TCM Star of the Month December 2018: Dick Powell

Dick Powell (r.) with Barry Sullivan and Lana Turner at the end of The Bad and the Beautiful

We're in the first full week of a new month, so it's time for a new Star of the Month on TCM, and this time it's Dick Powell, a choice given over to Backlot members (I think the choice was between him and Warren William). Powell's movies are going to be on TCM every Thursday in and around prime time. Powell started off in the 1930s doing light musicals, before abruptly switching in the 1940s to hardboiled detective movies, showing his range and proving he really could act for anybody who think those light musicals aren't much The picture above is from one of my favorites, The Bad and the Beautiful, which will be on at 1:00 PM on December 27.

Of course, this being the first Thursday in the month, we don't get the "serious" dramatic movies just yet; no, we get the 1930s fun. Powell I think really became a star with 42nd Street, another movie I really like, and that comes on at 9:30 tonight. It's preceded at 8:00 PM by what I think is his movie debut, in Blessed Event, where the star is Lee Tracy, playing a gossip columnist who isn't quite orthodox in his methods. Powell is a crooner (surprise, surprise) in that one who is the object of Tracy's poison pen.