The Dick Powell Show

This was the last television series Dick Powell was involved in, and the best. As a longtime movie star, first as a singer, then in tough guy roles, he saw the writing on the wall when he went into television in 1952 as one of the several stars on the anthology Four Star Playhouse. The production company, also called Four Star, was Powell's baby, and though he was only co-owner, he ran the company. As the years went by Four Star grew, ultimately surpassing even the mighty Desilu as the most successful independent production company in the business. Among the best remembered Four Star series: Zane Grey Theatre (hosted by Powell), Richard Diamond, The Rifelman, Wanted: Dead Or Alice, The Detectives. Powell was in large measure responsible for giving the first big breaks to such budding writers and film-makers as Roy Huggins, Blake Edwards, Sam Peckinpah and Aaron Spelling.

As to The Dick Powell Show, it was a major effort, and like Zane Grey, hosted by Powell himself, featuring top-notch talent in front of and behind the camera. Indepedendent producers were somewhat under siege in the early sixties, as the movie studios, with their back-lots and huge amounts of money, were moving heavily into television production. Powell perhaps saw this show as his best shot against the big studios. It was. Many of the best episodes were outstandingly written, and the show won an Emmy or two in its first season. It looked like the series was headed for a solid three to five year run. Tragically, Powell was struck down by cancer, and died in the middle of the second season. Four Star never wholly recovered from Powell's death, and neither in a way did television. This was and is a prime example of filmed anthology television at or near its best, and we shall not see anything of like quality on the networks anytime soon.

The Dick Powell Theatre was released on video cassette in 1985 by RKO Home Video. The best feature in the series is a murder mystery entitled, "Who Killed Julie Greer"? The cast includes Dick Powell, Nick Adams, Ralph Bellamy, Lloyd Bridges, Jack Carson, Carolyn Jones, Mickey Rooney, Ronald Reagan and Kay Thompson. Powell stars as Inspector Burke, later portrayed in a separate series by Gene Barry. The Rogues featured stories with David Niven, Charles Boyer and Gig Young alternating as the male lead. Robert Coote and Gladys Cooper were supporting players.

The series also featured the comedian Milton Berle in a rare dramatic appearance... a hard luck professional card dealer in: DOYLE AGAINST THE HOUSE.

The tapes were recorded in black and white and ran 52 minutes.

I could not agree more with these other reviewers. The Dick Powell Show, later called the Dick Powell Theatre after his death, was a great show. Typical of Mr. Powell's shows in so many areas. Well cast, well directed, well acted, interesting shows, parts for actors of all ages (Gladys Cooper, Charlie Ruggles and Charles Bickford, all in lead roles), and wonderfully produced. There are some neat all star shows in particular, A time to Die, Special Assignment, Who Killed Julie Greer, Last of the Private Eyes. The shows had a wide range: shows about the cold war (Project X), family dramas (In search of a son), to light romantic comedies (View from the Eiffel Tower, featuring a lovely performance in a drama by Jane Powell, no relation to Mr. Powell!). Mr. Powell obviously liked to help his friends get work, which had ranged back to Four Star Playhouse, Stage 7, Star and the Story, Turn of Fate, June Allyson Show and Zane Grey Theatre. All of these were produced by Dick Powell's Four Star Productions and he cast basically every veteran actor and actress in Hollywood, all in great shows. He would have given us many more shows if he had lived longer and this show, Dick Powell Show, was really great and would have easily gone on, as the other reviewer said, for several more years.

Wow, what a gem to discover, as described by the other reviewers. As described in the bio, that Dick Powell saw the change from the movie studio format for creating great movies and culivating actors, actresses, musicians and comics, and writers and producers and directors, with short, well told television stories, many of which could work as radio plays or in the theatre. Perhaps other shows at the time did the same like Perry Mason, which seems to have had connections through its producers and Raymond Burr to the Pasadena theatre of the time. I discovered this Dick Powell Theatre by looking up, through IMBD a Perry Mason episode.

Perhaps some of the current popular shows, with key actors and producers, are trying to do the same, in the face of cross currents of streaming that are diluting the viewership. Mark Harmon and the producers of NCIS seemed to have done so well, as did Person of Interest, the Law and Order franchise, Tony Shaloub and the producers of Monk, and, for awhile, Showtime and the actors and producers of Homeland and Ray Donovan, and other shows like The Shield and Justified. Hopefully they can keep this up, with Dick Powell as an inspiration.