Dick Powell's Murder Mystery Party

Dick Powell certainly set forth for St. Louis in 1925 with high hopes, determined to go just as far as talent and luck would take him. What he had not counted on was failure, the need to beg for jobs in movie theatres on amateur nights or the necessity of splitting $15 for two nights work between himself, the piano-playing Scott, and their agent. Years later, in Hollywood, he confided to Linda Heath details of the experience: "There was a winter in St. Louis, when I was 19, that I almost starved. With a piano player as partner, I managed to get a few bookings at the cheaper neighborhood theatres. I'd tell jokes and sing. And, oh, how we'd flop. After the whole winter of living in cheap boarding houses on practically no money at all, I had made just enough to get myself back home again." The fact that he was a straight-from-the-shoulder kind of fellow worked against him. For the typical vaudevillian created a stage personality so definite, rounded, unique, and so entirely his own, that he was recognized whenever he appeared on stage. By way of contrast, Dick's very strength depended on his resemblance to the boy next door, upon his being so obviously an average boy from an average family in an average-size town.To that town (Little Rock) he returned to hitch his ambitions to the phone company. Yet, even as he was battling to establish himself in just that sort of situation Ewing Powell could approve, Dick continued to sing with local choirs, secretly hoping to turn an avocational career into a professional future, as well as from his various singing engagements. It was enough to get married on, and his choice to be Mrs. Dick Powell was Mildred Maund, a "gorgeous brunette" from Shreveport, Louisiana, who was visiting her aunt in Little Rock. Powell met her while taking orders for phones. A Pittsburgh friend, Darrell Martin, says of the couple's meeting: "He was available, and she was willing." And so they were married in Benton, Arkansas, on May 28, 1925.

June Allyson quotes her husband's after-the-fact recollection of his first marriage: "It was a boyhood romance. She used to come visit some neighbors and I thought marriage was the proof of my manhood. The marriage didn't work and we parted friends." Dick told an interviewer: "She couldn't understand why I was not satisfied to work for the telephone company. I couldn't understand why she didn't realize that I would never be happy doing that. What I had to do was try to sing my way to whatever success I'd make." It was not his banjo playing but his singing of "My Blue Heaven," "I Can't Give You Anything But Love," and "At Sundown" that was responsible for each of the four shows daily being a sellout and for the crowds waiting in the lobby for the next performance. Back in Indianapolis in February, Dick sang with Emil Seidel's Orchestra at the Apollo Theatre for three weeks and then for two additional weeks in May. His good fortune was provoked by the reported intemperance of Eddie Pardo, master of ceremonies of the Circle shows. The latter had apparently downed one drink too many, and been fired on the spot. For his replacement, the management selected Dick Powell, who was to double as master of ceremonies and vocalist for the weekly stage productions. The first of these in which Dick was featured was "Spices of 1928," touted for its "peppy acts" and "snappy girls." The newsman who reviewed the ensuing week's show found the success of Pittsburgh's favorite something of an enigma. Had the writer been aware of Dick's Arkansas beginnings, he might have possessed an answer to the enigma: to the "honesty" and "modesty," to the boyishness which were in a large degree responsible for his success as a master of ceremonies in both Indianapolis and Pittsburgh.

Take "Revue of Song, Dance and Fun" that opened at the Stanley the week beginning February 13, 1932 - only two months away from Powell's departure for Hollywood to appear in his first film Blessed Event. Darryl F. Zanuck, who was about to embark upon 42nd Street, a motion picture rich in the atmosphere of the New York theatre. George Brent, one of its principals, felt "lost" in the film. Not so Powell. For him, there was always a place in a Horatio Alger tale asserting that hard work, diligence, and a little luck are preambulary to a meaningful, happy, and rewarding life. By 1935 a Quigley Publication poll ranked him seventh among Hollywood's money-making stars - just behind Claudette Colbert. A year later, motion picture exhibitors ranked him sixth among the ten moneymakers of 1936. Three years later, between films, he returned to Pittsburgh on a tenweek personal appearance tour. Those who greeted him at the station found Powell "smilingly boyish and modest." To more than ten thousand well-wishers he was "the same shy, retiring young man" they had long known. And, some thirty years later, adjectives like "decent" and "considerate" were coupled with Powell's name in Little Rock. To those who had known him during his apprentice years, he was yet "wholesome, considerate of the other person, full of life and fun." —"Dick Powell Scrapbook Collection" (1984, UCLA Library) 

I never speak to June Allyson, my dear lovely wife—about those nightmares I suffer every night. They all have a violent sameness. And I am the corpse. I think one night I’ll be the corpse propped up on the witness stand with the district attorney yelling at me, “Don’t you sit there trying to tell the court that the defendant is guilty just because he mowed you down with a machine gun. You can’t prove murder without malice, and when he shot you he was the happiest man in the world!” Then again I’ll be lying stone cold in a pool of blood, knifed to death by a butler. Detectives are swarming all over the place, suspecting everybody but that sanctimonious servant standing right in their midst, laughing out loud and looking like Orson Welles. When I try to tell them who did it they sneer and reply, “Some detective you are. You’re just a ham actor. Besides, everybody knows the butler is never guilty.” I wake up in the middle of the night out of these horrors and look over at Junie. She’s smiling in her sleep. I’d ask her what she dreams about but she’d only ask me the same thing and in the end insist that I go to a psychiatrist. That’s why I decided, humorously you understand, to do something about these grim nocturnal visitations of mine. 

I figured that if I could concoct a plot crazier than my dreams the nightmares would go away or at least simmer down. So I invited a few friends into coming to the studio for a party after my Tuesday night show. We had a good radio show that night. If I have to say so, Richard Diamond (that’s me) did very well. He got kicked around quite a bit but in the end he solved the mystery. It's not any mystery he did it with people like Rhonda Fleming, Virginia Field, Richard Greene, Mona Freeman, Pat Nerney, Mara Lynn, Joan Evans, and Jack Grey, for an audience. As soon as the announcer said, “This is NBC,” I put down my script and took up my guests, who I'm sure never have participated in the fine art of murder. They were delighted. June, who couldn’t be on hand due to the pending blessed event, had written the word 'Suspect' on little slips of paper. One for each guest, except for a lone slip on which was written "Victim." We drew the slips out of the hat and, for the sake of staying in character with my nightmares, I palmed the slip so I’d be the corpse, a role with which I’d become familiar. 

The idea behind all this, in case you should like to give a murder party, is to confuse the victim. The guests get in a huddle, have five minutes to decide on a plot and who among them did it. Then the victim stretches himself out in corpse position. If he can find out who killed him he’s certainly allowed to live—or he might even get a prize. They stretched me out on a table in studio C, ran me through with a prop knife and told me to take it from there. There were practically no clues at all. Just a gang of innocent looking characters. Virginia Field for instance. She looked as if she had a halo spinning around her head, so I passed her up as a suspect. Too beautiful. I saw the Frankenstein-like equipment Mona Freeman and Pat Nerney were toying with and thought, “Well, maybe.” To make a short case of a hilarious party, I lined up all the suspects, still wearing that knife through my middle. Don’t worry, it only hurt when I laughed. Before long I had the answer.

Dick Greene was the killer. Why? Well, for one thing, all detectives (that’s me) have an instinctive hatred for Sherlock Holmes. He knows too much. For another, Greene is an expert fencer. It was only natural that he should choose the rapier as a murder weapon. The motive? When Dick confessed, he explained that the guests figured the only reasons there could be to kill a radio detective would be (1) he was a lousy performer, which they insisted I wasn’t, and (2) he might be exposing a murder plot on his show. Hence the solution: Richard Greene, disguised as Sherlock Holmes, planned to heist a jewelry store. He was tipped off that the exact crime had been written into my show that night by a writer he knew. Result: if he eliminated me and stole all the scripts the cops would never suspect him. And how did I find out? 

Very simple, my dear Watsons. Looking around the studio—I noticed that right after the broadcast every script had disappeared, except the one in Dick Greene’s pocket! That did it. The case resolved, it was time for a celebration! I want to point out that actors do like to raid a table loaded with food, though, because quite a few of us have been hungry at one time or another in our careers. So we all hiked over to Bob Cobb’s Vine Street Brown Derby, where they tossed a fine repast for the people who had killed me. P.S.: I don’t have those nightmares any more. After all, how could I dream up a plot crazier than this one? —Dick Powell (Screen magazine, February 1951)