Jane Powell (born Suzanne Lorraine Burce; April 1, 1929 – September 16, 2021) was an American actress, singer, and dancer who appeared in Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer musicals in the 1940s and 50s. With her soprano voice and girl-next-door image, Powell appeared in films, television and on the stage, performing in the musicals A Date with Judy (1948), Royal Wedding (1951), Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (1954), and Hit the Deck (1955).
In December 2007, she united with the musical group Pink Martini, performing as a vocalist with them in their shared hometown of Portland. She appeared in local theatre productions in Wilton, Connecticut before her death.
Early years
Powell was born Suzanne Lorraine Burce, the only child of Paul Emerson Burce and Eileen Baker Burce, on April 1, 1929, in Portland, Oregon. Powell began dance lessons when she was 2 years old. By age 5, Powell had appeared on the Portland children's radio program Stars of Tomorrow. She took dance lessons at the Agnes Peters School of Dance, where the Burce family met a talent scout and dance instructor who persuaded the family to move to Oakland, California, to attract Hollywood talent agents.
She wanted to go back to high school and to university, but her mother forbade this as she was the only one in the family making good money.
Career
1943–1950
After signing with MGM, Powell was lent to United Artists for her first film, Song of the Open Road (1944), where she played the character of Jane Powell and took that as her professional name. In 1945, Powell sang "Because" at the wedding of Esther Williams and Ben Gage.
Powell's second feature film was Delightfully Dangerous (1945), then she appeared in Holiday in Mexico (1946), where she met Roddy McDowall, who became a life-long friend.
Powell lamented that, at the age of 25 and with children of her own, she found herself typecast in teenage roles, but she accepted the roles because she needed to support her family. In 2006, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers was named one of the greatest American musicals of all time by the American Film Institute. Powell starred in Athena and Deep in My Heart in 1954.
In 1955, Powell starred opposite Tony Martin, Debbie Reynolds, Ann Miller, and Russ Tamblyn in Hit the Deck, which was a commercial failure, underperforming at the box office. The following year, she recorded the song "True Love", which rose to number 15 on the Billboard charts and number 107 on the pop charts for that year, according to the Joel Whitburn compilation. This was her only single to make the charts. Also in 1956, Powell performed the song "I'll Never Stop Loving You" at the 28th Academy Awards. Next, Powell appeared in RKO Pictures' musical comedy The Girl Most Likely, playing a woman who becomes engaged to three men simultaneously. Though shot in 1956, the film was not released until 1958, after RKO went out of business.
Known mainly for her roles in musical comedies, Powell appeared in a rare dramatic role in the film noir The Female Animal (1958) from Universal Pictures, which marked the final film of co-star Hedy Lamarr.
1959–1980
By the late 1950s, after Powell's contract with MGM expired and her film offers began to slow, she turned to theater. as well as the female lead in an Atlanta-based production of Carousel, followed by The Boy Friend at the Carousel Theater in Los Angeles in 1967. Also in 1967, she starred in a touring production of Brigadoon. Next, she portrayed Maria von Trapp in a production of The Sound of Music in 1968. In addition to her stage work, Powell appeared in three television films: Wheeler and Murdoch (1972), The Letters (1973), and Mayday at 40,000 Feet! (1976).
In 1972, Powell appeared in a Cincinnati-based stage production of Meet Me In St. Louis. The following year, Powell made her Broadway debut playing the title character in Irene, following Debbie Reynolds' performance in the title role. Mel Gussow of The New York Times praised Powell's performance, writing: "The two stars are an equal match for peppiness. Miss Reynolds may score a point for clowning, but Miss Powell wins two for softness."
Howard Keel and she appeared on stage together in a revival of Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, I Do! I Do! and South Pacific. The couple had met while Moore was performing research for his autobiography Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star, but Don't Have Sex or Take the Car.
thumb|left|190px|upright|Powell in September 1998
In the early 1990s, Powell was a temporary replacement on the soap opera As the World Turns for Eileen Fulton as Lisa Grimaldi. In 1996 and 1997, she appeared in the off-Broadway production After-Play. She also performed the role of the Queen in Rodgers and Hammerstein's Cinderella at New York City Opera. This was followed by a stage production of 70, Girls, 70, the same year. "I auditioned just to meet Sondheim, who was nice and a very funny man,” Powell admitted. "But I was disappointed when I got the part. I didn't really want to be away from home, but I had never done a new show and that seemed exciting at first. But I didn't have much to do and the part wasn't too jovial." She also appeared on March 9, 2008, with Pink Martini at Avery Fisher Hall in New York City, singing a duet of "Aba Daba Honeymoon" with lead singer China Forbes. Powell filled in as guest host on Turner Classic Movies for Robert Osborne when he was on medical leave from July 17–23, 2011. The union produced two children, Gearhardt III (born July 21, 1951) and Suzanne Ilene (born November 21, 1952). In 1953, Powell began an affair with Gene Nelson, her married co-star in Three Sailors and a Girl. Powell and Nelson planned to marry after divorcing their spouses, but after divorcing his wife, Nelson backed out of marrying Powell.
Powell married car dealer Patrick W. Nerney on November 8, 1954. Their daughter, Lindsay Averill, was born on February 1, 1956. Powell and Nerney divorced in May 1963.
In 1965, Powell married Hollywood publicist and manager Jim Fitzgerald, who managed her career. They divorced in 1975. She married David Stellar Parlour in 1978 and divorced him in 1981.
Powell married former child star Dickie Moore in 1988. After Moore died in 2015, Powell moved to their home in Wilton, Connecticut, where she died of natural causes on September 16, 2021, at the age of 92.
Legacy
thumb|200px|upright|Powell's [[List of stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame|star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame ]]
Powell was referred to as one of the last surviving stars of the Golden Age of Hollywood. She secured her place in history with her performance in Seven Brides for Seven Brothers.
In 1960, Powell was awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
Filmography
{|class="wikitable sortable plainrowheaders"
! Year
! Film
! Role
! Director
! Notes
! class="unsortable"|
|-
! scope="row"|1944
| Song of the Open Road
| Jane Powell
|
|
| style="text-align:center;"|
|-
! scope="row"|1945
| Delightfully Dangerous
| Sherry Williams
|
|
| style="text-align:center;"|
|-
! scope="row"|1946
| Holiday in Mexico
| Christine Evans
|
|
| style="text-align:center;"|
|-
! rowspan=3 scope="row"|1948
| Three Daring Daughters
| Tess Morgan
|
|
| style="text-align:center;"|
|-
| '
| Judy Foster
|
|
| style="text-align:center;"|
|-
| Luxury Liner
| Polly Bradford
|
|
| style="text-align:center;"|
|-
! rowspan=2 scope="row"| 1950
| Nancy Goes to Rio
| Nancy Barklay
|
|
| style="text-align:center;"|
|-
| Two Weeks with Love
| Patti Robinson
|
|
| style="text-align:center;"|
|-
! rowspan=2 scope="row"| 1951
| Royal Wedding
| Ellen Bowen
|
|
| style="text-align:center;"|
|-
| Rich, Young and Pretty
| Elizabeth Rogers
|
|
| style="text-align:center;"|
|-
! rowspan=2 scope="row"| 1953
| Small Town Girl
| Cindy Kimbell
|
|
| style="text-align:center;"|
|-
| Three Sailors and a Girl
| Penny Weston
|
|
| style="text-align:center;"|
|-
! rowspan=3 scope="row"| 1954
| Seven Brides for Seven Brothers
| Milly Pontipee
|
|
| style="text-align:center;"|
|-
| Athena
| Athena Mulvain
|
|
| style="text-align:center;"|
|-
| Deep in My Heart
| Ottilie van Zandt in Maytime
|
|
| style="text-align:center;"|
|-
! scope="row"|1955
| Hit the Deck
| Susan Smith
|
|
| style="text-align:center;"|
|-
! rowspan=3 scope="row"| 1958
| '
| Dodie
|
|
| style="text-align:center;"|
|-
| '
| Penny Windsor
|
|
| style="text-align:center;"|
|-
| Enchanted Island
| Fayaway
|
| Alternate title: Typee
| style="text-align:center;"|
|-
! scope="row"| 1959
|Meet Me In St. Louis
|
|George Schaefer
|Television movie
| style="text-align: center;" |
|-
! scope="row"| 1975
| Tubby the Tuba
| Celeste
|
| Voice role
| style="text-align:center;"|
|-
! scope="row"|1999
| Picture This
|
|
|Cameo
| style="text-align:center;"|
|-
! scope="row"|2003
| Broadway: The Golden Age, by the Legends Who Were There
| Herself
|
| Documentary
| style="text-align:center;"|
|}
Short subjects
- Screen Snapshots: Motion Picture Mothers, Inc. (1949)
- 1955 Motion Picture Theatre Celebration (1955)
Stage work
- Allegro (1951 radio play)
- Oklahoma! (1958)
- The Most Happy Fella (1962)
- The Unsinkable Molly Brown (1963; 1966; 1981)
- Carousel (1966)
- The Boy Friend (1967)
- The Sound of Music (1968; 1972)
- My Fair Lady (1969; 1971)
- I Do! I Do! (1970)
- Meet Me in St. Louis (1972)
- Brigadoon (1973)
- Irene (1974; 1975–76)
- Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (1978)
- Sweethearts (1983)
- Cinderella (1995)
- After-Play (1996)
- Nothing Like a Dame (1998)
- Ancestral Voices (2000)
- Avow (2000)
- Bounce (2003; 2004)
|-
! scope="row"|1981
|Fantasy Island
|
|Episode: "Loving Strangers; Something Borrowed, Something Blue"
| style="text-align: center;" |
|-
! scope="row"|1987
|Murder, She Wrote
|Rev. Mother Claire
|Episode: "Old Habits Die Hard"
| style="text-align: center;" |
|-
! scope="row"|1988-1990
|Growing Pains
|Irma
|
| style="text-align: center;" |
|-
! scope="row"|2002
| Law & Order: Special Victims Unit
| Bess Sherman
| Episode: "Vulnerable"
|style="text-align:center;"|
|}
Radio
- 1944 — Powell played the title role in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs on Screen Guild Theatre on CBS.
- 1947 — Powell co-starred with Frank Sinatra in Songs by Sinatra.
- 1952 — Lux Radio Theatre (episode Royal Wedding)
Jane Powell played main roles as guest star in 4 musicals with Gordon MacRae in a series of musicals («Railroad Hour»)on radio in 1949. «Sweethearts», «Music in the Air», «Brigadoon» and «Good News».
Recordings
- 1949: Romance — Columbia Masterworks LP (ML 2034)
- 1949: A Date with Jane Powell — Columbia Masterworks LP (ML 2045)