I'm Feeling a Little Dewey Today...

If, as I mused in a recent posting, that in Ride the Wild Surf, Fabian was a ribeye, Peter Brown was sirloin strip and Tab Hunter was porterhouse, then comparatively speaking, today's featured actor would have to be classified as bacon (and not Kevin!) His physique was leanest of the lean. (Sizzlean?) I don't even usually go in for the really slim ones but, for his brief while in the sun, he was a real cutie. He also got to work with some great directors and stars, even if he would up in semi-obscurity in the end. I'm yammering about 1950s actor Dewey Martin.

Martin was born December 8th, 1923 in Katemcy, Texas. As a young man, he took part in WWII as a Navy pilot and paid a stiff price for his valor when a forced landing led to a months-long stint as a Japanese POW under punishing conditions. An interest in theatre while in his early twenties eventually led work as an extra and then to his being cast in his very first feature film, 1949's Knock on Any Door. The Nicholas Ray-directed film was produced by Humphrey Bogart and starred him as well, along with John Derek. Bogart was a defense attorney representing young delinquent Derek, accused of killing a police officer in an escape attempt. Martin played a neighborhood tough.

This led to another (uncredited) role for him in the well-mounted WWII epic Battleground, directed by the talented veteran William Wellman. Some of the stars of this one included Van Johnson, John Hodiak and Ricardo Montalban.

1950 brought The Golden Gloves Story, Oscar-winner James Dunn was the ostensible star, playing a boxing referee whose daughter is pursued by two contrasting boxers. Martin played one of them, a tough and aggressive Chicagoan. His face, an unusual combination of chiseled, yet baby-like, features with a rounded off nose, gave him the ability to play both good and bad types of characters. This was the first time Martin was really featured in a movie (appearing frequently in only some shorts, too) and it led him to winning further roles.

This same year, he played one of the infamous Younger Brothers in Kansas Raiders, a western about Jesse James (not that it bore much relation to actual facts!) starring Audie Murphy. Murphy, who parlayed his status as the most decorated soldier of WWII into a successful acting career, played James while a selection of other up and coming actors such as Scott Brady, Richard Long, James Best, Richard Egan and one Tony Curtis filled out the other roles. At 5'8”, Martin was no threat to the diminutive Murphy, who stood at only 5'5”. (That's Tony at the bottom left, Richard next to him, Audie in the middle and Dewey far right. James Best, standing, would later be known as Sheriff Roscoe P. Coltrane on The Dukes of Hazzard.)

Though film editor Christian Nyby is credited with his directing debut for 1951's The Thing from Another World, it is widely speculated (and debated) that producer Howard Hawks actually had a large hand in its direction. (And, no, it is not the life story of Victoria Wyndham!) Here, Martin was given a featured role (as a nice guy for once!) in the part of Crew Chief Bob, one of several military officers and scientists at an arctic outpost who come upon a strange being that feeds on blood! Needless to say, the entire outpost soon finds itself fighting for life. James Arness, in an early role that put his 6'6” frame to good use, played the creature. A remake in 1982, starring Kurt Russell and more simply titled The Thing, was more faithful to the source novel (and also ten times more graphic, being directed as it was by action/horror maestro John Carpenter.)

Still languishing in supporting roles, Martin next appeared in colorful sword and sandal flick called Flame of Araby. The stars were Maureen O'Hara and Jeff Chandler, with Maxwell Reed (Joan Collin's infamous first husband), Richard Egan and Lon Chaney Jr. in other roles. Martin's character name here was the ever-appealing “Yak!”

Howard Hawks, having approved of Martin's work in The Thing from Another World, gave him a major break in 1952 by pairing him with Kirk Douglas in the frontier epic, The Big Sky. Fur trappers Douglas and Martin played antagonists who then become friends as they journey up the Missouri River through hostile Indian territory. The Indian shown with Dewey here is unusual character actor Hank Worden, who typically played bald, simple-minded types (often downright crazy!) This was an atypical appearance by him.
Despite its epic scope and the fact that Hawks directed it, the film is strangely overlooked by most cinephiles. Perhaps due to it being in black and white versus color, or perhaps because some cutting after its initial release somehow weakened it, it has never been able to get the attention that many feel it is due. Allegedly, Hawks wanted either Gary Cooper or John Wayne instead of Douglas and so he didn't feel the same affection for the project that he might have if one of his picks had been used. He obviously still thought a lot of Martin because he would later use him a third time.

First, though, came a little color B-movie that remains an entertaining diversion, especially for fans of his. Tennessee Champ starred Shelley Winters and Keenan Wynn as a flashy woman and her fight-manager husband. They take on a new boxing prospect, which is Martin naturally, who is the naïve son of a church deacon.
A real treat for film buffs occurs when Martin heads into the ring and his opponent is none other than Charles Bronson (billed in this early role as Charles Buchinsky.) A treat for fans of lean, handsome Martin is seeing him work his thing in some too-big boxing shorts that occasionally creep down enough to show off a tinge of his tan line. His earnest character is endearing and helps to make this an entertaining film. Also on board is Earl Holliman as a harmonica-playing palooka.

His second film of 1954 was a bleak P.O.W. film called, aptly enough, Prisoner of War. He was third-billed after Ronald Reagan and Steve Forrest in this tale of a man who willingly goes undercover (being captured on purpose) in a Korean P.O.W. camp in order to investigate the abuses that are allegedly happening. And are they ever. Men are deprived and tormented in variety of ways in order to extract information from them. Finally, that year, he appeared in another war film, this one reuniting him with Van Johnson, who'd starred in Battleground, though here Martin had a far more key role. Men of the Fighting Lady involved bomber planes on a U.S. Naval tanker during The Korean War. Martin played a fighter pilot who is injured during a mission and has to attempt to fly (and land!) his plane despite being blinded. It's up to Johnson to talk him through it from on board the carrier.
Veteran actors Walter Pidgeon and Louis Calhern were also on board as was Keenan Wynn. Incidentally, there's a whole story about Martin's occasional costars, pals Wynn and Johnson, and how MGM wanted Van Johnson to be married and when the only woman he would agree to wed was Wynn's wife Evie, Wynn divorced her (in exchange for a hefty pay raise!) and Johnson married her instead! Johnson married Wynn's ex-wife the day after their divorce was final. This despite the fact that the Wynns had two children. Johnson and his new bride then had a child of their own one year later, but were eventually divorced (quite bitterly) in 1961.

Speaking of wives, in a press release for The Big Sky in 1953, Martin is described as living with his wife Margie in a modest Westwood apartment. There is no record of this marriage at imdb.com or at Wikipedia! I did dig up a mention of her on nndb.com (notable names database) as Margaret Ann Havelhurst, but with no dates of their marriage. One can assume that it was over by 1956 because that's when he married his more notable wife, but more on that in a bit.

Howard Hawks, the esteemed director who had offered Martin a couple of chances at stardom, came calling again in 1955 for a part in his Egyptian epic Land of the Pharaohs. The colorful, expensive film starred Jack Hawkins as the reigning Pharaoh with Joan Collins as a scheming princess who manages to become his queen. Martin played a slave, the son of a master builder (James Robertson Justice) who has been enlisted to create the ultimate burial site/tribute to Hawkins. (The lady in these particular shots, by the way, is not La Collins!)

While the film is now enjoyed as a cult camp classic, mainly for the slinky villainy of Collins, Martin's abbreviated costumes and cutie pie features are not to be overlooked! He is most often seen in a little skirt and a vest with no shirt underneath. In the construction/building sequences, he loses the vest and goes topless altogether. Here, he helps an injured Hawkins avoid one of the various boobytraps found in the labrynthine structure.

The film was a colossal failure at the box office and sent its director into a bit of a tailspin. He had never experienced a flop before and took four years off before coming back to the field with Rio Bravo. Now, of course, it can be enjoyed for the sort of “they don't make 'em like that anymore” spectacle it is as well as for a terrifically ironic finale. At the time, though, it was a crusher to many of the cast.

Martin's other film that year was vastly different. He was working again with the star of his first feature, Humphrey Bogart, and for another very well-regarded director, William Wyler. The film The Desperate Hours first began as an allegedly true 1952 incident about a family held captive by some criminals on the lam. This inspired a 1953 novel and that in turn inspired a 1955 Broadway play. Then the play became this movie!

The play had starred Karl Malden and Paul Newman (with George Grizzard in Martin's role of the youngest bad guy) as the homeowner and the chief criminal. Fredric March inherited Malden's role and Bogart (clearly a tad old) took Newman's. There was a twenty-four year age difference between “siblings” Bogart and Martin! Nevertheless, the movie was a hit and even inspired a positively horrendous remake in 1990 (just called Desperate Hours, the word “The” apparently having become uncool in the four decades or so since the original) with Anthony Hopkins as the homeowner and Mickey Rourke and Elias Koteas as the crooks.

At this point, though he still worked in feature films, Martin began appearing on television for the first time. He did the usual anthology shows (that everyone profiled in The Underworld seems to have done as they were very popular in the '50s and early '60s) including Climax!, Studio One Hollywood, Front Row Center and Lux Video Theatre. He also did a movie length TV pilot called Cavalry Patrol that didn't get picked up as a series.

His sole feature film in 1956 was The Proud and the Profane, a romantic drama about a war widow (Deborah Kerr) who volunteers with the Red Cross in the South Pacific only to fall for a charismatic Lieutenant (William Holden) who woos her, but has a secret. Kerr's superior is the dynamic Thelma Ritter who has all but raised a young man (Martin) who feels a sense of protection towards Kerr. Directed by George Seaton, it is noted for its overly melodramatic approach to the soapy material.

The big event in Martin's life during 1956 was his wedding to famous jazz and blues singer Peggy Lee. They had been seeing each other for a little while and tied the knot. It was (presumably) his second (and last marriage), but her third of four in all. Unfortunately, happy as it looked in the many press photos of the time, the marriage only lasted until 1958.

If Martin thought that Land of the Pharoahs was a flop, he hadn't seen anything yet. When successful comedy team Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis ended their association together, Dean Martin (no relation to Dewey) branched out on his own and somehow ended up in the film Ten Thousand Bedrooms. It's about a hotel owner, not a sex maniac. Anyway, in order for him to marry the Italian woman he loves, he has to get her other three sisters to wed first and that's where Dewey comes in. He's one of the other suitors. The film's dismal failure came very close to ending Dean Martin's career and only his role in The Young Lions the following year saved it.

In the wake of this, Dewey Martin would not be seen again on the big screen for six years. He did a fair amount of television, doing The Loretta Young Show, Zane Grey Theater and an episode of the immortal series The Twilight Zone. In it, he played one of four astronauts who crash land after a perilous flight and find themselves in a deserted wasteland. One dies on impact and two of the others perish as well, leaving only Martin behind until, just as it always was on that show, a twist ending demonstrates the futility of their struggle.

He also was granted the part of Daniel Boone in a series of appearances on Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Color. This being 1960 to 1961, there weren't really too many color sets out there to view him with. Note that he is not in the coonskin cap that Fess Parker later made famous when he played the role in a regular series. Daniel Boone didn't ever wear a coonskin cap. Parker only wore one as a way of attracting children to the show who had previously been addicted to the by-then-cancelled Davy Crockett!

Martin did take part in the gargantuan WWII epic The Longest Day, but his scenes were eliminated from the final cut of the picture, so he was not seen in it. In 1963, he had a role in the Disney sequel to Old Yeller called Savage Sam. The movie, not completely jibing with the continuity of the first film, was only modestly successful.

In 1964, he was the chief star of a low-budget film called Flight to Fury, all about a group of fortune hunters whose plane crashes in the Philippines. What draws viewers to the film nowadays is the fact that one of the supporting players (and also one of the writers!) was a young Jack Nicholson. The short (seventy-three minute long), cheap film was not going to make any impact on his standing in the movie community.

There was only one feature film left for Martin and it would come in 1974. In the meantime, he continued to appear frequently on television in such shows as Burke's Law, The Outer Limits, I Spy, Lassie and Hawaii 5-O. In the latter, he was a shifty lawyer who may or may not be responsible for the death of a man whose wife he is interested in. (He's pictured here with Linda Marsh, an actress who worked on many, many '70's TV shows, often looking quite different from role to role, but who is practically unknown today.)

He also had a role on an episode of Mission: Impossible as a ruthless crime lord in the syndicate, set up against Robert Goulet. Now fifty years old, but remaining in good shape, he was getting close to exiting the business and fulfilling his lifelong dream of living on a ranch (perhaps in Texas, where he was born.) Early press info described Martin as a gym nut who didn't drink or smoke but, by 1972 anyway, he looks as if he knew his way around a Tiparillo cigar! The close-up nature of TV sometimes brought out those still pretty baby blue eyes. Indicentally, retaining his interest in fitness, Martin did eventually work at a California gym in the late '70s/early '80s.That final movie came in 1974 when he played the ill-fated father in the low-budget family western drama Seven Alone. Loosely based on a true story of a pioneer family in which both parents die suddenly and tragically, the children decide to push onward and fulfill their dream of a new life. Aldo Ray was on board as an occasional helper to them. After this, there were just three more guest appearances on television (the last being an episode of Police Story) until Martin gave up acting and exited the business.
Now eighty-seven (!), Mr. Martin is still with us. Occasionally, he would make an appearance at fan events such as western film conventions and the like. Mostly, though, he has been out of the limelight now for over thirty years, about the same amount of time his career lasted. He isn't a tremendously well-known figure, but those who have seen him at his best can revel in the qualities he brought to the screen.

More Powers to Ya!

One of those actresses who seemed to appear on every television show during the '70s until landing her own hit at the end of that decade, today's featured star has been in the business for over fifty years now and has seemingly done it all, from feature films alongside big names to hours and hours of television and then to the stage, where she explored new ground for herself. In addition, she has devoted herself to the cause of exotic animals, tirelessly carrying on work that was started by one of her significant partners years ago. As of this writing, she's pushing seventy and has practically the same body as she did when she entered the biz! And the face, while it has been tweaked here and there, has mostly escaped the scary form that so many of her contemporaries' mugs have taken. We're referring, of course, to Miss Stefanie Powers.

Born Stefania Zofya Federkiewicz right in good ol' Hollywood, California to parents of Polish-American descent, she seemed tailor-made for work in show business from the start. Her parents divorcing when she was still a child, her stepfather's last name of Paul helped to sheer off some of the unwieldy moniker she started out with. As noted in another post here at The Underworld, she was part of the local ballet class that included Jill St. John and Natalie Wood. Later, she attended Hollywood High School where one of her classmates was the ever-so-slightly older Nancy Sinatra.

An outgoing and athletic type of girl, she was a cheerleader and later took an interest in the unlikely avocation of bullfighting, taking on her first match at the age of twenty! Shortly after, she became an honorary member of the Mexican Bullfighters Union and eventually invested in a breeding farm.

Her zesty personality and talent in school productions brought her to the attention of Columbia Pictures where she was signed as a contract player at the tender age of fifteen! She was groomed by the studio in all departments so that she would be ready to perform when they were ready to utilize her in the right project. As the '60s dawned, she adopted the cutesy name of Taffy Paul and began appearing in adolescent roles on such TV shows as The Ann Sothern Show, Lock Up and Bat Masterson. She kept this stage name for her film debut, which was Tammy Tell Me True, the second of three films featuring the title character (Sandra Dee was Tammy in the second and third films, replacing Debbie Reynolds, who had originated the part.)

For her next film, a far bigger showcase, she took the name that she would be forever associated with: Stefanie Powers. The film, Experiment in Terror, was a black and white thriller directed by Blake Edwards about a creepy extortionist who calls bank teller Lee Remick up and tells her to steal $100,000 or he'll harm her and her younger sister (Powers.) As Glenn Ford attempts to track down the cretin, Powers is kidnapped and held captive in exchange for the loot. It was the first of many times Powers would play a kidnapping vicitim in her career! Tame by today's standards, it was considered a bit of a nail-biter in its day, though it is not as enduring as Cape Fear, which came out that same year.

Also in 1962, Powers was part of the sprawling young ensemble found in The Interns, a medical soap opera all about doctors in training and the nurses and others they love. The title characters were played by Michael Callan, Cliff Robertson, James MacArthur, Nick Adams and Haya Harareet (of Ben-Hur fame.) Powers played a nurse in love with MacArthur. (Could there have possibly been a less flattering lobby card issued of her?!) Senior doctors were played by Buddy Ebsen and Telly Savalas! Most astonishing now is how ungodly much the doctors smoke incessantly throughout the film. Rounding out the year, she found herself working with Sandra Dee again in If a Man Answers. The frothy comedy, produced by Ross Hunter and starring Dee and her real life husband Bobby Darin, was about a series of romantic misadventures between a socialite and her photographer husband. Powers portrayed a pert, but glamorous, school friends of Dee's who complicates the marriage when she starts posing for pictures taken by Darin. The fluffy film (in the Rock & Doris mode, though few could touch them when it came to quality) wound up getting more attention from Cesar Romero's Golden Globe-nominated supporting role than anything else. I do like the way Stef looks in these various still shots, though.
Occasionally, Powers would be farmed out on TV guest appearances such as on Bonanza where she played Calamity Jane, but she still remained busy in features for the time being. 1963's Palm Springs Weekend was another ensemble movie, this time a frolic rather than a drama. She was loaned to Warner Brothers to play Troy Donahue's love interest. Other names in the cast included Ty Hardin, Connie Stevens and Robert Conrad.

Next she played the daughter of John Wayne and Maureen O'Hara in the rollicking western McLintock! The estranged couple battle it out while petulant Powers romances The Duke's real life son Patrick (playing someone not Wayne's son in the film.) A semi-remake of The Taming of the Shrew, it included some eye-opening spankings of O'Hara and Powers with a coal shovel! The climax has O'Hara tearing down the street in her bloomers before half the cast winds up in a massive mudhole.

1964 brought The New Interns, a sequel to The Interns from two years prior. Don't let the smiles to the left fool you. Now a wife married to a novice doctor (played here by Dean Jones instead of the original James MacArthur), her character has, for some reason, been transformed from a perky, friendly girl into an unbelievably shrewy pain in the ass who is hard to lend sympathy to when she discovers that she and her husband are incapable of conceiving a child.

In 1965, she was part of the splashy, gaudy, wonderful Love has Many Faces, a slick soaper about an heiress (Lana Turner) who has married a former gigolo (Cliff Robertson) only to carry on with another one who turns up dead. Powers plays the dead boy's jilted fiance who travels to Acapulco to see for herself what has happened. She winds up catching the eye of Robertson, much to Turner's dismay. In a climax that was right up Powers' alley, the cast dressed in bullfighting gear and attended a match. There's already a whole post devoted to this deliciously bad film here, so I won't continue on, but I'll post this shot of Stef and hunky Hugh O'Brian (who she had little to do with in the film) enjoying some fishing while on location.

Powers next traveled to England to make the thriller Die! Die! My Darling! (originally called The Fanatic) with the legendary stage actress Tallulah Bankhead. I won't go on about it now because, like Many Faces, there's a whole post here devoted to the movie. It remains an Underworld favorite.

After an ill-fated stab at romance with Eddie Fisher, Powers began seeing another young actor who she would eventually marry. Lockwood had been the star of two series that only lasted one year apiece, Follow the Sun and The Lieutenant. He and Powers did an episode of Love, American Style together while married. Though in 1968, he would land a role in the sci-fi sensation 2001: A Space Odyssey, he was never able to attain household name stardom.

In 1966, Powers was among the sizeable cast of Stagecoach, a bloated, color remake of the 1939 John Ford/John Wayne classic. Playing a snooty, pregnant passenger on the title vehicle that has to wend its way through Indian territory, she landed pretty far down in the billing with costars including Ann-Margret, Red Buttons, Mike Conners, Alex Cord, Robert Cummings, Van Heflin and, in his final feature film, Bing Crosby. For some reason, she failed to register much in her role, as if she'd given up in the face of the face more showcased A-M. However, like all the other major players, she did have her portrait painted, in character, by the legendary artist Norman Rockwell. Not many people considered the film an improvement on the original, though, and many diehard fans greeted the new version with the same basic reaction as this dead cavalryman to the right.
Far more important to her recognizability as an actress was an offer to star in her own TV series. The popular spy show The Man from U.N.C.L.E. had inspired the creators to develop a spin-off show featuring a female agent called The Girl from U.N.C.L.E. While it stood to reason that the show would be a hit, and Powers was the subject of a major press machine publicizing the project, it would up not satisfying its target audience. The character she played, April Dancer, though outfitted with some gadgets and weapons, was ultimately sort of helpless, relying on her male partner Noel Harrison and failing to ignite the sort of interest that was found in, say, Diana Rigg on The Avengers.

One thing the show did do was capitalize on a few of Powers' skills. For example, one episode featured bullfighting and others called upon her mastery of foreign tongues. Powers is fluent in at least six different languages. The role was played on the parent show by Mary Ann Mobley in one episode, but Powers was ultimately chosen for the series itself. One amusing bit of worthless trivia, a TV Guide article on the show listed Powers at 117 pounds while this paperback book puts her at 108.

While still appearing on TV as April Dancer, Powers was in movie theaters as part of a film with many interesting actors. Warning Shot, starring David Janssen, had a roster of costars that included Lillian Gish, Joan Collins and Eleanor Parker, to name a few. Intended as a TV-movie, it was released on the big screen instead. A tight and trim little mystery, it's fun mostly as a spot-the-star exercise.

It would be 1970 before Powers appeared in another feature film. She was becoming busy on television (appearing as a guest on the caper series It Takes a Thief starring one Robert Wagner.) The film Crescendo, opposite James Olson, was a Hammer Studios chiller about a music student who goes to live in a French villa with the widow of a famous composer who is the subject of her thesis. While there, she is surrounded by mysterious goings on and sinister people and, eventually, some gory murders. The film is notable for containing a nude scene of Powers, but shortly after its initial release, it was cut in order to obtain a less restrictive rating. Thus, some viewers see her in the altogether and some don't, depending on the print.

1970 also brought work at the Disney Studios where she took part in the maritime comedy The Boatniks. As the proprietor of a sailing school, she played love interest to coast guard ensign Robert Morse. Their relationship is complicated by the arrival of a trio of jewel thieves, Phil Silvers, Norman Fell and Mickey Shaughnessey. At least she also got to work with veteran actor Don Ameche who appeared as Morse's demanding commander.

The year 1971 was made up of several TV-movies, that period being a great one for amusingly pat, yet arresting , ninety minute gems. Five Desperate Women had her trapped on an island with four other ladies and a questionable Robert Conrad. Sweet, Sweet Rachel, the pilot movie for the series The Sixth Sense, centered on ESP being used to catch a psychic using telepathy to commit murder. Paper Man (a surprisingly prescient concept) had Dean Stockwell and a group of other college students creating a person that only exists on paper so that they can run up bills under his name and use a (huge!) computer to cover their tracks. Trouble is, someone decides to start killing off the people involved! She rounded out the year with a role in an Ellery Queen mystery pilot starring Peter Lawford as the sleuth.

Appearing on the big screen again in 1972, she was the unlikely love interest to Lee Van Cleef (close to two decades her senior) in The Magnificent Seven Ride! This fourth movie in the series (by now purely exhausted) was both inferior and close to being wildly inappropriate. Powers played a widow trapped in a Mexican village where she and sixteen other women have been brutalized and repeatedly raped. Yet, when the Magnificent Seven arrive, the ladies get all goo-goo eyed over them and Powers starts to fall for Van Cleef when her husband's barely cold! Powers' marriage to Gary Lockwood ended this same year.

This was about the time that Powers became a heavily familiar face to TV viewers. She did five separate appearances on Love, American Style, appeared on Banacek, The Mod Squad, The Sixth Sense, Barnaby Jones, McCloud, Marcus Welby, M.D., four different episodes of Medical Center. You can pretty much name it. She also did an update of the famous Topper films for TV called Topper Returns. This one starred Roddy McDowall as Topper and had Stefanie and someone named John Fink as the ghostly couple (in this rendition, still in their 1940s guises and bemused by the advanced 1970s.)

The '70s being a primo period for disaster, she was one of the passengers caught in a broken down tram in Skyway to Death. Then it was back to the Disney folks for Herbie Rides Again, the first sequel to The Love Bug, to be followed by several more. This one starred Ken Barry and had Powers playing an airline stewardess caught up in Herbie's misadventures. Again, she at least got to work with an esteemed film and stage veteran, this time Miss Helen Hayes, though was hardly a prestigious project for either one of them. Thankfully, she didn't have to take part in Herbie Goes to Monte Carlo or Herbie Goes Bananas (or Herbie Gets his Oil Changed??)
You know, I like Stefanie Powers a lot. Always have. This is not to say that she didn't appear in a fair share of complete drek. Falling squarely into that category is one of the worst movies I have ever seen and, trust me, I've seen a LOT! Gone With the West is a total and complete mess, despite a cast that includes James Caan, Sammy Davis Jr. and Aldo Ray. She plays an American Indian (who somehow has a Spanish accent) and, though the movie is dreadfully written, shot, edited and scored, she is far from the worst thing in it. Even this is considered better than her next one, though, a dastardly comedy called It Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time, a slapdash project that somehow managed to involve Anthony Newley, Lloyd Bochner, Issac Hayes, Yvonne de Carlo and John Candy!

Much work on TV continued until she landed a series of her own. The Feather and Father Gang had Powers as a Los Angeles attorney who utilizes her con man father (played by Harold Gould) to help sting various bad guys into revealing themselves to the law. For it, she was given a somewhat more cosmopolitan look than she'd been displaying in recent years. Gould (a veteran actor who would later play Miles, Rose's boyfriend, on The Golden Girls) and Powers got a fair amount of press and commercial publicity for the series, but it failed to catch on and was gone after just over a dozen episodes.

Powers had done quite a bit of guest star appearances and appeared in many telefilms, sometimes with titles so close to each other as to be absurd. For example, she was in No Place to Run in 1972 and then Nowhere to Run in 1978! One of the very best ones was a harrowing drama called A Death in Canaan, which cast her as a crusading woman attempting to vindicate a teenage boy who's been accused of viciously murdering his own mother. As an eleven year-old, I caught this (based on a true story) one and it stuck with me forever after. Brian Dennehy and Conchata Ferrell costarred while Paul Clemens (Eleanor Parker's son in real life) played the teen.
1979 found Stef in quite an unlikely role, that of a WWII entertainer turned art heist participant in Escape to Athena. The unbelievable cast included Roger Moore, David Niven, Elliott Gould, Telly Savalas, Claudia Cardinale, Richard Roundtree and Sonny Bono! Believe it or not, the film actually attempts to be taken seriously despite the inclusion of some of the participants. It does not succeed particularly well! Gould and Powers play man and wife. Gould is excruciating as he could often be during this period while Powers is called upon to strip for Nazi commandant Moore(!) She, as a trained swimmer, is then required to don a wetsuit and take further part in the plan. The whole thing might have been better off as a two-part episode of Fantasy Island, though at least some of the comedy was intentional.

Fortunately, a far more popular project was on the horizon by now. Aaron Spelling was planning another in a long line of successful television shows and wanted to pair Robert Wagner and Natalie Wood in this one, a contemporary spin on Nick and Nora Charles, a society couple who keep finding themselves ensconced in mysteries (frequently including murder.) Wagner was onboard, but it was decided to go with someone other than his real life wife Natalie. Eventually, Powers, who had worked with Wagner on his show It Takes a Thief, was mentioned (after bandying about Suzanne Pleshette and Lindsay Wagner as possibilities) and ultimately won the role.

From the start, chemistry between the leads was magical. The show Hart to Hart was a success and offered viewers a marriage that had never lost its spark. Wagner and Powers were wealthy, elegant, clever and inventive. Their in-house butler Max, played by showbiz veteran Lionel Stander, frequently pitched in along with narrating the memorable opening credits. Set to pulsating music, he introduced The Harts, referring to Powers as, “gorgeous” and she was. Her once rather tautly-drawn features had relaxed into an elegant, sophisticated visage. Then he said, “I look after them, which ain't easy. 'Cause their hobby is... murder!” (Later, due apparently to some dunderheaded viewers who might thin that the leads were killers, the line was changed to, “ 'Cause when they met, it was murder!” This made absolutely no sense at all... The show wasn't about when they met and it wasn't murder, in any case!) Lovable canine Freeway rounded out the foursome of regular characters.

Anyway, the crimes involved in the show were incidental. What drew viewers to the series was the glittering repartee of the lead couple. They were very much in love, but not above teasing each other, and were typically given sexy bits of dialogue, often courtesy of frequent writer Tom Mankiewicz whose father Joe was a tremendous writer-director. Powers was dressed by Nolan Miller, who would later make a huge splash with Dynasty. It was a light, sometimes silly, but endearing, program with a degree of class that tended to be lacking in the late '70s. She was nominated for an Emmy twice and for a Golden Globe fives times, one for each year the series aired.

Though there was never any romantic involvement between R.J. and Stefanie, they became closely identified with one another due to the magical chemistry they had created together on the show. They frequently appeared together on awards shows or other special occasions. Considering that Wagner claims to have had a longstanding sexual affair with Barbara Stanwyck and we cannot see his hands in this snap, I will leave it up to your imagination as to what was giving Babs this startled expression at an industry event!

Both stars received major blows to their personal lives during the run of Hart to Hart and would lean on each other at times for emotional support. Natalie Wood's mysterious and sudden death by drowning was a living nightmare for Wagner while William Holden's death due to an accident paired with alcohol abuse was a heartbreak to Powers. She and Holden had enjoyed a lengthy and fascinating romance during the mid-to-late '70s that included world travel, particularly to regions of Africa where Holden was working hard on preservation causes.

Running until 1984, Hart to Hart kept Powers busy. When it ended, she began working in a string of TV-movies and miniseries (the '80s being a major decade for that format.) There was Mistral's Daughter, all about a Picasso-esque painter (Stacy Keach) who compromises with the Nazis during WW in order to continue working; a decision that will come back to haunt him. Then there was the hilarious Deceptions, all about vastly different twin sisters (both played, of course, by Powers) who decide to swap lives on a lark and then wind up unable to switch back as soon as they'd wished. Costarring Barry Bostwick and Brenda Vaccaro (and including an appearance by Gina Lollobrigida!), it boasts some beautiful Venice locations, solid acting from Powers and some hilariously hideous '80s hairdos.

Powers never worked on a primetime soap, but got as close as she ever would when she took a role in the Jackie Collins trashterpiece Hollywood Wives. The gargantuan miniseries boasted a wonderful assortment of performers indulging in every conceivable type of nasty behavior. Powers' character was mostly above it all, married to Anthony Hopkins (!) and hobnobbing with Candice Bergen, Angie Dickinson, Rod Steiger, Suzanne Somers and many others. More serious endeavors included At Mother's Request, about a woman who coerces her sons into killing her parents, and Beryl Markham: Shadow on the Sun, based on a true story concerning a renowned hunter, horsewoman and aviatrix.

After many such endeavors, she and Robert Wagner (who had kept in touch and had even toured in, what was for a while a tremendously successful play for popular couples, Love Letters) decided to revisit their old series. 1993 brought Hart to Hart Returns. Jonathan and Jennifer Hart, almost a decade older than they were at the end of the original run, but still looking quite attractive, were back to solving mysteries, this time in two hour TV-movie events.

There were eight of these in all, several on ABC and the rest on The Family Channel, a now-defunct cable station (I'm sure it morphed into something... ABC Family maybe?) By the early '90s, ostentatious glamour was a rare thing, so The Harts tended towards more casual clothing and settings, but occasionally would drag out the tuxedos and ball gowns. (One of the telefilms had Wagner's old pal Joan Collins as a guest, so you knew there was going to be some glitz in that one!) Powers also remarried in 1993 to a man named Patrick Houitte de la Chesnais, but it only lasted until 1999.

When William Holden died in 1981, Powers took up his cause of conservation and wildlife preservation/protection. She and his existing partners, from a property he had long supported, created The William Holden Wildlife Foundation. The 1,800 acre ranch and education center in Kenya houses thirty-seven species of animals who were in danger of extinction due to over-hunting, poaching and population encroachment. The foundation has also built four libraries at several African schools. This dedication to the cause is remarkable in that she and Holden had actually ended their relationship prior to his death, but the devotion to these animals and the land had stayed important to her nonetheless.

Powers also had branched into stage acting, several of the projects being musicals, in an effort to explore otherwise untapped challenges. Aside from Love Letters (which had won her The Sarah Siddons Award), some of the shows she appeared in include Mame, Applause, The Vagina Monologues and, rather surprisingly, The King and I, in the role of Anna Leonowens! One of her moved beloved projects was a West End London production of Matador starring John Barrowman. Powers played an Ava Gardner-esque actress. A severe downturn in tourism caused by the first Persian Gulf War helped lead to an early closing for the show and the cast album was canceled the day before it was to be recorded.

In an almost unbelievable chain of events, considering how closely identified Powers has been with Wagner for three decades, some sort of misunderstanding occurred between them and their desire to work on further Hart to Hart mysteries. The seeds of it were planted when Powers felt that five years of touring in Love Letters was plenty, but Wagner wanted to keep doing it. His current wife Jill St. John took that over, so no harm, no foul (unless you count Wagner dissing Stefanie's acting over Jill's in his auto-bio.) Wagner next took exception to the fact that Powers wanted to pursue a stage opportunity when there was all sorts of money on the table for more Hart movies. He accused her of betraying him and the crew and their fans (she had made, after all, EIGHT movies - not six as his book states - and longed for new pastures.) Finally, when she suggested another reunion movie about ten years after that, he balked, saying he wasn't about to give Angela Lansbury a run for her money in senior crime-solving. Whatever...
Powers, though, has always been known for her sunny personality no matter what events befall her. Having worked with some of the most notable personalities Hollywood has to offer, whether in her feature films, TV-movies or during her five-year tenure on Hart to Hart, she has probably seen it all! She wrote and released an autobiography last year (which I have yet to read. I tend to be a good two to three years behind on those!) and has developed a cabaret act which she performed in both L.A. and New York City. (See sepia-toned shot above.) Now sixty-eight, she continues to stay active with her wildlife causes and with her acting career. She also attends many social functions (such as the premiere of I Love You Phillip Morris, at which these shots in black were taken. Lookin' good, lady!) She's a hit in The Underworld as much for her distinctive voice and method of speaking as she is for her beguiling personality and lovely looks. Somehow, despite a career that's lasted over half a century, I don't think she's altogether finished yet. Hopefully, she can find a vehicle to further show off her many (some yet untapped) talents.