Dick Powell

Dick Powell had perhaps the most diverse Hollywood career of any Golden Age star.  Given that stardom then, as now, inherently links an actor to a certain performance style, it was remarkable how Powell graduated from so called ‘juvenile’ crooning roles in 1930s Busby Berkeley musicals to playing hard-bitten film noir leads in 1940s classics like “Murder, My Sweet”.  The two genre and their talent requirements could not really be any more dissimilar: whereas the young Powell was so self-effacing to be almost effeminate, the mature man’s interpretation of Raymond Chandler’s Philip Marlowe was tough enough to give Bogart a run for his money.

The third act in the Powell career saw him step back behind the camera, initially to direct, and then produce and front his own television show.  He directed five films in the 1950s: one musical, one film noir, two war movies and one period epic.

The pick of the bunch is probably “The Enemy Below”, a taunt battleship vs U-boat thriller that was notable in 1957 for being amongst the first American films to in any way present the German side of World War II.  Powell extracted a fine performance from Robert Mitchum as a naval captain who does not entirely command the respect of his crew. 

Of far more infamy, however, is Powell’s fatal decision to direct “The Conqueror” for the by then barking mad Howard Hughes.  Fatal in a very literal sense, that is: the mammoth production was shot on location in the Utah desert, on a nuclear testing site.  It killed a large percentage of those who worked on it, including stars John Wayne, Susan Hayward and Agnes Moorhead, as well as Powell himself.

Probably no film is worth dying for.  But if you had to make the ultimate sacrifice for your art “The Conqueror” would be the last piece of celluloid worthy of such.  The Duke plays Genghis Khan.  Yes, that’s right, John Wayne as a Mongol warlord!  Making no concession to ethnicity, historical period or even common sense, he uses the same body language and intonation as he would if playing in a western.

Not that the rest of the cast are much better.  Or that the camp, excessively stilted dialogue would give even those better suited to the material much of a chance.  Powell displays a good visual sense and the climactic battle scene isn’t bad - seldom have so many horses been tripped up in the name of entertainment - but he’s undone by a script that puts improbable romance and ridiculous mysticism above spectacle.  To see John Wayne howling at the gods by moonlight is a treat that only Howard Hughes could enjoy unironically.

Autuer House proudly stocks “The Conqueror” on DVD.