2/11/1982 - Sublime dancer (after starring in her first MGM musical, a critic will write that she has, "the most eloquent feet in show business.") and American actress, Eleanor Torrey Powell, dies of ovarian cancer in her Beverly Hills home at the age of 69.
Eleanor
The girl that will grow up to be the "World's Greatest Tap Dancer" (per the "Dance Masters of America" in 1865), is born in Springfield, Massachusetts on November 21, 1912 to Clarence Gardner Powell (a hardware retailer) and Blanche Torrey Powell. When Eleanor is only eleven months home, her parents separate (they will later divorce) and she is brought up by her mother (who works as a chambermaid, waitress, and bank teller to support her daughter), and her mother's parents, Harold and Susie Belle Torrey (for years she will be told her father is dead, and Eleanor will not really know him until she is twenty-three and Clarence introduces himself to his daughter). Not having her father in her life, Eleanor grows up so painfully shy that she hides from guests when they call on her mother or grandparents. Hoping to break the shyness afflicting her daughter, when Eleanor is seven, Blanche enrolls her in dance classes given by Ralph McKernan (McKernan will also teach Robert Alton Hart, the dancer and choreographer responsible for discovering Gene Kelly, working with Fred Astaire, being the dance director at MGM from 1944 to 1951, and designing the dance numbers for The Harvey Girls, Till the Clouds Roll By, Show Boat, and White Christmas). Studying classical ballet, "interpretive" modern dance, and acrobatics, the blue-eyed youngster discovers she has a natural aptitude for physical movement and discovers her calling in life. Jumping about and dancing wherever she is, twelve-year-old Eleanor's big break comes during a family summer vacation to Atlantic City, New Jersey when local entrepreneur, Gus Edwards, spots her doing cartwheels on the beach and offers her a job working three nights a week at the Ritz Grill of the city's Ambassador Hotel doing a specialty acrobatic act. Not a bad gig, her opening salary is seven dollars a show. Receiving good reviews and more local work, by 1927, she is performing dance numbers at the high-priced Atlantic City supper clubs of the Silver Slipper and Martin's, and is soon hearing from comedian Jack Benny, entertainer Eddie Cantor, and her teacher, Ralph McKernan that she should set her sights on dancing on Broadway. Blossoming into a 5'6" brown-haired beauty with a 33-23-35 inch figure, forgoing her schooling, in 1927, Eleanor and her mother move to New York City, where the teenager signs with William Grady of the William Morris talent agency and begins getting jobs dancing in clubs, on vaudeville stages, and at private parties (she is now up to $500 a performance).
Young Eleanor
Teenager Powell
But the Broadway roles do not come, chiefly because Eleanor does not have tap dancing in her repertoire. Seeking to make the deficit into a strength, Powell enrolls in a ten lesson tap dancing class with Jack Donahue (a master soft shoe dancer) and Johnny Boyle (a vaudeville hoofer known for his "buck-and-wing" style dancing). The men emphasis the feet grounding tap requires, and known for her aerobatic dancing leaps, Eleanor almost quits after the first lesson, but perseveres and suddenly becomes a potential talent after her seventh lesson. Ankles held while Donahue works with how her feet will move on the ground, the two men also devise a Rube Goldberg apparatus consisting of a belt off of which ten pound sandbags drape from either hip that the teenager must wear while dancing that keeps her even more grounded. Lessons (by the eighth session Powell is being called on in class to demonstrate various taps she has just learned herself) combined with hours and hours of practice, and experience watching and dancing with legendary black entertainer, Bill "Bojangles" Robinson (the two will become life long friends, with Powell using the same entrances and exits the black entertainer is forced to use, as well as always making sure whatever food and drink she is offered, is also offered to Robinson, and Robinson will teach Powell his famous "stair dance"), and equally famous black hoofer, John W. "Bubbles" Sublett (the two share a twenty week tour of the vaudeville circuit that has them performing five shows a day, during which Powell learns the heel drop tapping that Sublett has mastered and moves to wearing high-heeled tap shoes with a wider Cuban heel more conducive to reproducing the Sublett's style of rhythm tapping she falls in love with) and like a caterpillar becoming a butterfly, Powell emerges from her work as one of the finest tap dancers of her generation. Ballet fused to aerobatic leaps married to grounded machine-gun style tapping that flows into energetic swift turns and natural, loose arm movements that mix gracefulness and athletic ability, at only seventeen years of age, Powell gets her first Broadway success in the 1929 musical, "Follow Thru" (she auditions to a tune that will become one of the show's hits, "Button Up Your Overcoat," with a dance routine she works on with Donahue in class. Aiming to get better and better, during the show's run, Powell continues to practice her moves, dancing up to twelve hours a day, creating her own routines as she listens to the records of various jazz talents of the day like Fats Waller. Other Broadway successes soon follow, "Fine and Dandy" in 1930 (the opening night audience includes George and Ira Gershwin, Al Jolsen, Ruby Keeler, Judith Anderson, and William Demarest), "Hot-Cha!" in 1932 for legendary Broadway impresario, Florence Ziegfeld, George White's "Music Hall Varieties" in 1933 doing two rhythm tap numbers, and "At Home Abroad" in 1935, with a cast that includes Ethel Waters, Reginald Gardner, Eddie Foy Jr., Vera Allen, and John Payne (Powell will dance to the new song, "What a Wonderful World"). Between shows, still working to perfect her craft, Powell takes jobs performing for jazz and big bands like the Paul Whiteman Orchestra, and becomes the first tap dancer to perform at Carnegie Hall.
George White, Powell, And Robinson
Sublett
Playbill For "Follow Thru"
Never intending to make a career in movies, just trying to keep a roof overhead as Broadway starts cutting back on spending as the Great Depression in America deepens, Powell appears in the chorus line of a couple of minor, early film musicals before moving front and center in "George White's 1935 Scandals," a project Powell loathes because she thinks she is made up too much and looks like an Egyptian on screen. Nonetheless, her tapping is a talent Hollywood wants, and when Leo B. Mayer of MGM comes calling, Powell gives the executive her money contract demands, which she believes will be rejected ... instead, Mayer accepts Eleanor's needs, Powell signs on and the studio soon has a new asset to put into a group of musicals which will save the company (behind the scenes, very little is done to change either her hair or makeup). Supported by old friend Jack Benny, actor Robert Taylor, entertainer Buddy Ebsen (his screen debut) and veteran actress Frances Langford, the fresh faced new beauty displays her energetic talent for stunning dancing in her first starring role as Irene Foster in "Broadway Melody of 1936," playing a dancer her high school boyfriend (Taylor) refuses to put in his New York musical, forcing Powell to pretend to be an imaginary French hoofer (created by newspaperman Benny) that is hired. Performing in scenes that include the songs "Broadway Rhythm," "You Are My Lucky Star," "Sing Before Breakfast," and "All I Do Is Dream Of You" (though possessing an adequate voice, her singing will be dubbed by Marjorie Lane) the movie and Powell are huge hits with 1930's audiences (the picture will be nominated for three Academy awards, including Best Picture, and will win for Best Dance Direction). Men are drawn to Eleanor as a beautiful woman, moving beautifully, while women respond to a vision of their future in which they can do anything a man can do, and can do it leading. Powell's follow-up to her first hit is "Born to Dance," in which she dances to the music of Cole Porter (the film features the debut of the hit song, "I've Got You Under My Skin") while trying to capture the affections of another big MGM male star, a gentleman named Jimmy Stewart. Also featuring the hit song "Easy to Love" (Powell will again have her singing voice dubbed by Lane), the movie is another hit for MGM and Powell. A backstage ensemble piece filmed in 1937 in which Powell plays a horse trainer breaking into show business at the behest of boyfriend (Lane again does Eleanor's singing and will for the rest of her career with MGM), actor Robert Taylor, "Broadway Melody of 1938" also features future California senator, George Murphy, legendary entertainer Sophie Tucker, Buddy Ebsen (again, his third pairing with Powell), and singing "You Made Me Love You" to a photograph of Clark Gable, MGM's coming musical star, Judy Garland. Also filmed in 1937, Powell appears as football loving princess opposite singer Nelson Eddy in a reworking of the 1928 play, "Rosalie," by Guy Bolton, and featuring a new score by Cole Porter (the film also stars Frank Morgan, Edna May Oliver, Ray Bolger, Ilona Massey, and Billy Gilbert). Finishing the decade with another hit, Powell starred next opposite Robert Young in the mistaken identity musical comedy, "Honolulu" (young plays the dual roles of a movie star and a Hawaiian businessman named George Smith). In the movie, for the first time, Powell incorporates "hulu" movements into her dancing, and in a tribute to her friend, Bill "Bojangles" Robinson (who one day will be the godfather of Eleanor's son, Peter), dances in blackface to "The King of Harlem," and manages to lose a toenail practicing her steps for hours for the movie.
Beverly Hills Rooftop Dancing - 1935
Mayer
Finale Of Born To Dance
Honolulu - 1939
Hit after hit, it is inevitable that sooner or later a studio executive would think it might be a good idea to match Eleanor up on screen with MGM's best dancer, Fred Astaire (his first movie after leaving RKO for MGM as an example of the perfection each dancer is trying to achieve, they spend two weeks practicing just the arm movements for "Begin the Beguine"), and so for the first and only time in their careers, the pair are matched together as a new decade begins in "Broadway Melody of 1940." Supported by George Murphy and Frank Morgan (with an uncredited cameo by voice legend Mel Blanc as a panhandler), with the words and music of Cole Porter, the film is a major hit for the studio and features in the number, "Begin the Beguine" what many film and dance historians believes is the greatest tap dance ever captured on film (Astaire will state, "She put 'em down like a man, no ricky-ticky stuff with Ellie. She really knocked out a tap dance in a class by herself. While in "That's Entertainment," Frank Sinatra will proclaim of the dance, "You know, you can wait around and hope, but I tell ya, you'll never see the likes of this again."). Though there are plans to match the two stars together again (as well as plans for a Broadway Melody of 1944 with Gene Kelly and Powell), nothing gets into production (both stars are slightly intimidated by each other at first, but impressed once they start dancing and will bloody their feet trying to find perfection in their steps, along with wearing out their practice pianist) and Eleanor's next movie will be 1941's "Lady Be Good" (chiefly because Eleanor is ill and is sidelined for several months after undergoing a gall bladder operation) with Robert Young, Ann Southern, Red Skeleton, Lionel Barrymore, Phil Silvers, and the dancing Berry Brothers. And once more, Powell has another astounding dance (this one directed by choreographer legend, Busby Berkeley) in which to the music of George and Ira Gershwin's "Fascinatin' Rhythm," clad in a tuxedo, Eleanor taps her way through a stage full of pianos, an orchestra, and lines of male dancers that pitch Powell into the finale (the film also includes a tap dance in which Powell's partner is a small dog Eleanor trained for the role ... if it doesn't make you smile after seeing the routine, there is something wrong with your funny bone!). America at war and audience tastes turning, Powell is matched with Red Skeleton in "Ship Ahoy" (1942) and "I Dood It (1943 ... practicing for a complex dance featuring lariats and cowboys she manages to knock herself unconscious whipping a rop about her head and will wear a football helmet until the scene is finally filmed), films that aren't major hits for MGM (but do feature Powell tapping out a Morse code message to a spy and dancing with the Tommy Dorsey Orchestra and drummer Buddy Rich to the tune "Tallulah" in "Ship Ahoy," and dancing to the music of Jimmy Dorsey in the second film). Waiting for her next assignment, she volunteers her time to make a cross-country, 12-city trip with other entertainers (among the notables are Bob Hope, Cary Grant, and Claudette Colbert) selling war bonds for the Army and Navy Relief organization. During the trip, Eleanor falls in love with a young, 27-year-old actor in the process of becoming a star for Columbia Pictures, Gwyllyn Samuel Newton Ford ... better known to audiences as Glen Ford.
Equals, Step For Step
Fascinatin' Rhythm
Dog Dance
Ford - 1943
Once Upon A Time
Eleanor, Peter, And Glenn
"Thousands Cheer"
Pinball Dance
Last Dance
Sadly, like far too many Hollywood marriages, the Ford & Powell bonding does not last (while Powell will never marry again, Ford will have three more wives before he dies at the age of from a series of strokes at the age of 90 in his Beverly Hills home), and after one-too-many times becoming involved with such leading ladies and entertainment beauties as Rita Hayworth, Stella Stevens, Gloria Grahame, Gene Tierney, Barbara Stanwyck, Eva Gabor, and Joan Crawford (many of the affairs caught on tape because Ford puts a recording system into the couple's Beverly Hills home to eavesdrop on whether Powell is aware of his serial cheating; their son Peter will claim his father has affairs with 146 actresses, all documented in Ford's personal diaries), the marriage ends with dissolution. By the day of Glenn's 43rd birthday, May 1, 1959, Powell has had enough and files for divorce, asking for $3,000 a month in alimony and seeking total custody of Peter, citing adultery and mental cruelty (the pair will only appear together only once, in a 1955 three minute short film produced by the Variety Club of Northern California entitled "Have Faith in Our Children"). Granted custody of Peter, Powell's post Hollywood career involves appearances on television (her first will be a guest appearance on a episode of "All Star Revue with Danny Thomas and June Havoc) on shows like The Ed Sullivan Show and The Hollywood Palace. Ordained a minister in the Unity Church (other famous members include Della Reese, Betty White, Lucie Arnaz, Wally Amos, Ruth Warrick, and Patricia Neal) in the early 50s, from 1953 to 1955, hosts an Emmy award winning Sunday morning TV program for kids called "The Faith of Our Children." Called out in real life watching a Pearl Bailey show in 1959 with her son as she was in "The Duchess of Idaho," encouraged by her son, Peter, Powell puts together a nightclub act that allows her way well into middle age during the 1960s (her highly publicized "return" takes place during a series of performances at Lou Walters' Latin Quarter in Boston). Fittingly, her final public appearance takes place in 1981 at the televised American Film Institute tribute to Fred Astaire, at which when introduced after the "Begin the Beguine" dance is shown, receives a standing ovation from a crowd that includes Fred, Charlton Heston, David Niven, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Bob Fosse, Cyd Charisse, Audrey Hepburn, Hermes Pan, James Cagney, and Gene Kelly. Sadly, for family, friends, and her millions of fans around the world, Eleanor dies in Beverly Hills, California of ovarian cancer on February 11, 1982 at the age of 69. Cremated, with her wishes that no lavish Hollywood funeral is planned, Powell is cremated and interred at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery in Hollywood, California. Now a forever angel in Heaven, her ashes reside in the Cathedral Mausoleum, Foyer Niche 432, Tier 3.
Peter & Glenn
TV Show Host
On The Nightclub Circuit
Astaire Tribute
2/11/1982 ... one of the greats of Hollywood's Golden Age passes ... do yourself a favor and pop in one of Eleanor's DVDs today ... the dance sequences featuring Eleanor are just as vibrant and alive today as they were when first captured on celluloid decades ago!
Resting Place
Eleanor Torrey Powell
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