Dick Powell,
star of screen, radio, TV, was a solid professional who made
several major transitions in the course of his great career.First
was the popular singer who sang songs in flashy
Dick Powell circa 1937 |
Depression era Busby Berkeley directed films such as "Forty
Second Street" and Mervin LeRoy's Gold Diggers of 1933,
which co-starred Joan Blondell and Ruby Keeler. A smart,
pretty-boy type just right for the glitz and military school-inspired
Berkeley visual extravaganzas, Powell was later to say,
"I was so insipid I wanted to throw up. It took me
five years of fighting to get out of those roles."
His audience loved the films, and still do today.
In the early 1940's, Powell signed with Paramont and did
some decent films, but couldn't get the dramatic actor roles
he yearned for. "Model Wife" was a solid film,
but finally in 1944, director Edward Dmytryk gave Powell
the lead in Raymond Chandler's "Farewell My Lovely."
To make the point more obvious to the film public, they
changed the title to "Murder, My Sweet." The film
is now considered a Film Noir classic, but at the time,
Powell stunned his musical fans with his acting portrayal
of Philip Marlowe, the scruffy, sardonic detective. With
this film, Dick Powell was on to his second screen career
at last. "To the Ends of the Earth" was released
in 1948, and then "The Bad and the Beautiful"
in 1952. Now he had several films where he really had acted,
and the public knew it. He was happy, too. He had married
June Allison, whose star also rose in the late 1940's and
'50's.
Yet all the while, Powell had been working asa radio actor,
and had been doing so since first appearing as a star on
several of the top radio shows of the 1930's. He had been
featured on Lux Radio Theatre over a dozen times, including
his hit films "Gold Diggers" in 1936, "Model
Wife" in 1941, (both with his second-wife Joan Blondell)
and then "Murder, My Sweet" in 1945 and "To
the Ends of the Earth" in 1949.
 The
Marlowe tough guy of his hit movie "Murder, My Sweet"
was just right for the mood of the post-World War II audiences,
so it was a natural to take the tough, descriptive detective
work to radio. And Powell did as a tough, wisecracking detective.
First came Rogue's Gallery
in 1945-46. Richard Rogue was a working stiff kind of a
private eye, and had a quick tongue. A guy talking in an
echo chamber sounding like Arnold Stang is "Eugor",
some kind of an unconscious voice that gets mixed up in
the episodes. Rogue's Gallery
was just a warm up for Richard
Diamond, a series that took the best of the Richard
Rogue character and made it even more suave and swinging
by placing Diamond in New York City and giving him a Park
Avenue girlfriend that purrs like a Jaguar. Richard
Diamond began in 1949, and took off as one of the
most popular private eye shows on network radio, right up
there with Yours Truly, Johnny
Dollar and Phillip
Marlowe, Private Eye. Actually, Powell had made
the pilot episode for the Marlowe show, but luckily for
all concerned, he passed it up and did the Richard
Diamond show instead. Marlowe
was straight-ahead gumshoe crime and grime, with all the
poetry in glints of Chandler-like description. The Richard
Diamond, Private Detective, as aided and abetted
by writer/editor Blake Edwards of later Pink Panther fame,
was a sparkling combination of tongue-in-cheek with right
to the jaw, all topped off with a song as chaser at the
end of every episode. Dick Powell was the perfect man for
that job!
Dick went on to television and film direction and production
as a founder of Four Star Productions. He was as smart,
tough and hard working off the set as on it. Powell said
of his stardom, "What counts most in this profession
is survival. There were lots of stars bigger than I, but
I saw them come and go. Somehow, I've managed to survive,
and that's what I'm proud of." Tough guy talk, or grown-up
starry-eyed idealist? You be the judge.
There's more detective crime on old time radio that you
can shake a swizzle stick at. Start with one, and follow
the leads. Tough guys Phillip
Marlowe and Sam Spade
are a good place to begin. For personality, you might try
Sherlock Holmes,
or The Saint or a current
revival favorite, Nero Wolfe.
Episodes of Richard Diamond,
Private Detective and Rogue's
Gallery along with audition recordings and other
guest appearances starring Dick Powell, are all in the Dick
Powell Collection!
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