Dick Powell, Underrated Hollywood

Dick Powell

Dick Powell was an exceptionally talented and versatile entertainer, who started as a juvenile lead in Busby Berkeley musicals of the 1930's with Ruby Keeler and Joan Blondell and then re-invented himself in darker, more mature roles in films noir of the late 1940's. He became a movie director in the 1950's, later switching successfully to television with his Four Star production company.

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Biography

Dick Powell was born Richard Ewing Powell on November 14th, 1904, in Mountain View, northern Arkansas. He started out as a vocalist in the 1920's, in the midwest band, the Charlie Davies Orchestra, before he was signed by Warner Brothers in 1932, and he made his movie debut as a singer and bandleader in 'Blessed Event in 1932.

He had two distinctive, separate film careers as an actor. In the 1930's he was the ever cheery juvenie in musicals, wooden in romantic scenes and warbling ditties as massed ranks participated in Busby Berkeley's choreographed kaleidoscopes such as '42nd Street', 'Footlight Parade' and 'Gold Diggers of 1933' all in 1933 and 'On the Avenue' in 1937. It was during this period that he married his first wife, Joan Blondell, with whom he co-starred in 12 films.

After being miscast as Lysander in 'A Midsummer Night's Dream' in 1935 he continued to rely on sweetness and geniality in his movie roles until the mid-1940's, when he actively sought more mature, edgier movies. In 1944, after playing the movies' best-ever Philip Marlowe in 'Murder, My Sweet', directed by Edward Dmytryk, which was a big success, he re-invented himself as a tough guy with a heart, a film noir lead qualified to discern the comical streak in Raymond Chandler's narration.

The following year Powell teamed up with Dmytryk agian to make 'Cornered', a film noir thriller, and he thereafter became a popular "hard man" leading actor, appearing in movies such as 'Johnny O'Clock' in 1947 and 'Cry Danger' in 1951.

Powell alternated hardboiled trench coats, as in 'Pitfall' in 1948, with urban whimsy, reading the next day's paper in 'It Happened Tomorrow' in 1944, and a dog reincarnated as a private eye in 'You Never Can Tell' in 1951. He also took on occasional historical action roles as a U.S. cavalry spy in 'Station West' in 1948 and a presidential bodyguard in 'The Tall Target' in 1951. His last screen appearance was in 'Susan Slept Here' in 1954 when he did a dancing sequence with Debbie Reynolds but he never sang on film again.

For four years from 1949, Powell worked in radio, playing the lead role in 'Richard Diamond, Private Detective', a National Broadcasting Company weekly production.

In the 1950's Powell concentrated on producing and directing-mostly B-movies such as 'Split Second' in 1953, but his film 'The Enemy Below' in 1957 won an Academy Award for Special Effects. He also moved into acting on television, resurrecting his Philip Marlowe in Climax's 'The Long goodbye' in 1954, and he is excellent as the pipe-smoking screenwriter married to flirt Gloria Grahame on the big screen in 'The Bad and the Beautiful' in 1952.

He partnered three other stars, Charles Boyer, David Niven, and Ida Lupino in forming the Four Star Television production company and during the early 1950's he appeared in several programs made by Four Star. He also hosted as well as occasionally starring in his 'Dick Powell's Zane Grey Theater' on CBS during the last years of the 1950's.

Powell wed three times, firstly to Mildred Maund in 1925, then to actress Joan Blondell from 1936 to 1944, and then to actress June Allyson from 1945 until his death.

Powell died on January 2, 1963 from lymphoma. He was 58.