Jane Powell

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Jane Powell

Jane Powell in Royal Wedding (1951).
Birth name Suzanne Lorraine Burce
Born April 1, 1929 (age 78)
Flag of United States Portland, Oregon, USA

Jane Powell (born April 1, 1929) is an American singer, entertainer and actor. She was the petite blonde with an operatic singing voice in many MGM musicals in the 1940s and 1950s.


Contents

[edit] Early Years

Born Suzanne Lorraine Burce in Portland, Oregon, she sang on the radio as a child, and performed in theater before her film career began in 1944. She appeared in her first film, Song of the Open Road (1944), at age 15.

[edit] MGM Years

Her first MGM musical was Holiday in Mexico (1946), which brought her to the public's attention, and she was later billed as the co-star in several films including A Date with Judy (1948), and Nancy Goes to Rio (1950).

Powell got the chance to sing and dance with Fred Astaire in Royal Wedding (1951), when she was brought in as a replacement for both June Allyson and Judy Garland. Her best known film is probably Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (1954), which gave her the opportunity to play a more mature character than previous films. Her other films include: Rich, Young and Pretty (1951), Small Town Girl (1953), Three Sailors and a Girl (1953), Athena (1954), Deep in My Heart (1954), Hit the Deck (1955), and The Girl Most Likely (1957). In 1956 Powell recorded a song, "True Love", that rose to 107 on the pop charts, according to the Joel Whitburn compilation. This was her only single to make the charts.

[edit] Life After films

By the end of the 1950s, Hollywood musicals began to lose popularity, and her film career ended. Since then Powell has continued to work in television, radio, and live performances. Her stage roles include the touring productions of South Pacific, The Sound of Music, Oklahoma!, My Fair Lady, Carousel, The Girl Next Door and How She Grew, and Irene, in which she made her Broadway debut, following Debbie Reynolds in the title role.

[edit] Television

During the 1960s and 1970s Powell appeared regularly on television. For example, she did a stint as one of the What's My Line? Mystery Guests on the popular Sunday Night CBS-TV program. Later, Powell appeared as a guest panelist on the same show.

She also played on As The World Turns as the temporary replacement for Eileen Fulton as Lisa Grimaldi in the years 1991, 1993, and 1994.

[edit] Current work

Powell lives in Connecticut and Manhattan, with her fifth husband, former child actor Dick Moore. She is a member of the Board of Trustees for the Actors Fund of America, and still acts and performs to the present day, most recently in a 2002 episode of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit.

In 2004, she made a return to the stage as Mama Mizner in the Stephen Sondheim musical Bounce. Despite Powell's great reviews in the part, Bounce was not critically successful and did not move to Broadway.

[edit] Trivia

She has three children from her first two marriages.

[edit] Filmography

[edit] External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to:
Persondata
NAME Powell, Jane
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Burce, Suzanne Lorraine
SHORT DESCRIPTION singer, entertainer, actress
DATE OF BIRTH April 1, 1929
PLACE OF BIRTH Portland, Oregon, USA
DATE OF DEATH
PLACE OF DEATH
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