Dick Powell: Toxic Marzipan
Dick Powell is an amazing figure. His career spans several stages which are not only distinct but unreconcilable: from gibbous crooner in pre-code musical comedies, first foist before a disbelieving public in the scabrous Blessed Event (1932), the whole pitch of which seems to be to make us hate him and want him punched, progressing through a series of Busby and sub-Busby musical fare, smirking and twinkling being generally mellifluous; he then “matured,” like cheese, into an uninspiring male lead of no particular qualities, perfectly servicable as the chump hero in Preston Sturges’ Christmas in July (1940); then comes an unlikelier reinvention, as tough guy, stippling on the stubble to play a world-weary Philip Marlowe in Murder My Sweet (1944), a piece of casting which makes no sense but somehow passes muster; and finally, there’s Powell the auteur, his most preposterous role yet, bringing us tough-guy stuff like the nuclear thriller Split Second and a couple of war pics, plus a musical remake of It Happened One Night which we all just pretend never happened, and the legendary John Wayne as Genghis Khan atrocity The Conquerer, which literally killed everyone involved.
Blessed Event is a fascinating starting point, a fast-talking newspaper comedy valorising the vile Walter Winchell in the form of motor-mouth string bean Lee Tracy, not-quite reprising his Broadway role as Hildy Johnson in The Front Page (Pat O'Brien must have seen him do it a hundred times, or else played himself to sleep with an audio bootleg of the show, because he delivers a pitch-perfect rendition of Lee Tracy’s mannerisms in the first movie adaptation, only fatter). Dick Powell plays his loathed enemy Bunny Harmon, a smarmy singer he’s dished dirt on, turning up to sing the same damn song three times (Warners synergy: hawking sheet music and phonograph discs). Powell, you assume, is going out of his way to be repulsive: oleaginous, his lipless smile and insincere rictus, a showbiz phony of uncertain sexuality seemingly carved from a turnip, rolling his eyes heavenward in ecstasy at his own repulsive cuteness: Narsissy.
It’s effective, in context, since the aim is to slant our sympathies towards Tracy’s indefensible hack. The surprise is when Powell keeps up the same oiled doll schtick in his later perfs, and we realise he thought he was being adorable all along.
by David Cairns