Other films in which Novello starred included Alfred Hitchcock's "", where he played the title character, and "Downhill" (both in 1927). The British film company Gainsborough Pictures offered Novello a lucrative contract, which enabled him to buy a country house in Littlewick Green, near Maidenhead. He renamed the property Redroofs, and he entertained there famously and with little regard for convention. Cecil Beaton, noting the frequent homosexual excesses, coined the phrase, "the Ivor–Noel naughty set". Coward had by now caught Novello up professionally, despite a joint disaster when Novello starred in Coward's play "Sirocco" in 1927, which was a débâcle, and closed within a month of opening. In 1928 Novello starred in the silent adaptation of Coward's much more successful "The Vortex", and made his last silent film, "A South Sea Bubble". During the late 1920s, Novello was the most popular male British film star and was often dubbed as Britain's "handsomest screen actor".