Dick POWELL Star of “Richard Diamond Private Detective”

Star of “Richard Diamond Private Detective”

Dick Powell has attained success in virtually two careers. Through the media of radio, stage and screen, the star of NBC’s “Richard Diamond, Private Detective” (Wednesday, 10:30 p.m. Est) gained popularity first as a singer and then reached new heights as a sleuth.

Powell’s sense of humor has contributed much to his success. It was responsible for pulling him through some of the toughest days on his musical tours, it lends a unique twist to his radio mystery dramas and it is now launching him in what may prove to be a third career. His appearance in MGM’s “The Reformer and the Redhead” with his wife. June Allyson, established him as a first-rate light comedian.

Dick Powell was born Richard Ewing Powell in Mountain View. Ark. Before he was of school age his family moved to Little Rock, and there he stayed until graduation from Little Rock College.

As a student in college he began singing in a church choir, and as a soloist at daces, socials and amateur theatricals he became one of the most popular singer in town. This interest was a spare time occupation when he started in the business world as a telephone company employe. Then a small traveling orchestra went through town and offered him a spot as featured soloist.

This first experience was short lived Several weeks after he left Little Rock. Powell found himself stranded in Anderson, Ind., with forty cents in his pocket.

Then he received a wire from orchestra leader Charlie Davis in –Indianapolis. If he could play a banjo there was a place for him in that band. With a $50 advance he spent several weeks learning to play a second-hand banjo, then hitch-hiked to Indianapolis, where he got the job .

He moved from on band to another in Ohio, Kentucky, Illinois, Indiana and a season in the Kentucky Hotel in Louisville.

Slowly Powell’s voice became known nationally through radio and recordings, and in 1930 he became emcee of all stage shows at the Stanley Theater in Pittsburgh. Near the end of his third year in this job, a talent scout from Warner Brothers studio spotted him and led him to Hollywood for the role of a down-and-out crooner in “Blessed Event”.

Also at this time (1932) Powell was signed as the singing emcee of one of the first transcontinental shows in radio history, “Hollywood Hotel”.

For Powell that was the beginning of ten years of uninterrupted singing success in a wide variety of musical films. Among the many were “42^nd Street”, “Gold Diggers of 1933”, “Footlight Parade”, “Flirtation Walk” and “Shipmates Forever”.

He was popular and Warner Bros. wanted to keep him a singer, but Powell had different ideas. He broke away from the studio in an effort to get a different casting. As a freelance actor he accepted new parts. The first was a newspaper reporter in “It Happened Tomorrow”. Then came “Murder My Sweet” in which his fans first saw him as a detective. They liked him.

He liked the role, too, and was inspired to launch radio’s first private-eye story, “Richard Rogue”, which gained such popularity that more shows of its type were put on the air.

In early 1949 he felt the time was right for his return to the air, so he introduced his second successful program to radio listeners… “Richard Diamond, Private Detective”.

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Golden Age of Radio

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