Powell developed and polished his smooth manner on the Broadway stage during the teens, and he was already a veteran by the time he first appeared onscreen, in John Barrymore's 1922 version of Sherlock Holmes (not as Dr. Watson, as some sources report, but as a minor character). For the remainder of the silent era, he distinguished himself by playing heavies, some charming and sophisticated, others snarling and brutish. He appeared in When Knighthood Was in Flower (1922), The Bright Shawl (1923), Romola (1924), Too Many Kisses (1925), Beau Geste (1926, as the untrustworthy Boldini), The Great Gatsby (also 1926, as George Wilson), Nevada (1927, playing a Western heavy in this Zane Grey story starring Gary Cooper), and Senorita (also 1927), before being assigned the plum role of the cruel movie director who torments Emil Jannings in The Last Command (1928). (Although the picture boosted Powell's stock with Paramount, he refused to renew his contract unless studio brass promised him he'd never again have to work with its director, Josef von Sternberg.)
Powell toiled in a few more silentsincluding the 1929 version of The Four Feathers-before making his talkie debut in Interference But it was his characterization of gentleman detective Philo Vance in The Canary Murder Case (1929, started as a silent but finished as a talkie) that finally elevated Powell to stardom. He reprised the role in The Greene Murder Case (also 1929), The Benson Murder Case in a short comedy skit for Paramount on Parade (both 1930), and, under his later contract to Warner Bros., in the best of the bunch, The Kennel Murder Case (1933).
After starring in a string of mediocre movies, including one, Ladies' Man (1931), which paired him with his thenwife, Carole Lombard, Powell left Paramount for Warner Bros., which immediately put him into better pictures, all in 1932: High Pressure and Lawyer Man were crackling melodramas with elements of comedy, in the best Warner Bros. style; Jewel Robbery was a Lubitsch-like romantic comedy that showed him and Kay Francis at their best; and One Way Passage reunited Powell and Francis for a classic shipboard romance about a captured killer and a woman who's dying. By the time Powell left Warners in 1934 he was a top box-office draw.
At that time a movie actor couldn't do much better than MGM, the studio with "more stars than there are in the heavens." Powell began his 13-year tenure there with Manhattan Melodrama (1934), which pitted him, a crusading district attorney, against boyhood pal Clark Gable, now a vicious gangster. Also featured in the successful film was Myrna Loy, with whom Powell was teamed later that year for what was to be a low-budget mystery, an adaptation of Dashiell Hammett's The Thin Man directed by W. S. Van Dyke. Powell and Loy were born to play the witty, lighthearted, cocktail-sipping sleuths Nick and Nora Charles, and audiences loved them in those roles. The performance earned Powell his first Oscar nomination.
Powell and Loy were reunited for the first time in Evelyn Prentice (1934). Reckless (1935) costarred Powell with platinum blond superstar Jean Harlow, to whom he was engaged at the time of her tragic death in 1937. In 1936 Powell and Loy made the first of five sequels, After the Thin Man then costarred in The Great Ziegfeld in which she played Billie Burke to his Flo Ziegfeld, and Libeled Lady which also featured Harlow and Spencer Tracy. All three were big hits, with Ziegfeld winning the Best Picture Academy Award.
During this period Powell, at the peak of his popularity, was loaned out several times. RKO starred him in two pretty good attempts to replicate The Thin Man's success: Star of Midnight (1935, with Ginger Rogers) and The Ex-Mrs. Bradford (1936, with Jean Arthur, his costar in Paramount's 1929 Philo Vance mystery, The Greene Murder Case Universal paired him with ex-wife Carole Lombard, whom he'd divorced in 1933, in the classic screwball comedy My Man Godfrey (1936), which saw Powell in one of his most endearing roles (and netted him an Oscar nomination), as the educated tramp who becomes butler to a madcap Park Avenue family.
Back at MGM, Powell starred in The Last of Mrs. Cheyney, The Emperor's Candlesticks and Double Wedding (all 1937, the last-named with Loy) before tragedy struck: Harlow's sudden death sent him into an emotional tailspin. His depression and a serious health problem kept him off the screen for more than a year. MGM reintroduced him to the public in Another Thin Man (1939) and he made his next three films with Loy as well: I Love You Again (1940), Shadow of the Thin Man and Love Crazy (both 1941). Powell's subsequent starring vehicles, even the Thin Man sequels, weren't terribly good, and after completing a run of pictures that included Crossroads (1942), The Heavenly Body, The Thin Man Goes Home (both 1944), Ziegfeld Follies (1946, in a cameo as the great showman), The Hoodlum Saint (also 1946), and Song of the Thin Man (1947), he left Metro to freelance.
An aging Powell realized he couldn't continue to play cocktail-swizzling urbanites forever, and undertook a wider variety of roles, including the eccentric, redheaded paterfamilias in the smash hit Life With Father (1947, snaring his third Best Actor Oscar nomination), a rakish politico in The Senator Was Indiscreet (also 1947), and a befuddled fisherman in Mr. Peabody and the Mermaid (1948). Following Dancing in the Dark and Take One False Step (both 1949), he went back to MGM for a cameo in the all-star It's a Big Country (1951), then played Elizabeth Taylor's father in The Girl Who Had Everything (1953). That same year he provided able support to Betty Grable, Marilyn Monroe, and Lauren Bacall in How to Marry a Millionaire His last role was that of the worldly wise doctor in Mister Roberts (1955), a good part (and a good film) to round out a career.
Powell retired to Palm Springs, perfectly content to while away his remaining years with his young wife "Mousie," former MGM starlet Diana Lewis, whom he'd married in 1940. He was frequently offered "comeback" roles but declined them all (although, according to some reports, a few sorely tempted him).
Personal Quotes:
"I do not hold that because the author did a bad job of writing the player need trump it with the same kind of acting. When I go into a picture I have only one character to look after. If the author didn't do him justice, I try to add whatever the creator of the part overlooked."
"I have never gone into a picture without first studying my characterization from all angles. I make a study of the fellow's life and try to learn everything about him, including the conditions under which he came into this world, his parentage, his environment, his social status, and the things in which he is interested. Then I attempt to get his mental attitude as much as possible."
Later,
Kenaz
