Jane Powell, the star of golden-era Hollywood musicals including such classics as 1954's "Seven Brides for Seven Brothers"and 1948's "A Date With Judy," has died. She was 92.
Powell's longtime friendSusan Granger confirmed tothe Associated Pressthat the actress died of natural causesat her home in Wilton, Connecticut on Thursday.
USA TODAY has reached out to a representative of Powell for further comment and details.
Powell performed virtually her whole life, starting about age 5 as a singing prodigy on radio in Portland, Oregon. She made her first movie at 16 and graduated from teenage roles to costarring in the lavish musical productions thatwere a staple of 20th-century Hollywood.
Her casting in 1951's “Royal Wedding” came by default. June Allyson was first announced as Fred Astaire’s co-star but withdrew when she became pregnant. Judy Garland was cast, but was withdrawn because of personal problems. Jane Powell was next in line.
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“They had to give it to me,” she quipped at the time. “Everybody else is pregnant.” Also among the expectant MGM stars: Lana Turner, Esther Williams, Cyd Charisse and Jean Hagen.
Powell had just turned 21 when she got the role; Astaire was 50. She was nervous because she lacked dancing experience, but she found him “very patient and understanding. We got along fine from the start.”
“Seven Brides for Seven Brothers” proved to be a 1954 “sleeper” hit.
“The studio didn’t think it was going to do anything,” she recalled in 2000. “MGM thought that 'Brigadoon’ was going to be the big moneymaker that year. It didn’t turn out that way. We were the ones that went to the Radio City Music Hall, which was always such a coup.”
The famed New York venue was a movie theater then.
Audiences were overwhelmed by the lusty singing ofPowell andHoward Keel,and especially by the gymnastic choreography of Michael Kidd. “Seven Brides” achieved classic status and resulted in a TV series and a Broadway musical.
“Blonde and small and pretty, Jane Powell had the required amount of grit and spunk that was needed to play the woman who could tame seven backwoodsmen,” John Kobal wrote in his book “Gotta Sing Gotta Dance: A Pictorial History of Film Musicals.”
But the blue-eyed, operatic-voiced startold the Observer in 2000 that the "so-called golden age ofmusicals" wasn't all it was cracked up to be.
"It wasn’t all that great. Everything was glazed. Those movies didn’t reflect reality,” she said. “I was at MGM for 11 years and nobody ever let me play anything but teenagers. I was 25 years old with kids of my own and it was getting ridiculous...It was hard work, I had no friends, no social interaction with people my age and the isolation was tough. But I had to support my family, so I did what I was told and had no other choice."
She added: "Everyone wanted to keep me young. I didn’t even know anything about sex until I was 21. I was forced to live up to an image, and the only advice I ever got in acting was, ‘Stay as sweet as you are and never change.’ If I never grew as an actress, it’s because no one ever taught me how."
According to The Hollywood Reporter, Powell appeared in numerous stage musicals in addition to her film career, including productions of"The Sound of Music," "Oklahoma!," "My Fair Lady," "Carousel" and "South Pacific."She made her Broadway debut in 1973 in a revival of "Irene" and, in 2004, played a rolein "Bounce" that composer Stephen Sondheim wrote specifically for her.
She married five times and had three children:Lindsay, Gearhardt and Suzanne.
“I don’t think about the past except now, when we’re talking about it,” Powell told the Connecticut Post in 2017. “I never felt I was really there anyway. I always pictured myself as a fly who was up in the corner looking down at myself. I never feel I was there."
“I’m not very sentimental when it comes to the past,” she added. “I don’t live there and I feel for people who do because it’s never going to be the same as you remember it.”
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Contributing: Lynn Elber, Associated Press
