No movie star ever made a more radical change of image in mid-career than Dick Powell. The former crooner turned tough guy in Murder, My Sweet, Cornered (his darkest film), Johnny O’Clock, To the Ends of the Earth, Pitfall, Station West, and Cry Danger, all among the best examples of American film noir. It was, as he admitted, “one hell of a transition.” Dick Powell’s position in Hollywood history is unique in that he is identified as a leading exponent of two vastly different film genres—the musicals of the Thirties and the films noir of the late Forties. The actor of the one is barely recognizable as the actor of the other. Film students might be forgiven for wondering if they are the same man. Despite the complex image, Dick Powell was a relatively simple man. He was the product of an average working-class family, growing up with traditional values, politically conservative with religious views that did not much go beyond a faith in the Golden Rule and The Ten Commandmants. Powell was a classic example of the Great Depression self-made man with a passion for work and seemingly gifted with the Midas touch. Powell believed that anyone can achieve anything if he tries hard enough. For him it certainly worked.
Almost all the songs sung by Dick Powell in his first two years in Hollywood were written by Harry Warren and his lyricist Al Dubin. Dubin quit Hollywood in 1938, but Warren stayed for the rest of his long and productive life. He and Powell remained friends. “Of all the singers I’ve ever dealt with, he was just about the easiest to get along with. I don’t think he ever made an objection to any song we ever handed him. Music was easy for him. He’d been a musician and he’d been singing since he was a choirboy. His only problem at Warners was getting more money. Even when he was doing 42nd Street he was only getting $175 a week, and it was a constant fight to raise it.”
Naughty But Nice brought the long Warner Bros. phase of Dick Powell’s career to a rather abrupt end. The original title of this minor musical was The Professor Steps Out, which indicates the nature of the plot. In something of a change of pace for Powell, he is not a genial dunderhead but a serious minded music professor named Hardwick, who goes to New York to arrange for his symphony to be published. In The Big Apple the poor man is used, abused and confused, and learns that the music business is not run by decent minded academics.
Professor Hardwick is not equipped to deal with the kind of sharks who run Tin Pan Alley. Part of his problem is that he has been coddled and protected by three maiden aunts who believe him to be a genius. Although far from that he does have some ability with melody, which leads to one of his serious pieces being bowdlerized into a snappy jive song, “Hooray for Spinach,” performed by the slinky Zelda Manion (Ann Sheridan), who is in league with a sleazy publisher. She pursues the professor in order to filch more of his melodies but Linda McKay (Gale Page) falls in love with the sweet natured but thoroughly naive professor. Harry Warren and Johnny Mercer wrote four songs for Naughty But Nice. Ann Sheridan, whose career Warners was building, got two of them and Powell got “I’m Happy About the Whole Thing” and “In a Moment of Weakness,” which he recorded for Decca. Sadly it would be the last of the movie songs that he would record.
Murder, My Sweet continues to be a much studied and admired film. Its qualities are many but pivotal is the performance of Dick Powell. Always a confident man, he was here able to focus his intelligence as an actor. Never before had he been able to take such command of a characterization. His Philip Marlowe is not an especially likeable man but he is basically decent, “I’m just a small businessman in a very messy business, but I like to follow through on a sale.”
Much of the effectiveness of Powell’s performance was due to his skill in deliver ing lines, one of which became a classic, “I caught the blackjack right behind my ear. A black pool opened up at my feet. I dived in. It had no bottom.” Powell could muster the right tone for cynical dialogue, as when seeing the palatial home of the Grayles, “It was a nice little front yard. Cozy. Okay for the average family. Only you'd need a compass to go to the mailbox.” After this film Dick Powell no longer had to dog anybody to be considered for a good role. He had made the breakthrough. Now they would come to him. Philip Marlowe would be played by other actors, including Humphrey Bogart and Robert Mitchum, but there are those who feel that Powell’s Marlowe was the closest to the part as written by Raymond Chandler.
One of them was Chandler himself, who felt that Murder, My Sweet was the best film adaptation of any of his novels. In his book The Detective in Film (1972), film historian William K. Everson noted: “Purely as a thriller, with a complicated yet logically worked out plot, Marder, My Sweet was near perfect. Powell—because the realistic conception of the private eye was relatively new, and because Powell was totally new to it—became Marlowe far more easily than Bogart, who had several other competing images against him: the gangster image, Sam Spade, Rick from Casablanca. Powell tossed off the tired, contemptuous, yet biting Raymond Chandler wisecracks and insults with superbly underplayed style.”
Powell’s emergence as a director and producer was closely tied to the legendary eccentric Howard Hughes when he took over RKO as owner and manager in 1948. The studio’s financial affairs were then in disarray and the assumption was he had acquired RKO as a tax write-off. This proved not to be the case. Production picked up and for a while it seemed as if Hughes would become a movie tycoon, albeit one with highly unusual business practices. Hughes’ office was not at RKO but at the Goldwyn Studios and it is said that he set foot on the RKO lot only once and getting an appointment with him was virtually impossible. RKO functioned as if it had a ghost boss.
However, Hughes appeared to like Powell and gave his approval when producer Edmund Grainger suggested that he be hired to direct Split Second. Hughes’ respect for Powell increased when he found that Powell was not cashing any of the checks paid to him in the period of pre-production. Hughes called and wanted to know what was wrong. Said Powell, “I told him that the script was being altered without my having any say in the matter. Hughes asked for my ideas and immediately phoned the writer to work directly with me. Then I cashed my checks. The movie was a hit and Hughes started cultivating me.”
Dick Powell considered many other projects for Twentieth Century-Fox but none materialized. In 1960 he asked that his contract with them be terminated. It was obvious to Fox and to everybody else that Four Star Television had burgeoned into a major production company and Powell was the man who ran it. It was a matter of too much to do and too little time. He had directed five films, while also producing four of them. Split Second and The Enemy Below deserve special mention as very fine pieces of work. He was never pretentious about anything he did and about his work as a director he made no lofty claims. “I do the best I can with the type of material I am able to get. I have no illusions about joining the company of William Wyler, Billy Wilder, Henry Koster, Elia Kazan, Carol Reed or John Ford. I admire all these filmmakers for the honesty with which they attempt to do their pictures.” Still, it is interesting to wonder how good a track record Dick Powell might have had as a director had he been not so busy.
Ronald Reagan became friendly with Dick Powell soon after he arrived at Warners in 1937. He played an announcer in the film Hollywood Hotel and afterwards played supporting roles in three other Powell pictures. Recalls Reagan, “On Hollywood Hotel, Dick was the star and I had only two lines, but he couldn’t have been nicer. Easily and smoothly he put me at ease. I was one of thousands who were drawn to this very kind man, and who would think of him as a best friend. He always seemed to feel such genuine pleasure at seeing you. Sometimes our paths took us in different directions and months would pass without our seeing each other. Still in these later years, when we did meet again, it would be as if no interruption had occurred. I cannot recall Dick ever saying an unkind word about anyone.”
Four Star Productions blossomed in the late Fifties, taking over the Republic Pictures lot in Studio City. It quickly became known as a place that gave fresh talent a break. Powell said at the time: “I know what a tough time I had realizing my ambitions, so I’m giving everybody a chance to make money and do what other shows won’t let them do. I’ve been able to sign the best writers and actors in the business because I’m not following the greed principle of the other producers. The actors are coming into my fold because I’m offering them all rights outside of the United States in the shows in which they appear for me. And I’m giving the writers every financial break.” One of the young producers in whom he put his trust was Stanley Kallis: “I was hired as an associate producer for The Law and Mr. Jones and at the end of the first season, we didn’t know if we would be picked up. Dick came to me and told me: ‘I’d like you to stay here. I don’t have anything for you at the moment but I’ll find something.’ I was amazed. This is not the usual way of doing things in Hollywood. I’d been striving to find a niche in this business and he gave it to me. Dick was a very generous man.
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There was a decency about him that is unfortunately rare in this business. He was a ‘no nonsense’ character. He had a genius for business but he did it with charm. Dick was a gentleman. I’d have done anything for this man.” According to Kallis, Powell was also a man of vision. “One evening in his office he showed me some plans he had drawn up for a future concept of the studio. He always had a keen regard for real estate and he thought the old idea of sound stages covering acres of ground was a waste. His concept was to build new sound stages one on top of the other, to stack them and thereby leave the cleared ground for location use or other buildings. There’s no telling how far he would have gone had he lived.”
Someone who had a good idea of where Powell wanted to go was June Allyson, who always referred to her husband as Richard. Allyson said: “Richard’s wheeling and dealing in TV boggled my mind. At one point Four Star was buying the stock ownership of Marterto Productions, which owned, among other things, ninety episodes of Make Room For Daddy. It would cost us $1,800,000. Time magazine called Richard ‘one of the major, and sharpest, businessmen in U.S. television.’ Richard's favorite phrase was, ‘Nobody loses, everybody wins.’” Powell justified all the long hours and the many periods away from home by affirming it as his plan for the future—to turn Four Star into a major film studio, one that would rival MGM. The plans were admirable, but the strain on his marriage was severe. He arose at six, conducted business by phone during breakfast and often put in sixteen-hour days, in addition to the constant trips out of town.
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