William Powell

 ( 1892 Births ) 

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 Sound film were introduced.

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 Awards nomination, in 1935

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.

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.Christensen et al., p. 375.

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

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.Bryant, p. 142. He was romantically involved with Jean Harlow, his co-star in Reckless (1935), until her unexpected death from illness in 1937. On January 6, 1940, three weeks after they met, Powell married his third wife, actress Diana Lewis, who retired from her film career to be his full-time wife. They remained married until his death in 1984.

A Republican, Powell supported Thomas Dewey in the 1944 United States presidential election