William Powell

Powell was born in Pittsburgh in 1892,[1] the only child of Nettie Manila (née Brady) and Horatio Warren Powell, an accountant.[2][3] In 1907, young William moved with his family to Kansas City, Missouri, where he graduated from Central High School four years later.

Powell in When Knighthood Was in Flower, 1922

Phillips Holmes, Powell and Fay Wray in Pointed Heels, 1929

After high school, Powell enrolled at the University of Kansas to study law, but after a week he relocated to New York City, where he attended the American Academy of Dramatic Arts.[3][4] In 1912, Powell left the AADA, and began working in vaudeville and stock companies.[5] Powell began his Hollywood career in 1922, playing Professor Moriarty in a production of Sherlock Holmes with John Barrymore. He performed as Francis I in When Knighthood Was in Flower with Marion Davies.[6]

Powell remained under contract to Paramount throughout the 1920s, before signing with Warner Bros.

Powell portrayed a vengeful film director in the silent movie The Last Command (1928). His first starring role was Philo Vance in The Canary Murder Case (1929). He played Vance at Paramount Pictures four times. His strong stage-developed voice became a powerful asset when talking pictures were introduced.

Promotional photo for The Thin Man (1934) with Powell, co-star Myrna Loy, and Skippy as Asta

Powell appeared as Nick Charles in six Thin Man films, beginning with The Thin Man in 1934, based upon Dashiell Hammett's novel. This movie provided Powell with his first Academy Award nomination, in 1935[7]

Powell starred in The Great Ziegfeld, (1936), opposite his The Thin Man co-star, Myrna Loy, who played Ziegfeld's wife, Billie Burke. In 1937, Powell received his second Academy Award nomination for the comedy My Man Godfrey.[8]

In 1935, he starred with Jean Harlow in Reckless. In 1936, Harlow and Powell appeared in Libeled Lady, and they became romantically involved off-set. He gave her a handsome ring, but did not ask her to marry him, so she referred to it as her "unengagement ring". Powell had been unhappy with his previous marriage to popular actor Carole Lombard, and this apparently kept him from entering a similar arrangement with Harlow, who was a sex symbol to the film-going public during that time. They kept company but did not live together. Harlow fell ill from undiagnosed kidney failure while working on a film with Clark Gable, and died before the film was completed, from uremia, at age 26 in June 1937.[9]

Powell received his third Academy Award nomination in 1947 for his role as Clarence Day Sr. in Life with Father.[10] His last film was playing the character Doc in 1955's Mister Roberts.

Carole Lombard

Jean Harlow

Diana Lewis

On April 15, 1915, Powell married Eileen Wilson, who was born Julia Mary Tierney. The couple had a son, William David Powell. They divorced in 1930. Powell's son became a television writer and producer before a period of ill health and depression led to his suicide in 1968.[11]

On June 26, 1931, Powell married actress Carole Lombard. They divorced in 1933, but starred in My Man Godfrey three years later. Powell was devastated by her death in an airplane crash in 1942.[12] He was romantically involved with Jean Harlow, his co-star in Reckless (1935), until her unexpected death from illness in 1937.[13][14] On January 6, 1940, three weeks after they met, Powell married his third wife, actress Diana Lewis, who cancelled her film career to be his full-time wife. They remained married until his death in 1984.[15]

A Republican, Powell supported Thomas Dewey in the 1944 United States presidential election.[16]

In March 1938, Powell was diagnosed with rectal cancer.[4][17] He underwent surgery and experimental radium treatment, which put the disease in full remission within two years. Given his own health and sorrow over Jean Harlow's death, Powell did not undertake any film roles for more than a year during this period.[18]

Powell died in Palm Springs, California, on March 5, 1984, at the age of 91 from pneumonia. He is buried at the Desert Memorial Park in Cathedral City, California, near his third wife, Diana Lewis, and his only child, William David Powell.[1][19]

• List of actors with Academy Award nominations

• Bryant, Roger. William Powell: The Life and Films. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Co., 2006. ISBN 0-7864-2602-0.
• Christensen, Lawrence O., et al. Dictionary of Missouri Biography. Columbia, Maryland: University of Missouri Press, 1999. ISBN 0-8262-1222-0.
• Francisco, Charles. Gentleman: The William Powell Story . New York: St Martins Press, 1985. ISBN 0-312-32103-1.

Wikimedia Commons has media related to William Powell.

• William Powell
• William Powell at IMDb
• Photographs of William Powell
• FBI file on William Powell
• William Powell at Find a Grave