Trivia of Eleanor Powell

Trivia of Eleanor Powell (21 November 1912 - 11 February 1982)

*Having been spotted playfully performing acrobatics on the beach while on vacation at Atlantic City, her first professional dancing job was at age 12 at the Ambassador Hotel in a Gus Edwards summer vaudeville revue. She was reportedly paid a total of $21 for performing three times a week.

*She trained of tap dance by Jack Donohue and John Boyle.In training Powell, Donohue and Boyle used an unconventional method: in order to counteract her tendency toward pulling away from the floor and working through her feet, as one does in classical ballet and acrobatics, they had her wear an army surplus belt during her lessons, which had one sandbag attached on either side. This was intended to weigh her down, help her to feel the floor in a different way, and engage with it – to "play" the floor as if it were an instrument. This not only served to help Powell "find her legs" in tap dance, it also was to be a catalyst in the development of her uniquely grounded and smooth tap style.

*She started her career on Broadway in Follow Thru (1929), where her machine-gun foot work gained her the title of world champion in tapping.

*In 1935 she came to Hollywood where she starred in the great MGM musicals in the late 1930s, establishing herself as a Queen of Ra-Ta-Taps. Unlike most other film dancers of her day, Powell did not use a choreographer but devised all her own numbers. Consequently, although she danced with some of the best dancers of her era, her most memorable performances were in solos.

*Powell was well received in her first starring role in 1935 Broadway Melody of 1936 (in which she was supported by Jack Benny and Frances Langford), and delighted 1930s audiences with her endless energy and enthusiasm, not to mention her stunning dancing. According to dancer Ann Miller, quoted in the "making-of" documentary That's Entertainment! III, MGM was headed for bankruptcy in the late 1930s, but the films of Eleanor Powell, particularly Broadway Melody of 1936, were so popular that they made the company profitable again. Miller also credits Powell for inspiring her own dancing career, which would lead her to become an MGM musical star a decade later.

*She was inspired by certain forms of the Hula, a Polynesian dance, and learned some hula technique in order to incorporate it into her dance numbers in the film "Honolulu" (1939). This influence remained as part of her repertoire and hints of it can be seen in some subsequent (non Hawaiian-style) numbers of hers, for example, during the introductory (legato) section of her boogie woogie tap feature in "Duchess of Idaho" (1950).

*In 1943, she married with actor Glenn Ford and had only child named Peter Ford (born 1945). The couple appeared together on screen once in a short film produced in the 1950s titled Have Faith in Our Children. When they married, Powell was more famous than was Ford.They divorced in 1959.