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Hyman Fink
Dick can really enjoy his night-clubbing now that he escorts Joan instead of having to be seen with his newest leading lady — only one of the important changes in his life which were made possible by his marriage.
too dramatic, this story of a man lost in a wilderness of Kleig lights and a woman who put her hand in his and led him to a haven of peace and happiness.
The story begins a lot longer ago than anyone knows. Its roots are buried deep down in Dick Powell's youth, in the character that was forming even as he worked for the telephone company in Little Rock, Arkansas. They were there, for anyone to see, in the first evidence of the kind of young man Dick was, when Dick quit the job that was paying him 1 125 a month, to go to work for an orchestra that would pay him $60 a week.
He quit for the bigger income. Not because he felt the call of the artist or because of some inner urge, but because it was a straight business proposition.
You probably never guessed Dick was like that. But he always has been. The next chapter in this story that tells you how Hollywood Hotel happened to part company with its favorite master of ceremonies was written when Dick heard of a band that would pay a banjo player $125 a week. Dick learned to play that banjo. And he got the job.
Then he set about learning the show business — really learning it. He studied theater management, song writing, orchestral scoring, box office finance, the problem of the movie exhibitor. It was to be his life work and he was going to know everything about it.
He did the job so well in Pittsburgh that Hollywood heard about him. That is history, but there is an unwritten chapter in this history which supplies a very important link in the story of why Dick Powell quit Hollywood Hotel.
Only a few months after Dick landed in Hollywood, he was Movieland's unhappiest young man. Tickled to death at first because he had signed a long term contract which gave him his first financial security, two things happened, in rapid succession, that killed his first thrill of working at an undreamed of salary. First, as he explained to me, "I was shoved into one picture after another regardless of its merits. And then, even worse, I had to undergo what they call a build-up campaign."
It was this combination — the {Continued on page 65)
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