overt references to Hitler were cut out.

Here was to be a musical play of at least some substance, with some historical context, at a time of great international unrest, not least the rise of the Nazis and reign of the Third Reich.