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TCM Schedule for Friday, August 12, 2022 -- Summer Under The Stars: Jane Powell
Today's star is actor/singer/dancer Jane Powell. From her TCMDb biography:With a light-up-a-room smile, mesmerizing hazel eyes, and a trademark perky demeanor, Jane Powell incarnated the last gasp of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer's era of feel-good musicals and the wholesome performers who inhabited these Technicolor extravaganzas. Powell emerged from a troubled childhood to find a spot in MGM's stable of child stars, doing a string of plucky love-struck teen roles in B-musicals of the late 1940s and early 1950s. Wielding a powerful soprano voice, she would secure a place in the pantheon of classic musicals in the lead of the 1954 film adaptation of "Seven Brides for Seven Brothers." Though her movie glory days lasted only a decade, she transitioned into television and eventually took her penchant for classic musicals on regional theatrical tours. Grossly insecure, she would cycle through a series of marriages and struggle with severe depression, belying her longtime public image. Yet she would remain active in stage and television productions late into her life. For a generation, however, Powell would forever embody the archetype of the all-American girl-next-door, remaining a symbol of the proverbial shinier, simpler good ole' days.
She was born Suzanne Lorraine Burce on April 1, 1929, in Portland, OR, to Paul and Eileen Burce, an unhappy couple who saw in their precocious girl a chance to escape their modest means, seeing her as child-star heir apparent to Shirley Temple. They saved up to pay for dance lessons for Suzanne when she was only three, which three years later drew the attentions of a talent scout who convinced the family to move to Oakland, CA, ostensibly to be a mid-market stopover before conquering Hollywood. A promised project never materialized, the agent took a powder, and the Burces moved back to Portland - all of which was another setback exacerbating Eileen's alcohol abuse. The actress later confessed in her 1988 autobiography that she felt exploited by her mother and learned to repress her negative feelings for fear of aggravating Eileen, even to the point that after she was molested by other youthful residents in the family's apartment complex, the youngster said nothing so as not to upset her mother. Meanwhile, Suzanne added singing lessons to her regimen, earned appearances on local radio shows, and by age 11, had her own radio show on Portland radio station KOIN. When the U.S. entered World War II, she was selected Oregon's "Victory Girl," appearing across the state at war-bond drives.
In 1943, Suzanne won a spot on a radio talent show in Los Angeles. It led to a succession of radio appearances in the entertainment capital, including one on the popular Edgar Bergen/Charlie McCarthy show, piquing the interest of Shirley Temple's then-studio, MGM, which signed her to a contract. The Burces moved to L.A., where she attended the studio's Little Red Schoolhouse, renowned for teaching its famed stable of child stars like Temple, Mickey Rooney, Judy Garland, but she won little work and initially felt isolated and depressed. Her first two films, in fact, would be loan-outs to United Artists. "Song of the Open Road" (1944) introduced the newly christened Jane Powell, playing a young teen star named Jane Powell who, fed up with her goody-two-shoes public image, makes a musical sojourn to the real world. She followed that with "Delightfully Dangerous" (1945), a standard girl-hoping-to-make-it-big flick. It was not until 1946 that MGM put her in an in-house production, "Holiday in Mexico," an airy musical whose story basically served as padding between songs by Powell and her castmates. The film became a staging point for her; her onscreen romantic interest, a young Roddy McDowall, became a lifelong friend; producer Joe Pasternak became the shepherd of many of her projects; and the movie's formula - show folk in fluffy, interchangeable plots enabling song-and-dance in scenic locations - would become the Powell stock-in-trade.
That very same template would manifest with a series of crowd-pleasers, including "Three Daring Daughters" (1948), "A Date with Judy" (1948), co-starring Elizabeth Taylor, "Luxury Liner" (1948), "Nancy Goes to Rio" (1950) and "Two Weeks With Love" (1950). Taylor would stand as Powell's bridesmaid upon her marriage to ice-skater Geary Steffen the next year. Many of the songs off her chirpy, colorful B-pictures migrated onto Powell albums issued by Columbia Records, such as 1949's A Date with Jane Powell. MGM moved her song-and-dance routine into the A-picture realm with "Royal Wedding" (1951) by pairing her with none other than Fred Astaire, with the two playing siblings in spite of Astaire being three decades her senior. Later in 1951, during the shooting of the seemingly literalist "Rich, Young and Pretty" (1951), she discovered she was pregnant by her first husband. She bore the first of her and Steffen's two children, Geary (G.A.) Steffen III, with daughter Suzanne arriving the next year. She resumed playing to type as the disarming all-American ingénue in "Small Town Girl" (1953) and "Three Sailors and a Girl" (1953), during the making of which she began an affair with co-star Gene Nelson. They divorced their respective spouses, intending to wed, but Nelson backed out. Insecure about being alone, she married car dealer Patrick Nerney the following year, the union producing a daughter, Lindsey, two years later.
In 1954, Powell would snare her signature role as the Alpha-female in the phalanx of would-be wives in the Stanley Donen-directed Technicolor musical "Seven Brides for Seven Brothers," opposite booming baritone and onscreen love interest Howard Keel. MGM returned her to more contemporary song-and-dance comedies in tandem with fellow sprite Debbie Reynolds in "Athena" (1954) and "Hit the Deck" (1955), yet when Louie B. Mayer, MGM's longtime champion of musical treacle, departed the studio, Powell foresaw the genre's imminent decline. She quit, she later discovered, not long before new studio chief Dore Schary had planned to cut her loose. The new free agent began turning up in guest appearances on television shows, such as "The Goodyear Theatre" (NBC, 1957-1960), "Alcoa Theatre" (NBC, 1957-1960) and "What's My Line" (CBS, 1950-1967). She was drawn particularly to variety shows that could showcase her song-and-dance skills, such as Dinah Shore, Judy Garland, Red Skelton and Andy Williams' eponymous showcases, and two big-ticket made-for-TV remakes of "Ruggles of Red Gap" (1957) and "Meet Me in St. Louis" (1959). She returned to the movies with a triumvirate of 1958 releases - two rare non-musical dramatic outings, playing Hedy Lamarr's daughter in Lamarr's final film, "The Female Animal" and a Polynesian girl-next-door in the low-budget Melville adaptation "Enchanted Island," as well as a last light-hearted movie musical, "The Girl Most Likely."
Powell continued voluminous TV guest-work through the 1960s, in addition to taking roles in touring and regional versions of Broadway plays, among them such staples as "South Pacific," "The Sound of Music," "Oklahoma!" "My Fair Lady," "Carousel" - some of the productions reuniting her with Keel. By now her relationship with Nerney had floundered and they divorced in 1963. She married Jim Fitzgerald in 1965, who took over managing her career - poorly, by her later estimate. She did, however, make her Broadway debut in 1973 in "Irene," replacing Debbie Reynolds in the title role of the plucky, blue-collar Irish woman wooed into New York high-society circles. By the mid-1970s, her relationship with Fitzgerald also deteriorated, as would her relationship with children G.A. and Suzanne - all of which led to a nervous breakdown. In 1974, Fitzgerald reportedly intervened in an attempted suicide by Powell. Though she convalesced for a time in a hospital, she did not receive psychiatric treatment until years later. Powell and Fitzgerald divorced the next year. By the end of the 1970s, she settled into a schedule of telefilms and guest appearances on TV staples of the time such as "Fantasy Island" (ABC, 1978-1984), "The Love Boat" (ABC, 1977-1986), and "Murder, She Wrote" (CBS, 1984-1996), eventually taking on a recurring role as the grandmother on the popular family sitcom "Growing Pains" (ABC, 1985-1992).
After another marriage that ended in 1981, she gave an interview to fellow ex-child star Dickie Moore, who was working on a book and the two began a relationship. She moved to New York in 1982, cohabitated with Moore and married him in 1988, the same year she published her confessional autobiography The Girl Next Door and How She Grew. Still spry by the late-1980s, she teamed up with the Arthritis Foundation to appear in the exercise video "Fight Back with Fitness," specifically designed for senior citizens, In the early 1990s, she periodically stood in for actress Eileen Fulton in her long-running role on the soap "As The World Turns" (CBS, 1956-2010), and continued to add to her stage résumé with a stint in a New York production of Rodgers and Hammerstein's "Cinderella," an East Coast run in the Anne Meara-penned play "After-Play," and two 2000 productions, "Avow" and "70, Girls, 70." In 2003, she took a featured role in the Showtime made-for-TV movie "The Sandy Bottom Orchestra," and trod the boards again in Chicago and Washington, D.C. runs of Stephen Sondheim's musical "Bounce."
By Matthew Grimm
She was born Suzanne Lorraine Burce on April 1, 1929, in Portland, OR, to Paul and Eileen Burce, an unhappy couple who saw in their precocious girl a chance to escape their modest means, seeing her as child-star heir apparent to Shirley Temple. They saved up to pay for dance lessons for Suzanne when she was only three, which three years later drew the attentions of a talent scout who convinced the family to move to Oakland, CA, ostensibly to be a mid-market stopover before conquering Hollywood. A promised project never materialized, the agent took a powder, and the Burces moved back to Portland - all of which was another setback exacerbating Eileen's alcohol abuse. The actress later confessed in her 1988 autobiography that she felt exploited by her mother and learned to repress her negative feelings for fear of aggravating Eileen, even to the point that after she was molested by other youthful residents in the family's apartment complex, the youngster said nothing so as not to upset her mother. Meanwhile, Suzanne added singing lessons to her regimen, earned appearances on local radio shows, and by age 11, had her own radio show on Portland radio station KOIN. When the U.S. entered World War II, she was selected Oregon's "Victory Girl," appearing across the state at war-bond drives.
In 1943, Suzanne won a spot on a radio talent show in Los Angeles. It led to a succession of radio appearances in the entertainment capital, including one on the popular Edgar Bergen/Charlie McCarthy show, piquing the interest of Shirley Temple's then-studio, MGM, which signed her to a contract. The Burces moved to L.A., where she attended the studio's Little Red Schoolhouse, renowned for teaching its famed stable of child stars like Temple, Mickey Rooney, Judy Garland, but she won little work and initially felt isolated and depressed. Her first two films, in fact, would be loan-outs to United Artists. "Song of the Open Road" (1944) introduced the newly christened Jane Powell, playing a young teen star named Jane Powell who, fed up with her goody-two-shoes public image, makes a musical sojourn to the real world. She followed that with "Delightfully Dangerous" (1945), a standard girl-hoping-to-make-it-big flick. It was not until 1946 that MGM put her in an in-house production, "Holiday in Mexico," an airy musical whose story basically served as padding between songs by Powell and her castmates. The film became a staging point for her; her onscreen romantic interest, a young Roddy McDowall, became a lifelong friend; producer Joe Pasternak became the shepherd of many of her projects; and the movie's formula - show folk in fluffy, interchangeable plots enabling song-and-dance in scenic locations - would become the Powell stock-in-trade.
That very same template would manifest with a series of crowd-pleasers, including "Three Daring Daughters" (1948), "A Date with Judy" (1948), co-starring Elizabeth Taylor, "Luxury Liner" (1948), "Nancy Goes to Rio" (1950) and "Two Weeks With Love" (1950). Taylor would stand as Powell's bridesmaid upon her marriage to ice-skater Geary Steffen the next year. Many of the songs off her chirpy, colorful B-pictures migrated onto Powell albums issued by Columbia Records, such as 1949's A Date with Jane Powell. MGM moved her song-and-dance routine into the A-picture realm with "Royal Wedding" (1951) by pairing her with none other than Fred Astaire, with the two playing siblings in spite of Astaire being three decades her senior. Later in 1951, during the shooting of the seemingly literalist "Rich, Young and Pretty" (1951), she discovered she was pregnant by her first husband. She bore the first of her and Steffen's two children, Geary (G.A.) Steffen III, with daughter Suzanne arriving the next year. She resumed playing to type as the disarming all-American ingénue in "Small Town Girl" (1953) and "Three Sailors and a Girl" (1953), during the making of which she began an affair with co-star Gene Nelson. They divorced their respective spouses, intending to wed, but Nelson backed out. Insecure about being alone, she married car dealer Patrick Nerney the following year, the union producing a daughter, Lindsey, two years later.
In 1954, Powell would snare her signature role as the Alpha-female in the phalanx of would-be wives in the Stanley Donen-directed Technicolor musical "Seven Brides for Seven Brothers," opposite booming baritone and onscreen love interest Howard Keel. MGM returned her to more contemporary song-and-dance comedies in tandem with fellow sprite Debbie Reynolds in "Athena" (1954) and "Hit the Deck" (1955), yet when Louie B. Mayer, MGM's longtime champion of musical treacle, departed the studio, Powell foresaw the genre's imminent decline. She quit, she later discovered, not long before new studio chief Dore Schary had planned to cut her loose. The new free agent began turning up in guest appearances on television shows, such as "The Goodyear Theatre" (NBC, 1957-1960), "Alcoa Theatre" (NBC, 1957-1960) and "What's My Line" (CBS, 1950-1967). She was drawn particularly to variety shows that could showcase her song-and-dance skills, such as Dinah Shore, Judy Garland, Red Skelton and Andy Williams' eponymous showcases, and two big-ticket made-for-TV remakes of "Ruggles of Red Gap" (1957) and "Meet Me in St. Louis" (1959). She returned to the movies with a triumvirate of 1958 releases - two rare non-musical dramatic outings, playing Hedy Lamarr's daughter in Lamarr's final film, "The Female Animal" and a Polynesian girl-next-door in the low-budget Melville adaptation "Enchanted Island," as well as a last light-hearted movie musical, "The Girl Most Likely."
Powell continued voluminous TV guest-work through the 1960s, in addition to taking roles in touring and regional versions of Broadway plays, among them such staples as "South Pacific," "The Sound of Music," "Oklahoma!" "My Fair Lady," "Carousel" - some of the productions reuniting her with Keel. By now her relationship with Nerney had floundered and they divorced in 1963. She married Jim Fitzgerald in 1965, who took over managing her career - poorly, by her later estimate. She did, however, make her Broadway debut in 1973 in "Irene," replacing Debbie Reynolds in the title role of the plucky, blue-collar Irish woman wooed into New York high-society circles. By the mid-1970s, her relationship with Fitzgerald also deteriorated, as would her relationship with children G.A. and Suzanne - all of which led to a nervous breakdown. In 1974, Fitzgerald reportedly intervened in an attempted suicide by Powell. Though she convalesced for a time in a hospital, she did not receive psychiatric treatment until years later. Powell and Fitzgerald divorced the next year. By the end of the 1970s, she settled into a schedule of telefilms and guest appearances on TV staples of the time such as "Fantasy Island" (ABC, 1978-1984), "The Love Boat" (ABC, 1977-1986), and "Murder, She Wrote" (CBS, 1984-1996), eventually taking on a recurring role as the grandmother on the popular family sitcom "Growing Pains" (ABC, 1985-1992).
After another marriage that ended in 1981, she gave an interview to fellow ex-child star Dickie Moore, who was working on a book and the two began a relationship. She moved to New York in 1982, cohabitated with Moore and married him in 1988, the same year she published her confessional autobiography The Girl Next Door and How She Grew. Still spry by the late-1980s, she teamed up with the Arthritis Foundation to appear in the exercise video "Fight Back with Fitness," specifically designed for senior citizens, In the early 1990s, she periodically stood in for actress Eileen Fulton in her long-running role on the soap "As The World Turns" (CBS, 1956-2010), and continued to add to her stage résumé with a stint in a New York production of Rodgers and Hammerstein's "Cinderella," an East Coast run in the Anne Meara-penned play "After-Play," and two 2000 productions, "Avow" and "70, Girls, 70." In 2003, she took a featured role in the Showtime made-for-TV movie "The Sandy Bottom Orchestra," and trod the boards again in Chicago and Washington, D.C. runs of Stephen Sondheim's musical "Bounce."
By Matthew Grimm
Enjoy!
6:00 AM -- A Date with Judy (1948)
1h 53m | Musical | TV-G
A teenager thinks her grandfather is involved with a fiery Latin singer.
Director: Richard Thorpe
Cast: Wallace Beery, Jane Powell, Elizabeth Taylor
Though now barely remembered, if at all, by modern audiences, the radio version of "A Date With Judy" was so popular that there was a built-in audience for MGM's film version at the time of its release.
8:00 AM -- Luxury Liner (1948)
1h 31m | Musical | TV-PG
The daughter of a ship's captain becomes a sea-going cupid.
Director: Richard Whorf
Cast: George Brent, Jane Powell, Lauritz Melchior
"Cugat's Nugat," one of Xavier Cugat's signature themes, had appeared just a few months earlier in another Jane Powell vehicle, A Date With Judy (1948), where it served as the climactic rhumba sequence for Wallace Beery and Selena Royle. In Luxury Liner (1948), Cugat and his orchestra perform the lyric, which was not heard in the earlier incarnation.
10:00 AM -- Nancy Goes to Rio (1950)
1h 39m | Musical | TV-G
Mother-and-daughter singers compete for the same role and the same man.
Director: Robert Z. Leonard
Cast: Ann Sothern, Jane Powell, Barry Sullivan
One of several Jane Powell vehicles that concerned a pubescent character falling in love with an older man. At the time these films were made, there was a charm to younger people histrionically 'play acting' adult emotions, but modern-day audiences are largely put off by the admittedly uneasy plotlines of these movies, and Nancy Goes to Rio (1950) may be the worst offender, as it involves a mother and daughter competing for the same man.
12:00 PM -- Rich, Young and Pretty (1951)
1h 35m | Musical | TV-PG
A rancher's daughter visits Paris to meet her mother and find love.
Director: Norman Taurog
Cast: Jane Powell, Danielle Darrieux, Wendell Corey
Nominee for an Oscar for Best Music, Original Song -- Nicholas Brodszky (music) and Sammy Cahn (lyrics) for the song "Wonder Why"
Jane Powell was pregnant during the filming of this movie.
2:00 PM -- Three Sailors and a Girl (1953)
1h 35m | Musical | TV-G
Three sailors on leave back a Broadway hit.
Director: Roy Del Ruth
Cast: Jane Powell, Gordon MacRae, Gene Nelson
Jane Powell's off-screen romance with Gene Nelson ended her marriage, but Nelson's wife refused to give him a divorce. In 1973, Nelson directed Powell in a segment of the made-for-TV anthology movie "The Letters."
4:00 PM -- Hit the Deck (1955)
1h 52m | Musical | TV-G
Sailors on leave in San Francisco get mixed up in love and show business.
Director: Roy Rowland
Cast: Jane Powell, Tony Martin, Debbie Reynolds
A funereal air surrounds this film, as it was made during the final flowering of the MGM musical, at which point the studio was canceling its contracts with nearly all of its legendary contract players. This film marked the final MGM appearances of Jane Powell, Tony Martin, and J. Carrol Naish. Ann Miller would make only two more films for the studio - The Opposite Sex (1956) and The Great American Pastime (1956) - and Vic Damone would make one, Kismet (1955). Only Debbie Reynolds and Russ Tamblyn survived the cut; both stars would remain at MGM through the early-1960s.
6:00 PM -- The Girl Most Likely (1958)
1h 38m | Musical | TV-G
A girl accepts three wedding proposals at once and dreams of marriage to each man.
Director: Mitchell Leisen
Cast: Jane Powell, Cliff Robertson, Keith Andes
This was the last movie to be shot at the RKO Hollywood studio at 780 Gower Street. Filming took place between early September and early November 1956 and again during the week of January 8, 1957. After sitting on the shelf for over a year, Universal International picked up the distribution rights, and the feature finally went into wide release in February 1958 on a double bill with Day of the Badman (1958), a Universal International production starring Fred MacMurray. Jane Powell quipped in a 1987 "Films in Review" profile that Universal-International didn't release the film; they simply allowed it to "escape". Out of respect for RKO, who had not actually produced the film, but who had been its intended distributor, Universal-International left its original RKO logo intact on the beginning and end titles, and this is the way it's now seen on TCM.
WHAT'S ON TONIGHT: SUMMER UNDER THE STARS -- JANE POWELL
8:00 PM -- Royal Wedding (1951)
1h 33m | Musical | TV-G
A brother-and-sister musical team find romance when they tour London for Elizabeth II's wedding.
Director: Stanley Donen
Cast: Fred Astaire, Jane Powell, Peter Lawford
Nominee for an Oscar for Best Music, Original Song -- Burton Lane (music) and Alan Jay Lerner (lyrics) for the song "Too Late Now"
Originally envisioned as the first pairing of Fred Astaire and June Allyson, but Allyson left the project within weeks when she discovered she was pregnant. Judy Garland was tapped as her replacement, but when she failed to appear for costume fittings, MGM finally severed her contract, and Jane Powell took over the role of Ellen Bowen. Ironically, towards the end of filming, Powell discovered she also was pregnant.
10:00 PM -- Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (1954)
1h 43m | Musical | TV-G
The seven Pontipee brothers ease the loneliness of their Oregon farm by courting seven women.
Director: Stanley Donen
Cast: Jane Powell, Howard Keel, Jeff Richards
Winner of an Oscar for Best Music, Scoring of a Musical Picture -- Adolph Deutsch and Saul Chaplin
Nominee for Oscars for Best Writing, Screenplay -- Albert Hackett, Frances Goodrich and Dorothy Kingsley, Best Cinematography, Color -- George J. Folsey, Best Film Editing -- Ralph E. Winters, and Best Picture
Howard Keel called this film "one of my happiest filmmaking experiences at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. The cast was magnificent, and the chemistry irresistible. Jack Cummings had his stamp on the whole picture. Jane Powell, as Milly, was perfect, and I loved working with her. She was cute and persnickety and a multi-talented pro. It truly was one big happy family." In an interview for TNT's "Our Favorite Movies" series, Keel said, "A 'Seven Brides for Seven Brothers' doesn't come along too often. I remember thinking, 'If this isn't a hit, I give up,' because it was so much fun to make."
12:00 AM -- Small Town Girl (1953)
1h 33m | Musical | TV-G
A sheriff's daughter falls for a playboy arrested for speeding.
Director: Leslie Kardos
Cast: Jane Powell, Farley Granger, Ann Miller
Nominee for an Oscar for Best Music, Original Song -- Nicholas Brodszky (music) and Leo Robin (lyrics) for the song "My Flaming Heart"
For the reprise of "Take Me to Broadway", Bobby Van performs an extended dance sequence in which he jumps continuously for nearly five minutes. At first glance, it appears that he accomplishes the entire routine in one take. However, the dance was so tiring that it was cut into five segments, so that he could rest. The cuts are covered by changes in camera angles and placement.
2:00 AM -- Two Weeks with Love (1950)
1h 32m | Musical | TV-PG
Two sisters find romance during a turn-of-the-century family vacation.
Director: Roy Rowland
Cast: Jane Powell, Ricardo Montalban, Louis Calhern
Reportedly Jane Powell's personal favorite of her movies.
4:00 AM -- Enchanted Island (1958)
1h 33m | Drama | TV-PG
Two 19th-century sailors jump ship only to discover their tropical paradise is a cannibal stronghold.
Director: Allan Dwan
Cast: Dana Andrews, Jane Powell, Don Dubbins
According to a 1987 "Films in Review" article Jane Powell said, "It was a terrible movie. Dwan had no interest in it; and Dana Andrews was drinking at the time. It was really a fiasco! The best thing about it was that it gave the family a great vacation in Acapulco."
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...Enchanted Island, with its cannibals alongside Jane Powell and Dana Andrews. 