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Jane Powell Story
From an Amazon reader review: "Jane Powell is a really good actress, since to watch her in films such as "Holiday in Mexico", "Two Weeks with Love", "Nancy Goes to Rio", "A Date With Judy", "Rich, Young and Pretty", and her best-known title, "Seven Brides for Seven Brothers", one would never know what a rough personal life she actually has had until fairly recently. Goes to prove, once again, that Hollywood public imagery was and is often a long way from the reality. One interesting point I do want to bring up is the sympathetic portrait of Louis B. Mayer that Powell paints, one that's shared by a great many other former MGM actresses in the biographies I've read. Mayer was a complicated man, sometimes tyrannical and abusive, but at the same time, as Powell and others state, it's plain that he really did see his actor and actress employees as part of a huge extended family with himself as the father-figure."
213 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published July 1, 1988
About the author
Jane Powell
1 book1 followerSuzanne Burce became Jane Powell when she hit the screen in 1944. She became a top singing star for MGM making splashy musicals usually concerning her teenage character falling in love and having conflicts with her parents. She also toured with live musical productions and appeared on television for years after her film career ended.
She was married five times and has three children.
She was married five times and has three children.
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
April 9, 2013
An enjoyable read. Having been written in 1988 the book doesn't bring the reader up to the present day but it offers a clear eyed and honest view of a woman whose career was chosen for her. She is very honest about her faults, a pleaser to the point of damage to her well being and a crippling inability to be alone, and how she conquered them. A more in depth look at her film career would have been nice since that's a large part of her fame. She discusses frankly many things that touched her life: drug problems of one of her children and the distance that came with it, a rocky relationship with her own mother, AIDS, and various other issues that when the book was published where not freely discussed.
March 17, 2022
I have always adored Jane Powell with her perky personality and her gorgeous singing voice. So when she died at the age of 92, I both grieved and celebrated her long life. Little did I know, until reading The Girl Next Door…And How She Grew, her autobiography, that the Jane I loved actually was a much more complex person, one who was not truly happy until her late fifties. This book, written in 1988, with Jane on the cusp of her sixth decade, is a therapy session, in effect. I read celebrity biographies not only to find out about the celebs but also to hear anecdotes from their careers. Jane’s book, though, is heavy on the personal life, light on the professional life. We find she was an unhappy child, an uncertain loner during her film career, and a woman who hated being alone and loneliness so much that she married four men before finding the love of her life. And since the book was written thirty-four years ago, we don’t know if that love of her life stuck around. I certainly hope so—and I suppose I could Google it and find out. But I like to leave my memories of Jane with the knowledge she finally found happiness in her life. I only wish she had dwelt a little bit more on her remarkable career, letting us in on the goings-on while filming classics like Royal Wedding and Seven Brides for Seven Brothers. I also applaud her for revealing her oldest daughter is gay, but I wish she hadn’t used the terms choice and lifestyle and refused to utter the word gay. But this was 1988, and this was a woman who grew up in a much more unenlightened era than today’s openness. So I forgive her.
July 18, 2012
Jane Powell is not the most recognized name in Hollywood history, but the petite actress has her place as a very pleasant singing star who enjoyed a brief career as a box office attraction. She left Hollywood at the beginning of the demise of the studio system and spent her later years with her family, doing summer stock, and performing on television.
This is a quick read, but not an entirely filling meal. Jane gives a lot of information about her feelings and the important moments in her life, but they are not necessarily the ones you might be interested in. What about the films? She discusses some of them, but in no great detail. Part of this is because of her reluctance to be an actress, something she just did to please her parents and to help support the family. But it would have been nice to hear more. After all, her fans are interested because her films are so much fun.
However, her brightness shines through and this makes for an enjoyable book. She is extremely candid about herself, her failed marriages, and her career, but she never comes off as negative or bitter. She seems to be a very happy woman, in the throes of her new love with husband Dick Moore, also a former child star. (They are still together.) And while she talks about a desire to grow up when she was a girl, it is obvious that she has retained her youth and optimism.
This is a quick read, but not an entirely filling meal. Jane gives a lot of information about her feelings and the important moments in her life, but they are not necessarily the ones you might be interested in. What about the films? She discusses some of them, but in no great detail. Part of this is because of her reluctance to be an actress, something she just did to please her parents and to help support the family. But it would have been nice to hear more. After all, her fans are interested because her films are so much fun.
However, her brightness shines through and this makes for an enjoyable book. She is extremely candid about herself, her failed marriages, and her career, but she never comes off as negative or bitter. She seems to be a very happy woman, in the throes of her new love with husband Dick Moore, also a former child star. (They are still together.) And while she talks about a desire to grow up when she was a girl, it is obvious that she has retained her youth and optimism.
November 29, 2021
I enjoyed reading Jane Powell's memoir. I was always delighted with her in the musicals of Royal Wedding, A Date with Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (favorite) and I Love Melvin. Mkky husband saw her and Howard Keel in the stage play "I Do, I Do" and loved it. She was always sweet, petite, and had a lovely voice. Her memoir describes a totally different personal life which was fraught with tears, loneliness, ignored, shunned by a mother who didn't want her, as well as 4 marriages which ended in divorce. She always seemed to bounce back, and tried so hard to be a good daughter, a good singer and actress, a good wife and mother. As I read the book, I was singing or humming the songs as she told about each movie and stage show she performed in. I didn't realize the book was written in 1988, and read this just a couple of months after she passed at age 92. I am so glad she finally found happiness.
April 29, 2020
I read this book by Ms. Powell and I loved it although it was actually quite an unexpectedly truthful story. Did you know her mother tried to kill her? She wrote allot about her her feelings and how sad and Lonely she was. Good book!
October 21, 2021
I would have enjoyed more dirt about the entertainment business and a little less of the repetitive (I hate to call it) whining about her personal life. She did have some sorrows and obstacles to overcome but they were a recurring theme to the detriment of more show business stories.
October 6, 2021
All that you want in a celebrity autobiography. Incest, child molestation. Five husbands. One child on drugs, one gay, one SPOILER ALERT molested by her dad. Jane not divorcing the molester as soon as she found out is hard to accept. I'm glad that she was happy with her last husband, though. She is quite good in the movie with Astaire, and the cameos she did on tv shows, especially one as a woman with Alzheimer's.
December 30, 2008
An excellent account of the life of one of America's "Girl Next Door" film stars of the 1940's and 50's. Remember "Seven Brides for Seven Brothers"? Worth reading.
March 29, 2017
I greatly admired Jane Powell.
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews