He served as a chorister for the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company in 1950–1951 but soon went on to play small roles in the West End productions of South Pacific, The King and I and Plain and Fancy.

He is also featured on the box set, The Greatest Musicals of the 20th Century, on the 1966 RCA Victrola recording of The Pirates of Penzance, and in a solo album, The Best of Ivor Emmanuel.

Emmanuel was born in Margam, near Port Talbot, Wales, and moved to the nearby village of Pontrhydyfen as a young child.

He was 14 years old when his father, mother, sister and grandfather were killed by a stray bomb that hit their village during World War II.

[1] His aunt Flossie took him in (his younger brother John lived with an uncle), and he began working in the coal mine like his father and grandfather before him.

He took solace by drinking with an old friend, Richard Burton, who was performing in The Lady's Not for Burning at the time in London, and telling him how desperate he was to break into show business.

Kenneth Johnson in the hit production of South Pacific (1951–53), then played small roles in two more long-running shows, The King and I and Plain and Fancy.

In 1966, he appeared on Broadway as Mr. Gruffydd, the minister, in A Time for Singing, a musical version of Richard Llewellyn's novel How Green Was My Valley, but the show ran for only 41 performances.

He took part in a Welsh language singing programme called Dewch i Mewn and from 1958 to 1964 was lead singer on the TWW show, Gwlad y Gan (Land of Song), acting as an older brother figure for the Pontcanna Children's Choir.

The show was broadcast across the UK once a month and regularly attracted an audience of some ten million people, helping to popularize the Welsh language.

[1][11] Emmanuel retired to a quiet life in Benalmadena, a village near Málaga on Spain's Costa del Sol, in 1984 with his wife.