The Complete Films of William Powell [antikvár]

Miim mm.- THE/l[TQR/ll\DTHLr^/ll\ At age three months, 1892. William Powell was Hollywood's most underestimated actor. Although he had graduated from the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in 1912, and over the next ten years had played over 200 stage roles, including Shakespeare and the classics, and although in 95 movies between 1922 and 1955 he had taken on, and implemented with thoroughgoing professionalism, a startling variety of character types, he is still best remembered as the sophisticated playboy detective, replete with charm, poise and ineffable elegance, who teamed with Myrna Loy in six Thin Man films, and as the dapper, brittle Philo Vance of four earlier movies made from S.S. Van Dine mystery tales. Yet it has not been sufficiently noted that he was nominated for Academy Awards three times, in 1934, 1936 and 1947, and that in the last year he won The New York Film Critics Award for his sterling portrayal of the formi- dable, crusty but deeply human paterfamilias Clarence Day in Life With Father. During the 1920's, his first decade in films, Powell was one of the nastiest of cads and most sinister of villains in coundess movies in which he supported personalities of far less talent than his own, who were largely to fade out with the advent of sound, whereas for him, sound was to be just the beginning of major success. When, in 1928, his superb speaking voice was impressed on the fans in one of the first ground-breaking talkies. Interference, he dramatically metamorphosed, in what seemed no time, into one of the most romantically delightful of male film stars. As the talkie years proceeded, Powell demonstrated remarkable characterizational range—from the British Army officer in The Key to the governor in Manhattan Melodrama to the secret operative in The Emperor's Candlesticks to the gay comedian of Love Crazy to the jealous astronomer husband of Hedy Lamarr