Dick Powell

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Dick Powell

from the trailer for
The Bad and the Beautiful (1952)
Born Richard Ewing Powell
November 14, 1904(1904-11-14)
Mountain View, Stone County, Arkansas, U.S.
Died January 2, 1963 (aged 58)
West Los Angeles, California, U.S.
Spouse(s) Mildred Maund (1925-1927)
Joan Blondell (1936-1944)
June Allyson (1945-1963)

Richard Ewing "Dick" Powell (November 14, 1904 – January 2, 1963) was an American singer, actor, producer, director and studio boss.

Contents

[edit] Biography

Born in Mountain View, the seat of Stone County in northern Arkansas, Powell attended the former Little Rock College in the state capital, before he started his entertainment career as a singer with the Charlie Davis Orchestra, based in the midwest. He recorded a number of records with Davis, and on his own, for the Vocalion label in the late 1920s.

Powell moved to Pittsburgh, where he found great local success as the Master of Ceremonies at the Enright Theater, and the Stanley Theater. In April 1930, Warner Bros. bought up Brunswick Records, which at that time owned Vocalion. Warner Bros. was sufficiently impressed by Powell's singing and stage presence to offer him a film contract in 1932. He made his film debut as a singing bandleader in Blessed Event. He went on to star as a boyish crooner in movie musicals such as 42nd Street, Footlight Parade, Gold Diggers of 1933, Dames, Flirtation Walk, and On the Avenue, often appearing opposite Ruby Keeler and Joan Blondell.

Powell desperately wanted to expand his range but Warner Bros. wouldn’t let him. Finally, reaching his forties and knowing that his young romantic leading man days were behind him, he lobbied to play the lead in Double Indemnity. He lost out to Fred MacMurray, another Hollywood nice guy. MacMurray’s success, however, fueled Powell’s resolve to pursue projects with greater range and in 1944, he was cast in the first of a series of films noir, as private detective Philip Marlowe in Murder, My Sweet, directed by Edward Dmytryk. The film was a big hit and Dick Powell had successfully reinvented himself as a dramatic actor.

The following year, Dmytryk and Powell re-teamed to make Cornered, a gripping, post-WWII thriller that helped define the film noir style. He became a popular "tough guy" lead, appearing in movies such as Johnny O'Clock and Cry Danger. Even when he appeared in lighter fare such as The Reformer and the Redhead and Susan Slept Here, he never sang in his later roles.

From 1949 until 1953, Powell played the lead role in the NBC radio theater production Richard Diamond, Private Detective. His character in the 30-minute weekly was a likeable private detective with a quick wit.

In the 1950s, Powell produced and directed several B-movies and was one of the founders of Four Star Television, appearing in and supervising several shows for that company. His film The Enemy Below (1957) based on the novel by Denys Rayner won an Academy Award for special effects.

Powell died on January 2, 1963 from lymphoma at the age of fifty-eight. He was one of many cast and crew members of The Conqueror (1956) who died from the same disease. The Conqueror was filmed in Utah in a fallout zone from a Nevada atomic test site. It has long been suggested, but never proven, that the film's shooting location may have been the cause of the cancers that later afflicted the cast and crew. Powell was cremated, and his remains were interred in the Columbarium of Honor at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale, California.

[edit] Personal life

Dick Powell was married three times:

  1. Mildred Maund (1925-1927)
  2. actress Joan Blondell (married September 19, 1936, divorced 1944), with whom he had two children, Ellen and adopted son Norman
  3. actress/singer June Allyson (August 19, 1945, until his death), with whom he had two children, Pamela (adopted) and Richard Powell, Jr.

[edit] Filmography

[edit] As actor

[edit] Features

[edit] Short subjects

  • The Road Is Open Again (1933)
  • Just Around the Corner (1933)
  • Hollywood on Parade No. A-9 (1933)
  • And She Learned About Dames (1934)
  • Hollywood Newsreel (1934)
  • A Dream Comes True (1935)
  • Hollywood Hobbies (1939)

[edit] As director

[edit] External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to:


Preceded by
Jack Benny
19th Academy Awards		 Oscars host
20th Academy Awards (with Agnes Moorehead)		 Succeeded by
George Montgomery
21st Academy Awards