Dick Powell in The Dark Side of the Screen

Among his many interesting achievements, as a musical star in the '30s, Dick Powell introduced several Harry Warren standards which have become part of the "Great American Songbook," including "I'll String Along With You" in TWENTY MILLION SWEETHEARTS (1934), "I Only Have Eyes For You" from DAMES (1934), "I've Got My Love to Keep Me Warm" in ON THE AVENUE (1937), and "You Must Have Been a Beautiful Baby" in HARD TO GET (1938). Once Powell parted company with Warner Bros. after NAUGHTY BUT NICE (1939), he spent the next few years appearing in a handful of comedies at a variety of studios. Some of these films were indifferent, but there were also two sterling classics: Preston Sturges' CHRISTMAS IN JULY (1940), in which Powell believes he's won a fortune in a contest, and Rene Clair's fantasy IT HAPPENED TOMORROW (1944), in which he receives newspapers which can predict the future. In 1944, Powell accomplished one of the most amazing transformations in the history of the movies: The onetime baby-faced singer became hardboiled, sarcastic Philip Marlowe in MURDER, MY SWEET (1944), and now Powell was the tough, hard-edged, darkly funny star of film noir. 

Dick Powell also seems to have been universally admired by his colleagues, not always an easy feat while maintaining a high-powered career in the entertainment industry. Behind the scenes, there are many stories underscoring Powell's reputation as a savvy, supportive colleague. Joyce Holden, Powell's costar in YOU NEVER CAN TELL (1951), echoed those sentiments in a 2008 interview for Films of the Golden Age. When the interviewer, Tom Weaver, noted she had stolen some scenes from Powell, she replied, "But he would let you steal from him, he allowed it... That's the kind of guy he was." 

Joyce Holden also added another fascinating insight: "You know who really directed the film ["You Never Can Tell"]? Dick Powell. Absolutely. Every shot, I saw him conferring with Lou Breslow, the credited director. Dick was very circumspect, but it was very obvious that he had the ideas, the set-ups, the little innuendos. Dick really was a brilliant person. He was extremely talented." 

When Alan K. Rode of the Film Noir Foundation introduced a 2012 screening of PITFALL (1948), he shared that he had recently interviewed Powell's PITFALL costar, Lizabeth Scott, and she'd said that Powell had been kind and a joy to work with, and she termed her experience making PITFALL with Dick Powell "delicious." Another compliment came from actress Jean Porter Dmytryk, who was the wife of the director of MURDER, MY SWEET and who also acted in Powell's CRY DANGER (1951), saying: "Dick Powell was so many things. First of all, he was the best businessman of any of the actors in Hollywood. I enjoyed working with Dick in his film CRY DANGER and appreciated his Eagle Scout attitude." Dick Powell was quoted by Tony Thomas in a 1961 'Films in Review' profile as saying, "I saw no reason why an actor should restrict himself to one particular phase of the business." When co-star Richard Erdman was interviewed about CRY DANGER (1951) at UCLA Film Festival in 2011, he said Dick Powell was always generous and supportive. In his personal life, while a marriage to Warner Bros. costar Joan Blondell petered out after a few years, he found lasting happiness with June Allyson, whom he married in 1945.

What is Altman saying in The Long Goodbye? That Marlowe’s code is no longer applicable to the cynical seventies? That trust and loyalty are irrelevant and misplaced feelings, and have no part in the life of a private eye? Elliot Gould’s sloppy Marlowe is deliberately a far cry from the sartorial neatness of Bogart and Dick Powell. Behaving altogether with a cuteness that would have given Bogart the shudders, Gould plays Marlowe as a mumbler who lives in a pig sty and holds absent-minded conversations with his cat. This Marlowe gets his revenge at the end, in a radical and quite unexpected gesture, when he kills his betraying friend and then walks away, seemingly purged, an act of cold-blooded murder that Chandler’s Marlowe would never commit. 

The fundamental objection to The Long Goodbye, which included professionals such as director Joseph Mankiewicz and film critics, was that Elliott Gould's performance as Marlowe was no match for the likes of Bogart and Powell, whom they had seen essay the role in the course of the film festival. Asked later if she thought Elliott Gould was miscast in the role, screenwriter Leigh Brackett responded, "I thought he did a beautiful job, except that he was not hardboiled enough."

The actor whose record in noir most closely approximates Humphrey Bogart’s is Dick Powell (even surpassing Robert Mitchum). Powell had earned a reputation in the thirties' musicals as a crooner with an engaging personality and a charismatic singing style. By the mid-forties he was eager to change his image, and he sensed that the current noir phase offered him an appropriate opportunity. He played Philip Marlowe (before Bogart) in the 1944 film version of Murder, My Sweet. Raymond Chandler later said that Powell came closest to his own idea of Marlowe. If anything, Powell is even dryer in the part than Bogart, erasing entirely the crooner’s geniality that had made him a popular fixture in Warner musicals. The only echo of the earlier Powell is the actor’s physical grace—he has a dancer’s flowing ease. However, Powell’s voice is flat, his face taut and frozen in the masklike noir vein, and he plays Marlowe as a blunt, no-nonsense professional. He is guarded and sardonic, and yet he is capable of projecting an aura of integrity. Dmytryk concurred that Powell played Marlowe "as Chandler visualized him, with a patina of toughness only skin deep:" 

Beneath Marlowe's tough exterior, Powell neatly implies in his superbly underplayed performance, is a humanity that can be reached. He is the tough-but-vulnerable hero, tossing off the biting Chandler wisecracks to cover up his tender spots. Then, too, Claire Trevor, as the bewitching platinum blonde temptress who is deadlier than any male, played the dangerous noir siren Helen Grayle to perfection. Like Bogart, Powell fits so snugly into Marlowe’s character that the audience is unaware that he is acting: his is the kind of style that conceals style. As Chandler’s private eye, he is noir’s perfect tough guy, yet the toughness is never insisted on, it's simply there as a natural part of the character. Through it all, Powell remains a model of the Hemingway code of grace under pressure, his irony a shield against constant mischance. Powell's work is spare and subtly stylized, and like Bogart, Powell is at the top of his form as the ironic observer, maintaining a skeptical distance even from his own misfortunes as he trades cracks with his adversaries, the police, and with the two-timing dames that he is wise to. 

Chandler himself characterized Philip Marlowe as a loser, Leigh Brackett pointed out, at least in a society where money alone is the measure of success. But Marlowe is "a man who is pure in heart, who is decent and honorable and cannot be bought. He is incorruptible:' Brackett continued. In fact, Brackett bought Chandler's description of Marlowe as a modern-day knight: "Here is the knight in shining armor with a shabby trench coat and snap-brim felt hat. I think he is a universal folk hero who does not change through the ages:' except that he carries a gun rather than a sword. "I think the concept was damn good, a very moral concept:' Chandler said that Marlowe, as he had drawn him in his novels, would indeed look plain foolish in the corrupt modern world that we live in. Certainly Marlowe is thought of as a chump, who is out of touch with the times, by several of the characters he encounters in his journey. Film critic David O'Brien says Chandler's conception of Philip Marlowe is "a study of a moral and decent man cast adrift in the selfish, self-obsessed society where lives can be thrown away without a backward glance, and any notions of friendship or loyalty are meaningless." —Sources: "Creatures of Darkness: Raymond Chandler, Detective Fiction, and Film Noir" (2003) by Gene D. Phillips and "The Dark Side of the Screen" (2008) by Foster Hirsch

A Fairy Tale for Grown-Ups (The Princess and the Goblin): Dick Powell, Mary Martin, Jean Arthur

Researchers at a British university found that men with higher IQs place greater value on monogamy and sexual exclusivity than their less intelligent peers. But the connection between conventional sexual morality and intelligence is not mirrored in women, it seems. The researchers could find no evidence that clever women are more likely than the general population to remain faithful. The patterns were uncovered by Dr Satoshi Kanazawa of the London School of Economics and Political Science in a paper published in the March edition of the journal Social Psychology Quarterly. He concluded: "As the empirical analysis shows, more intelligent men are more likely to value monogamy and sexual exclusivity than less intelligent men." Dr Kanazawa claims that the correlation between intelligence and monogamy in men has its origins in evolutionary development. Source: www.telegraph.co.uk

"I've had all the fun," F. Scott Fitzgerald said, "but in my heart I can't stand this casual business. With a woman, I have to be emotionally in it up to my eyebrows, or it's nothing. When I love, I love. It has to be my life." -"F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald" (1984) by James R. Mellow

James Stewart: “I loved being in pictures. Right away. All that stuff ya hear ’bout how the big studio was nothing but an enormous factory—this just isn’t true… it was wonderful.” His nonsexual on-screen persona had by now led Mayer to wonder if, in fact, there was something “wrong” with him. Whereas other MGM names had to be literally pried loose from the bevy of starlets they were bedding, despite the fact most stars were all married—such as Clark Gable; Franchot Tone, whose suavity had led him into the arms of some of Hollywood’s most fabulous beauties; Spencer Tracy, a known womanizer from the moment he first stepped on a sound stage — Jimmy kept himself away from all of that, preferring the company of one steady woman. 

June Allyson and Jimmy Stewart’s on-screen chemistry was real. They had known each other before either of them was married to their current spouses—Jimmy Stewart to Gloria Hatrick, June Allyson to actor Dick Powell. Jimmy and Allyson had dated in 1940, and at one point they maybe considered marriage. Allyson recollected, “I knew Jimmy before he married Gloria. With my cooking, it’s a good thing he didn’t marry me. The poor dear weighed only 154 pounds before he was married and he was all of 6 feet 2 or 3 inches tall. Jimmy seldom took his dates to nightclubs. Instead, he fed them steak that he grilled himself in his own backyard. If they didn’t like that and wanted the limelight, they were not for him. Gloria was the perfect choice. They were both so suited to each other—both slim and dignified and both with the same sense of humor.” Without question, on screen at least, the key to the successful pairing of Jimmy and June lay in their wholesomeness rather than any sexual chemistry. "USA Today" wrote: "It's hard to believe that anyone as famous as James Stewart could get by so scandal-free. Just try to scrape off any dust, let alone dirt, from this devout Presbyterian and conservative republican." 

The ongoing screen “affair” between Stewart and Allyson became something of a joke in both the Dick Powell/June Allyson and Jimmy Stewart/Gloria Stewart households, a joke, that is, with a slight pinch. This is how Allyson recalled that period: “When Richard [Powell] and I got together with our friends Jimmy and Gloria Stewart, Richard kidded Jimmy and me about the string of hit movies that had made us the reigning romantic team in Hollywood. As Gloria put it, jokingly, but with just a bit of an edge, ‘June is Jimmy’s perfect wife in movies and I’m his imperfect wife.’ And one time Richard at a banquet said in front of our whole table, ‘June here must be a good wife. Jimmy Stewart has married her three times.’” 

Stewart did not marry until his forties, which attracted a significant amount of contemporary media attention; gossip columnist Hedda Hopper called him the "Great American Bachelor". Regardless, he had many romantic relationships. Stewart and Ginger Rogers had a relationship in 1935 while Henry Fonda was dating Rogers' good friend Lucille Ball. During production of The Shopworn Angel (1938), Stewart dated actresses Norma Shearer and Loretta Young. While filming Destry Rides Again (1939), Stewart had an affair with his co-star Marlene Dietrich, who barely mentioned him in her memoir and waved him off as a one-time affair. Stewart's first interaction with his future wife, Gloria Hatrick McLean, was at Keenan Wynn's Christmas party in 1947. A year later, Gary Cooper and his wife Veronica, invited Hatrick and Stewart to a dinner party, and the two began dating. A former model, Hatrick was divorced with two children. Stewart and Hatrick were married at Brentwood Presbyterian Church in 1949. After the death of his stepson Ronald in Vietnam in 1969, Stewart brooded constantly and when he did go out, it was mostly to play golf with Fred MacMurray, Dick Powell, and sometimes with President Richard Nixon. Jimmy Stewart, Fred MacMurray and Dick Powell were Republican, all three had conformed to their 'nice guy' archetype, they weren't particularly cozy with the press, they had taken risky shifts in their film careers (especially Powell), and had played opposite some of the most gorgeous leading ladies of their era. Some examples:

Fred MacMurray and Claudette Colber in "The Gilded Lily" (1935) directed by Wesley Ruggles

James Stewart and Claudette Colbert in "It's a Wonderful World" (1939) directed by W.S. Van Dyke

After filming The Secret Heart (1946) together, Claudette Colbert and co-star, June Allyson, became great friends. Colbert became godmother to Allyson's daughter, Pamela Powell in 1949.

James Stewart and Jean Arthur in "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington" (1939) directed by Frank Capra

Fred MacMurray and Jean Arthur in "Too Many Husbands" (1940) directed by Wesley Ruggles

Dick Powell and Mary Martin (doppelganger and alleged lover of Jean Arthur) in "True to Life" (1943) directed by George Marshall

Producer Paul Gregory (The Night of the Hunter) called Mary Martin "a very difficult woman, an angel with lots of demons" who constantly bickered with her husband Richard Halliday. Paul Gregory, Janet Gaynor's last husband, disliked Mary Martin so much (for quite complicated reasons), he wouldn't even tell her where Gaynor had been buried after a car accident in San Francisco. In "Diary of a Mad Playwright: Perilous Adventures on the Road with Mary Martin and Carol Channing" (2002) by James Kirkwood. Although warned that she was a prize they might do better not to win, Kirkwood and his associates not only got Martin for the Legends Broadway tour, they got much more than they bargained for. Although noted for her cheerful stage presence, Mary Martin proved to be one tough cookie, making--and getting--a host of demands that few companies would tolerate. 

Her demands also extended to the script, casually tossing lines she didn't like, and demanding re-writes. Martin also had significant difficulty in learning her lines, and throughout the rehearsal and preview process frequently errupted in tears and threats to quit. Channing also felt (with some justification) that everyone from the writer to the director to the producer was babying Martin to her own expense, a circumstance that led to repeated blow outs. Eventually Channing bonded with Martin by refusing to continue the tour without Martin, rejecting her possible replacement for Ann Miller. 

One night, sharing a dressing room, James Kirkwood listened to Mary Martin confessing to Carol Channing the ways she felt she was "different", and how favored a certain kind of man who was a good listener. Channing talked about her second husband Alexander Carson, a private detective. Martin said she had been smitten with Dick Powell (her co-star in Happy Go Lucky and True to Life). Martin reportedly said: "Dick was going to marry Mary Brian, but Joan played her cards well. Mike Todd gifted her  a mink coat and she went to New York. I think Joan broke his heart. We were good friends for years. One night Dick invited me to his apartment. He was great in bed and all, but I couldn't leave Richard [Halliday]." 

Were Jean Arthur and Mary Martin lovers? It was a hot topic of Hollywood speculation for years. Mary Martin, despite not being considered a sex-symbol, was in fact disconcertingly pretty with great legs. Martin’s personality gave warmth and demanded it in return. She was emotionally more suited to success in the theater than Hollywood. Mary Martin had accidentally won a singing contest, and eventually ended up on Broadway singing Cole Porter's "My Heart Belongs To Daddy". Legend has it that Mary was then so prudish and inexperienced, she did not understand the bawdy nature of Porter's lyrics. Later in life, Martin told her grand-daughter she never understood them! Several years in Hollywood proved fruitless and left Martin disoriented. But much of David Kaufman's biography is devoted to Mary's strange, complex, and co-dependent relationship with her second husband Richard Halliday. Mary Martin was hiding an important aspect of herself, although her lesbian inclinations were well known in Broadway circles. True to its fairy-tale title this book by Paul Rosner takes as its subject matter the most unreal place that has ever existed: Hollywood. What the book really examines is the notion of "star quality": what is it, where does it come from, what are its components, can you fake it? The two central female characters are actresses, one a "bubbling, cottonheaded southern belle, a personality actress with no personality"; the other a sophisticated, successful diva with a vulnerability that has become her on-screen trademark. The heart of the plot is the relationship that develops between them, and the notion that it might be possible for one woman to don the personality of another and carry it further than the first is capable to take it herself. Rosner, one feels, wants to create monsters but cannot: even his minor characters when they are behaving at their most petty and egocentric, soar above stereotype and take hold of our sympathies. Little wonder that this has been hailed as one of the best novels about Hollywood that has ever been written. I believe the book stands along other great novels like "The Day of the Locust" and "What Makes Sammy Run?" —"A Fairy-Tale for Grown-ups" (2001) by David Potter 

Written by first-time novelist Paul Rosner, the book was a thinly-veiled treatment of the alleged lesbian relationship between Jean Arthur and Mary Martin, and it became an instant source of underground conversation within the entertainment world. It tells the story of two women, Maureen Covillion and Josie Miller. Maureen (like Mary Martin) gains notice as a singer in New York revues, comes to Hollywood in the late thirties and returns to New York in the late-forties to become the queen of the Broadway musical. While in Hollywood, Maureen falls in love with her female idol, Josie Miller, an enigmatic and publicity-shy star whose odd, cracked voice and deft comic talent playing secretaries and shopgirls have made her one of the world's top female film stars. Maureen achieves a similar level of stardom by borrowing and eventually usurping Josie's personality as her own. Meanwhile, Josie suffers an emotional breakdown as a result of their relationship and divorces her husband, a movie producer and her erstwhile career manager. After her divorce, Josie flees Hollywood to live out her life as a recluse by the ocean, making only a fleeting and abortive comeback attempt in the theater. 

To people such as Hollywood writer George Eells, the book appeared to confirm the stories he had been hearing for years. Eells was a close friend of Martin's but never knew if the rumors about her and Arthur were true; when the book came out, Hollywood's insiders told each other that it validated what they'd been saying all along. An avid fan of Arthur's films, Rosner created the Josie Miller character based on his conception of what Jean Arthur was really like, while his inspiration for Maureen Covillion came from his observation that Mary Martin borrowed much of Arthur's personality in the course of building her own career. "I'd always wanted to do a book about one person assuming another person's identity and improving on it," Rosner said, and when he saw Mary Martin on Broadway as Peter Pan, it suddenly dawned on him how much she looked and acted like Jean Arthur. —Jean Arthur: The Actress Nobody Knew (1999) by John Oller

Confidential magazine, Dick Powell & June Allyson, Dean Martin, Peter Lawford

In March 1937, the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America expressed alarm at the number of candid shots being used in magazines and newspapers. While studio photographers were required to have their work approved by the organization’s Advertising Advisory Council, the same rules did not apply to photographers shooting on assignment. Modern Screen was again the subject of controversy, with its August 1937 issue, when it featured Joan Blondell in various stages of undress. The magazine had hired its own photographer, Frank Muto, to take the photographs and had not submitted them for studio approval. Modern Screen editor from 1935 to 1939, Regina Cannon was advised that “We shall take steps to prevent the recurrence of such an incident. If it is to be the policy of your magazine to publish such pictures, it will be impossible to cooperate with either your writers or photographers.” According to Variety, Shirley Temple was the subject of the most space given to female stars in the fan magazines in 1935. She also beat out Clark Gable, who came first in the male division. 

Runners-up in the female field were Joan Crawford, Claudette Colbert, Ginger Rogers, Greta Garbo, Jean Harlow, Carole Lombard, Katharine Hepburn, Mae West, and Marlene Dietrich. Trailing Gable were Fred Astaire, Gary Cooper, Bing Crosby, Dick Powell, Franchot Tone, Nelson Eddy, William Powell, and John Boles. Of approximately 2500 established players, only 330 were found on the covers, in full-page photographs and feature stories in the fan magazines. In 1935, Variety surveyed twelve publications: Photoplay, Picture Play, Silver Screen, Screenland, Motion Picture, Classic, Screen Play, Screen Book, Hollywood, Movie Mirror, and Modern Screen. Of the 132 covers represented by these magazines, Claudette Colbert was seen on ten; Shirley Temple on nine; Ginger Rogers on eight; Carole Lombard and Jean Harlow on seven; Janet Gaynor, Joan Crawford, Myrna Loy, and Ruby Keeler on six; Miriam Hopkins, Mae West, Greta Garbo, and Katharine Hepburn on four; Kay Francis, Dolores Del Rio, Alice Faye, Ann Sothern, Marion Davies, Bette Davis, and Loretta Young on three; Marlene Dietrich, Gloria Stuart, Virginia Bruce, Merle Oberon, Jeanette MacDonald, Margaret Sullavan, Joan Bennett, Grace Moore, and Ann Harding on two; and Irene Dunne, Lillian Harvey, Anna Sten, Madge Evans, Mary Carlisle, and Elizabeth Allen on one. There were no male stars on any of these magazine covers. 

In 1948, it was reported that there were currently only eight “absolutely safe” cover girls: June Allyson, Ingrid Bergman, Rita Hayworth, Lana Turner, Betty Grable, June Haver, and Esther Williams. The only “safe” male stars were Dick Powell and Alan Ladd, whose presence on a fan magazine cover would not reduce its newsstand sales by as much as twenty percent. Within a matter of a few years, several of the “absolutely safe” cover girls would be tinged by scandal, most notably Ingrid Bergman, Rita Hayworth, and Lana Turner. If the fan magazines were limited by studio control as to what they might openly discuss, to what extent could they indulge in innuendo? There were obviously certain key words and phrases used by gossip columnists and fan magazine writers that went far beyond the dictionary definition. An “engagement” between two players generally implied that sexual intercourse had taken place, particularly if the actress in question was someone like Lana Turner, exuding sexuality. An actress having “her appendix removed” usually meant that she was having an abortion. 

Flair magazine reported that the fan magazines in 1950 represented a multimillion dollar business. In his 1950 report on audience research, Leo A. Handel noted that thirty percent of audience members at the New York opening of a major production had read of the film in a movie magazine. In 1952, John Danz, president of the Sterling Theatres in Oregon, Washington, and California, stated that “Movie magazines are the ‘Dun and Bradstreet’ rating on movie stars, and invaluable to the exhibitor.” Earl Hudson, president of the Detroit United Theatres, claimed “Fan magazines helped make Van Johnson a movie star. Marlon Brando and Shelley Winters quickly became new favorites through youthful theatre audiences." In October 1955 at a luncheon of studio publicity directors in Beverly Hills, Irving S. Manheimer, president of Macfadden Publications, publisher of Photoplay and others, claimed that fan magazine sales now totaled more than 8.5 million copies per issue, a substantial increase over five years earlier. There was also a recognition that the fan magazine readership, while still devoutly female, was decreasing in age. More teenagers were reading fan magazines than were their mothers. Seventeen magazine had begun periodicals such as Sheilah Graham’s Hollywood Romances, earlier titled Hollywood Romances. 

Issues of these fan magazines from 1953 and 1957 had one thing in common—Elizabeth Taylor. For the next two decades, Taylor was one actress guaranteed a fan magazine cover because her image and her love affairs assured the magazines of an avid readership. Liz Taylor was on the cover of Sheilah Graham’s Hollywood Yearbook in 1953 and again in 1955, and she appeared on the cover of the September 1957 issue of Hear Hollywood, a decidedly odd fan magazine that provided its readers with a phonograph recording of some of its printed interviews. In 1958, Dell published a fan magazine, a one-off titled 'Liz and Mike'. Modern Screen featured Elizabeth Taylor on the cover in July 1958, with husband Mike Todd and the promise of an article titled “The Most Tender and Tragic Love Story of Our Time.” She was featured again in October 1958 and in December 1958, with a composite of her, Eddie Fisher, and Debbie Reynolds. 

Ironically, the 1959 breakup of Reynolds’ marriage to Fisher and his leaving her for Elizabeth Taylor helped ensure Reynolds appearance on the covers of countless fan magazines. “They’re running out of stills of Debbie,” reported Ezra Goodman. “They are taking old black-and-white pictures and tinting them for color. Debbie sells books. It’s a horrible thing they call reader identification.” Marilyn Monroe should have dominated fan magazine covers in the 1950s, but there were only an estimated seventy-five, beginning with Silver Screen in February 1952. Monroe’s first Photoplay article was “Make It for Keeps,” which dates from July 1951. Fan magazine editors could be quite demanding in terms of what they expected from a Monroe story, even if the writer was Hedda Hopper, and Monroe was volatile. 

Confidential magazine was founded in 1952 by Robert Harrison (1904–1978), who had worked for the New York Graphic and for the Quigley Publishing Company (responsible for the Motion Picture Herald). Harrison knew what a publisher could get away with and what the film industry wanted kept under wraps. The initial print run of 150,000 would eventually rise to 4.6 million. Confidential was to out a number of Hollywood celebrities, with damning stories on Lizabeth Scott, Marlene Dietrich, Dan Dailey, Tab Hunter, Sal Mineo, etc. In July 1957, it explained to its readers “Why Liberace’s Theme Song Should Be Mad about the Boy.” If nothing else, Confidential was decidedly more sleazy that any of the fan magazines of the period on offer, with stories such as “Why Sinatra Is the Tarzan of the Boudoir” (May 1956), “Joan Crawford’s Back Street Romance with a Bartender” (January 1957), and “Louella Parsons: Hollywood Hatchet Woman” (April 1959). However, it was the lawsuits that eventually forced Harrison’s sale of Confidential in July 1958, and the new owner, Hy Steirman, tried to keep away from Hollywood gossip. In reality, the magazine was about to be overcome by a new publication, the National Inquirer. Both Confidential and its founder died in the same year, 1978. At least one famous gossip columnist had ties to Confidential. Mike Connolly provided it with material he could not use in his column in The Hollywood Reporter. —"Inside the Hollywood Fan Magazine: A History of Star Makers, Fabricators, and Gossip Mongers" (2010) by Anthony Slide

Dean Martin possessed both wiles and wisdom beyond his years. But the wisdom served by those wiles was an annihilating wisdom. It was the wisdom of the old ways, a wisdom through which the seductions of reason and love and truth would in their seasons emerge and then, wither and die. The sum of Dino’s instincts had to do with the old ways, those ways that were like a wall, ways that kept the world lontano, as the mafiosi would say: distant, wisely at bay. That was how he liked it: lontano, like the flickering images on the theater screen, in the dark. Those close to him could sense it: He was there, but he was not really there; the glint in his eye was disarming, so captivating and so chilling at once, like lantern-light gleaming on nighttime sea: the tiny soft twinkling so gaily inviting, then illuminating, a vast unseen cold blackness beneath and beyond. The secret in its depth seemed to be the most horrible secret of all: that there was no secret, no mystery other than that which resides, not as a puzzle to be solved or a revelation to be discovered, but as blank immanence, an emptiness itself. An ex-prizefighter and ex-cardsharp, Martin had been laboring in a steel mill when he began singing nights and weekends in small clubs. 

After he teamed up with frenetic comedian Jerry Lewis in 1946, he assumed the role of a handsome, not-so-bright straight man. 'The Dago is lousy, but the little Jew is great,' were Sinatra first impressions of the duo. In 1962 Hedda Hopper would warn in her Los Angeles Times column: “The unions are taking a dim view of Dean Martin’s walkout from Something’s Got to Give,” citing a union official as saying, “Dean’s putting people out of work at a time when we are all faced with unemployment.” Mickey Cohen, a mobster who “got kind of friendly with him,” said that “Dean would’ve been in the rackets if he didn’t have a beautiful voice. He probably would’ve ended up a gambling boss somewhere. I’d say Dean had the perfect makeup to be a racket guy, although he is a little too lackadaisical, if you know what I mean.” Packaged romance was Dean’s racket. The traits he shared with the Fischettis – that lontananza, that dark self-serving ego – were never far beneath the surface of whatever spell he meant to cast. Whatever talent he had, that darkness beneath the spell, was immanent and intractable.

I chalk it up to the emergence of “mob culture,” the age of mass entertainment that Henry James foresaw as the coming “reign of mediocrity.” At 14, Dean Martin was helping his pals, the Rizzo brothers, run bootleg whiskey during Prohibition. Dean’s dealings with various gangsters gives the expression “mob culture” an intriguing double meaning. Martin’s relations with certain celebrated underworld characters were more cordial than cozy--he would occasionally perform freebies to help launch a mob-funded club or casino. He earned $200,000 a picture loafing in Hollywood, doing Matt Helm movies and dozens of bad films. The lousy pictures, the tasteless TV shows--they all made good money. In the late ‘60s, Dino was making $15 million a year. Dino also performed freebies to help out gangster pals like Sam Giancana and Johnny Rosselli. By the 1970s, having gone through three wives and dozens of girlfriends, Dino had become the ultimate hack celebrity, showing up at show-biz TV roasts, adrift in a fog of Percodan and Scotch. In all those tawdry ‘60s sex comedies Dean Martin would become the personification of tastelessness itself. In the end, the modern audiences often find themselves exasperated and unable to connect with Dean Martin and the worst aspects of the Rat Pack he personified. Eyeballing the world’s most impersonal celebrity, they find themselves chilled by his offensive indifference. ―Dino: Living High in the Dirty Business of Dreams (1992) by Nick Tosches

June Allyson's name is included in The Rat Pack's list of conquests (Rat Pack Confidential by Shawn Levy), presumably by Peter Lawford, who had a huge crush on Allyson. Joe Naar recalls one night that Peter had drunk heavily and boasted of his dalliance with June Allyson. Maybe Sinatra was jealous? Lawford asked, which a skeptical Sinatra denied. Dean Martin allegedly had received a letter from Allyson and he had written a telegram that read: "June, I'm still tingling", and wondering if Dick Powell bored her. Sinatra, having admired Powell's singing prowess as a crooner, said to Martin to shut up. One of Martin's reasons to try to bed Allyson might have been jealousy of Powell's talent. June first had met Dean Martin when he was appearing at Slapsie Maxie Rosenbloom’s with Jerry Lewis. June became a regular ringsider at the club. And then she accompanied Dean when he moved from Hollywood to a nightery in Las Vegas. The Las Vegas natives weren’t as blase as they were cracked up to be. As one gossip columnist itemed it, “Dean Martin and June Allyson are having a ball in Las Vegas where they’re spinning faster than the roulette wheels.” 

Dick Powell did a lot of hollering when Confidential magazine echoed the rumors of an affair between Allyson and Martin, saying: "What can you do when a pack of lies appears about your wife? I was told legally that to sue [Confidential magazine] for libel is just blowing up a lot of wind. This is a job for the government." And the betting around Hollywood was two to one that Junie would be given her divorce papers. But it never happened. Powell may have been sore but he wasn’t sore enough to call the whole thing off. Just what he had to say to Junie when she returned from her Vegas adventure must have been quite a storm. Specially because Powell's lifestyle was the opposite of Martin's. A good friend met Dick Powell outside Hollywood’s Brown Derby and politely inquired: “How’s June?” “You mean Stupid?” Powell snapped, visibly angry. “I don’t know how Stupid is. Ask me another question.” Whilst, Martin resumed his list of conquests, including his improbable dalliance with Rita Hayworth. Supposedly, Peter Lawford was jealous of Martin, because he also had hit on Allyson a year before. 

According to actor Jackie Cooper, Lawford was obsessed with Allyson and was bold when both were reunited at Cooper's house. Cooper said he saw Lawford kissing a reluctant Allyson, while Allyson had Powell pick her up so it looked like she was just visiting Cooper and his wife. According to Lawford, Allyson had led him on only to finally rebuke him. Lawford said to Cooper: "Whenever the Powells had a party, I would assist with a girlfriend". Lawford said it was hard for him not try to kiss Allyson. Their failed romance soon appeared in gossip columns. Then the MGM bosses forbade Lawford to make a trip to New York because Allyson was going to be there at the same time. According to James Spada, this one-sided romance was over before it had a chance to thrive, ending with ill feelings on both sides. “There was word out that Peter might have been homosexual because he knew Van Johnson,” said UCLA football player Joe Naar. “Van Johnson may well have been gay, but Peter couldn’t have been more heterosexual. All we did was chase ladies in those days. He was dating Janet Leigh during The Red Danube and was after June Allyson like a madman.” 

In 1961, Gloria Pall met Dick Powell when he was living separated from June Allyson for a while, after his wife had asked for a divorce. Gloria said they dated occasionally and he helped pick out her sign for her real estate office on the Sunset Strip. In her memoir Cameo Girl of the 50's (1993) published by Showgirl Press, Gloria said Powell was always polite and attentive with her. Gloria wanted him to help finance her real estate Lavender R.E office on Sunset Strip. She said they had an intimate connection but apparently he wouldn't go to bed with her. Powell helped her stack up funds, since she needed 10,000$ to open her office. A sign outside her lavender-colored office read: "Call Pall." Her friendship with Powell ended when she found out he had returned to his wife June Allyson. Gloria Pall had previously dated Robert Mitchum, James Garner, and Elvis Presley. ―Sources: Inside Story magazine (1952), June Allyson: Her Life and Career (2023) by Peter Shelley, The Peter Lawford Story: Life with the Kennedys, Marilyn Monroe and the Rat Pack (2015) by Patricia Lawford Stewart

Serpentine Plots in L.A. Noir, Dick Powell

Richard Ewing Powell was born on November 14, 1904, in Mountain View, Arkansas, a small town once described by the actor as “ten miles from modern conveniences.” The second of three boys of Sallie and Ewing Powell, an International Harvester salesman, Powell moved to nearby Little Rock at the age of 10. In 1923, Powell enrolled at Little Rock College, where he headed up the popular dance band Peter Pan, while working part-time for the telephone company. The future star also found time to get married to his college sweetheart, Mildred Maund, on May 28, 1925. A short time later, Powell played a variety of club acts; he sang with the Royal Peacock Orchestra in Louisville, Kentucky, and the Charlie Davis Orchestra in Indianapolis, and also played vaudeville theaters, adding saxophone and clarinet playing to his performing repertoire. In September 1926, he landed a job as emcee at the Circle Theatre in Indianapolis, and a few years later became master of ceremonies at the Stanley Theatre in Pittsburgh. During this period, Powell also hosted a weekly radio show in Pittsburgh, The Pow Wow Club. “In my field, it was wonderful experience,” Powell once said of his varied activities, “like playing stock is for an actor.” After several years at the Stanley, Powell was spotted by a talent scout from Warner Bros., and was invited to Hollywood. Powell’s wife, who had long objected to his choice of career, declined to accompany her husband. 

Powell was promptly cast in his film debut, Blessed Event (1932), a musical starring Lee Tracy and Mary Brian. Years later, Brian praised Powell’s performance in his initial feature film outing. “He had all the stage presence and professional experience when he came out, although pictures were new to him,” Mary Brian said in 1996. “He took to it like a duck to water.” In the early 1930s Mary Brian was engaged to Powell until he romantically was linked with Joan Blondell. Powell married the vivacious blonde actress on September 19, 1936, aboard the luxury Santa Paula liner. A short time later, Powell adopted Blondell’s young son, Norman, and in June 1938, the couple had a daughter, Ellen. “My mother said she was taken with the kindness and gentleness that he exhibited toward her, and the fact that he really seemed to love me,” Norman Powell said in 1996. “I think that’s what attracted her to him more than any other thing.” 

Powell was cast in yet another musical, Bring on the Girls (1945), starring Veronica Lake and Sonny Tufts. Balking at the assignment, the actor was placed on suspension. “This went on for 10 or 12 weeks,” Powell later recalled. “One day, in an elevator, I ran into Frank Freeman, then head of Paramount’s production. I said, ‘Frank, this is silly. I’m not going to do that kind of picture anymore. So you might as well let me out of the contract.’ And he did. I then went over to RKO and told them my little tale of woe. It so happened they had just bought Raymond Chandler’s Farewell, My Lovely. They gave me the script, I read it, and I said I’d do it. My problem was convincing the director, Edward Dmytryk. My box-office appeal was sagging and he could only see me as the singing marine. But I must have begged hard enough because he decided to take a chance on me, and it worked.” 

Author Raymond Chandler would later claim that Powell’s rendition of Marlowe was his favorite, and co-star Claire Trevor laid the film’s success squarely on Powell’s shoulders. “He was a revelation,” Trevor said. “Up to this, he was known only as a boy singer, but now he was playing Raymond Chandler’s tough private eye, and playing it magnificently. People couldn’t get over it. The film revitalized his career.” Indeed, Murder, My Sweet had finally given Powell the role that he had sought for so many years. But his career wasn’t the only aspect of the actor’s life that was undergoing a transformation. 

Since leaving Warner’s, Powell’s marriage to Joan Blondell had been increasingly strained, fostered by long absences while Blondell accepted stage roles in New York, and damaged further by rumors of her romantic involvement with producer Mike Todd. Meanwhile, while starring in the 1944 MGM musical Meet the People, Powell rekindled his friendship with actress June Allyson, falling for the younger ingenue. “He was wonderful to all of us new kids—if we had a problem, he would tell us how to do a scene or help us learn how to read a script,” Allyson recalled in a 1996 TV homage to Powell. “And our friendship just kind of grew.” In July 1945, Powell and Blondell were divorced, and a month later the actor married Allyson.

After the wedding, Powell played in another noir, Cornered (1945). Upon the film’s release, critics once again hailed the “new” Powell; one of the best reviews was offered by Jim Henaghan of the Los Angeles Examiner, who wrote: “If there was any question about Dick Powell’s astonishing performance in last year’s Murder, My Sweet, this picture will dissolve it. For in Cornered he plays a character equally as hard and tough, and draws a role considerably more complex and difficult to portray—and plays it to a fare-thee-well.” In Cornered Dick Powell plays a man exhausted, angry, and with little hope for the future. Though marred by its serpentine plot, Cornered is an important film noir. It offers an extraordinarily bleak worldview, precocious even for noir. Certainly no Hollywood film to date had brought to the screen a milieu so desolate or a hero so pathologically dour. Coming so quickly on the heels of cataclysm, previous efforts couldn’t have imagined the world portrayed in Cornered, neither This Gun for Hire nor Journey into Fear come close — and no previous film featured a protagonist with so little hope. In terms of global change the Second World War is the defining moment of the twentieth century, and a singular one in the development of the noir style. Insofar as this is concerned, no entry is more emblematic of that change than Cornered.

Much of Cornered’s originality comes from Powell’s interpretation of Laurence Gerard. It has been said that Cornered might have suited Humphrey Bogart better, an actor for whom tiredness was natural. Yet while Bogart could do angry, his rage seemed to have a leering quality — and while Gerard is reckless he’s no head case. Violent acts, especially the up-close, dirty, wet ones, have become frighteningly impersonal in Cornered, as the survivors are now numb to the moral absolutes of pre-war society. It’s in this notion of lashing out, of poker-faced violence, that Cornered also anticipates film noir’s shell-shocked man apart, plagued by some unknown neurosis or gnawing guilt. Like most good noir, the brooding thematic elements of Cornered are supported by the mise en scene, which pushes the dark frame to extremes. Dmytryk, art director Carroll Clark, and cinematographer Harry Wild give us the expected interplay of shadow and light, as well as numerous offbeat camera angles. 

In fact the only conventional shots seem to involve one of the film’s two female characters, which is a subtle clue to her true nature. Wild often shoots from behind a pillar, around a corner, or from on high to obfuscate our sense of environment. Filming Powell in tight close-up, making him difficult to place and reinforcing the idea that he doesn’t belong further heightens this confusion. The effect is claustrophobic, disorienting, and perfectly in keeping with the film’s tone. Cornered gets progressively darker and darker as it approaches its climax, eventually to place Gerard in utter darkness, groping and bumbling through a deserted warehouse. Cornered was a bitter reminder for a people still celebrating victory that not all was well in the world, yet it did well with critics and audiences. The film’s box office owes itself directly to the casting of Dick Powell. Preview audiences were ecstatic to see him again in what they described as a “he-man” role, with hardly any comments recommending a return to musical comedy. Even New York Times grouch Bosley Crowther lauded the film: “Cornered is a drama of smoldering vengeance and political scheming which builds purposefully and with graduating tension to a violent climax, a committing of murder that is as thrilling and brutal as any you are likely to encounter. Cornered provides a vision of a world gone to hell.” 

Even in his non-film noir features, Powell continued to play tough-guy roles; he was a narcotics investigator in To The Ends Of The Earth (1948), co-starring Signe Hasso; an undercover military investigator in the western noir Station West (1948); and an army intelligence agent in Rogue’s Regiment (1948). During this period, Powell took his first step toward his future career behind the camera, forming a partnership with Samuel Bischoff and Edward Gross to create Regal Films. The company’s initial effort marked Powell’s fourth film noir, the underrated Pitfall (1948). “Dick Powell was a man of immense self-confidence, outward ease, friendliness, warmth, and humor,” Christopher Knopf wrote in a 1976 Variety article. “He gave approbation to everyone he employed. If he hired you, you could do the job, or he wouldn’t have hired you. His confidence in you injected confidence in yourself.” 

In Cry Danger (1951) Rocky Mulloy (Dick Powell) is released from the slammer after serving five years of a lifetime sentence. He was framed for a murder and hold-up, where $100,000 are still missing. Rocky becomes a free man after a marine he never met before, Delong (Erdman), provides him after all this time with a bogus alibi. However, Rocky’s best friend, Danny, also framed, is still in prison (with a lesser charge). Rocky tells the wolfish Delong that Nancy Morgan (Rhonda Fleming) is out of bounds. Delong soon learns that Nancy was once Rocky’s girl, but dumped him for his pal Danny. The one who arranged the robbery is a bar owner/racketeer named Castro (Conrad), who first tried to get Rocky to go along with the heist. When Rocky is asked: “What do you plan to do with all the dough?” Rocky responds “I plan to get an operation, so I can play the violin again.” 

Rocky beats it out of Castro that it was Danny and Nancy who framed him, and Nancy has hidden the $50,000 half share from the heist Danny split with Castro. At the film’s end, Rocky turns Nancy over to Cobb, telling him with regret that “she’s already packed.” In this feature, Dick Powell turned in one of his best performances and his role was singled out as “adroitly played”. In the New York Times, Bosley Crowther wrote: "Cry Danger is a tidy package of fictional extravagance. Usually you don't find much occasion for laughter in a picture that is concerned with revenge and murder. But in "Cry Danger" scenarist William Bowers has found room for some sardonic lines that are tossed off most effectively. This is the story of a man who was framed into a jail term and gets out when a former marine comes up with a convenient alibi. The marine just wants a cut of the $100,000 swag Rocky Mulloy is supposed to have stashed away. Dick Powell plays Mulloy with an air of cocky toughness that inspires confidence in his ability to run down the sleazy characters who fingered him as the fall guy for a big robbery and murder rap. This report will not disclose anything more about the plot details of "Cry Danger." (Inside intelligence; Mr. Powell is in town—he appeared on the Paramount's stage yesterday—and he can be pretty rough on squealers.*) As the chief feminine interest, Rhonda Fleming turns on the charm effectively and Jean Porter is amusing as a blonde pickpocket."

When Lizabett Scott was loaned for Pitfall (1948), she was guaranteed a minimum of $75,000. Although Pitfall now ranks as classic noir (French filmmaker Bertrand Tavernier considers it one of the genre's masterpieces), producer Hal B. Wallis could not have known that in 1948; he simply believed that Lizabeth appearing opposite Dick Powell, who showed his macho side in Murder, My Sweet (1944) and Cornered (1945), was right for a movie about a woman who ensnares a respectable married man in a web of deception and murder, from which he emerges repentant but not exactly on the best of terms with his wife. With Jane Wyatt as the sexless wife, one could understand why she would stand by her man and at the same time why her husband would be drawn to a considerably more sensuous woman. Pitfall (1948), directed by Andre de Toth, is an even more caustic examination of the American dream than Double Indemnity, chiefly because its subject is the post-war nuclear family, amidst factories such as Douglas Aircraft in Santa Monica. 

Eisenhower engineered tax breaks and housing subsidies to create the ideal consuming unit: the residential nuclear family with a working father, purchasing mother, and dependent children, a unit which would buy the new consumer goods the war industries would retool to produce en masse: cars, houses, and household appliances. In Los Angeles, new suburbs were born, including the San Fernando and San Gabriel valleys and the South Bay-Long Beach area. Pitfall exposes—as only a noir film can—the soft center of the American social ideal. About Powell's official debut as director, Split Second (1953). the critic for The Hollywood Reporter wrote, “Powell, who certainly must get much of the credit for the consistently excellent performances, does a masterful job of pacing, starting off in a staccato style and relentlessly building up the tension to a breathtaking climax.” 

Meanwhile, Powell was making headlines not for his films or television work, but because of his deteriorating marriage. *The first bump happened around 1949, after the rumors floating about a dalliance of June Allyson with Dean Martin. The Paramount stage could allude to the set where Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis were filming My friend Irma (1949), which was produced by Hal B. Wallis and released on August 16, 1949, by Paramount. A jilted Powell and a conceited Martin may well have exchanged some heated words. After reconciling with Powell following a brief separation in 1957, triggered by a frustrated romance with Alan Ladd, June Allyson filed for divorce in 1961, citing his workaholic nature and his frequent absences from home. Allyson was granted an interlocutory divorce in January 1961, which would become final in a year. But Powell had other plans; on the day following the court hearing, Allyson said, “he was sitting at the little breakfast nook, having breakfast and reading the paper.” “And I said, ‘What are you doing here? We just got a divorce,’” Allyson recalled. “He said, ‘No, you didn’t—you just got a paper that said you can have a divorce in a year.’ And he said, ‘You know, I’m never going to let you go. And you’ve spent all that money for no reason at all.’ And he went right on eating his breakfast. And we never did get the divorce. For which I’m very grateful.” —Sources: "Bad Boys: The Actors  of Film Noir" (2003) by Karen Burroughs Hannsberry and "L.A. Noir: The City as Character" (2005) by Alain Silver and James Ursini