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Richard E. Powell was born on November 14, 1904 in Mountain View, Arkansas. Dick Powell studied voice when he was quite young and was a vocalist for the Charlie Davies Orchestra before entering film.

Powell's film career began with musical roles, which led him to be stereotyped as "the baby-faced tenor" in boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl back plots set as backstage musicals. It was during this time that he married Joan Blondell, of whom he costarred with in with in twelve films. In many of these films with Joan, his leading lady was Ruby Keeler, whom Powell is most identified with. Their films together like 42nd Street and the Gold Diggers films are considered classics with songs like "Lulu's Back In Town," "Lullaby Of Broadway," "The Shadow Waltz," and "Forty-Second Street."

Powell's marriage began to crumble when Joan fell in love with another man. Powell began seeing June Allyson, a starlet whom he had guided towards success and would end up teaching her how to survive in Hollywood the rest of her life. After much time in trying to trap him, June finally won him over and they were married until Powell died of terminal cancer in 1963.

The night June Allyson first met Dick Powell, Rosemary Lane (whom introduced them and whom costarred with Powell in Hollywood Hotel a few years earlier) gave June a little background on Powell, explaining how nice and how unlike the usual arrogant movie star he was. June Allyson would find the things Rosemary Lane reported to her were true. In her biography Allyson shared some thoughts on her perception of her "Richard":

"He was a joy to live with. Richard usually acted as if he didn't have a care in the world. Take the matter of noise and noise making. He was always whistling or singing. He whistled when he came into the house; he said he always knew when I was mad at him--he'd listen and if I didn't whistle back he knew I was angry about something."

Powell, was incredibly diverse in his talents. From backstage musicals, he jumped to nonmusical films and also thrived in comedy and dramatic roles. Powell is best remembered now for noir genre films he did in the late forties and early fifties like Murder, My Sweet and Johnny O' Clock. Acting was not his only art, he was also very popular on the radio (he would later have his own detective series as Richard Diamond) before and after his career in Hollywood and would turn to Television, where he produced the Ford Star Theatre, which was a star-studded show that was quite popular in it's day.

Yet music and acting were not the limits Dick Powell was restricted to. He became a producer and a director in later years. Powell also had a tremendous business sense and civic duty towards his country and fellow entertainers. Good friends of Powell were fellow actors George Murphy and Ronald Reagan, the three of them were very involved with The Screen Actor's Guild Association and of course Reagan would be the future President of the United States and Murphy would become Senator of California.

A sweet man with a sweet voice, Dick Powell was a real class act as both an entertainer and a human being. There may never be another baby-faced tenor so versatile.