Eleanor Powell (November 21, 1912 – February 11, 1982) was an American actress and dancer of the 1930s and 1940s, known for her exuberant solo tap dancing.

Eleanor Torrey Powell was natural inside Springfield, Massachusetts. a dancer since childhood, she was found at the age of Xi per head of the Vaudeville Kiddie review, Gus Edwards. While she was Seventeen, she brought her elegant, athletic style to Broadway, where she starred inside various review & musical comedy. When you took this period, she was dubbed "the world's greatest tap dancer" due to her machine-gun footwork.

Inside 1935, a leggy, clean-faced Powell processed the move to Hollywood and did a specialty total around ''George White's 1935 Scandals which she later described as a disaster due in part to her accidentally being made up to look like an Egyptian due to a mix-up prior to filming her scene. A personal experience left her unimpressed by owning Hollywood. However, she was signed by MGM soon after, which groomed her for her first stardom making minimum changes around her (non-Egyptian) makeup & conduct. She was easily-received inside Broadway Melody of 1936'' (in which she was supported by Jack Benny and Frances Langford), and delighted 1930s audiences with her endless energy & enthusiasm, does'nt to mention her stunning terpsichore.

Powell would last in to star paired numerous of the decade's top leading men like Jimmy Stewart, Robert Taylor, Fred Astaire, George Murphy, Nelson Eddy, and Robert Young. Films she processed when you took a height of her career in the mid-to-late 1930s co-starred these men & others and involved Born to Dance (1936), Rosalie (1937), Broadway Melody of 1938 (1937), Honolulu (1939), and Broadway Melody of 1940 (1940). Virtually all one moving-picture show featured her amazing solo tapping, although her more and more immense production statistics began to attract criticism. Broadway Melody of 1940, where Powell asterisked paired Fred Astaire, featured a brilliant musical score by Cole Porter. Together, Astaire & Powell danced to Porter's "Begin The Beguine", which is considered by numerous to use at times been a greatest tap sequence inside film history.

In the 1940s, after existence sidelined for several months as punishment the gall stone operation, things changed somewhat for the worse, at least when far when Powell's picture show career was caring. 1941's Lady Be Good gave Powell top billing and the classic dance routine to "Fascinatin' Rhythm", however Robert Young & Ann Sothern carried the moving-picture show. A equivalent happened by using Red Skelton in Ship Ahoy (1942) and I Dood It (1943). She was signed to play paired Dan Dailey in For Me and My Gal in 1942, but them actors were flushed from either a picture in the period of rehearsals & replaced by Gene Kelly and Judy Garland. Late, production of the fresh Broadway Melody film that would develop paired Powell by owning Kelly was likewise cancelled.

She parted ways using MGM in 1943 after Thousands Cheer, in which she did a specialty total, & the equivalent month married Canadian lead actor Glenn Ford. She danced inside the giant pwithin table in Sensations of 1945 (1944), but this picture was a big disappointment, & Powell out from either the cinema to concentrate in raising her boy, actor Peter Ford, who was natural that month.

Around 1950, Powell returned to MGM just once, to guest star in The Duchess of Idaho, starring Esther Williams. She divorced Ford around 1959, & that season began the extremely-publicized nightspot career, maintaining her practiced figure and looks swell into middle age. Withinside her late years, she became concerned in religion, & was actually ordained the minister of the Unity Church. She too hosted an Emmy Award-winning Sunday morning TV program for children entitled A Faith of My Toddlers (1953 - 1955). Her boy, Peter Ford, was a regular on this indicate.

Powell was reintroduced to audiences in the popular ''That's Entertainment! documentary in 1974, and its sequels That's Entertainment Part II and That's Entertainment III which spotlighted her dancing from films such as Broadway Melody of 1940 and Born to Dance''. Within other recent years, all the same, virtually all of Powell's films develop lapsed into obscurity, sustaining simply Broadway Melody of 1940 presently available inside DVD in Northerly America when of 2005, although 2 of her production prices from either Broadway Melody of 1936 were when well involved as bonus features on the 2002 favorite edition DVD release of ''Singin' in the Rain.

Eleanor Powell died of cancer on February 11, 1982 at the age of 69, & was interred in the Hollywood Forever Cemetery in Hollywood.

Filmography

Queen High (1930) No Contest! (1934) (short subject) George White's 1935 Scandals (1935) Broadway Melody of 1936 (1936) Screen Snapshots Series 16, No. 12 (1936) (short subject) Born to Dance (1936) Broadway Melody of 1938 (1937) Rosalie (1937) Honolulu (1939) Broadway Melody of 1940 (1940) Lady Be Good (1941) Ship Ahoy (1942) Thousands Cheer (1943) I Dood It (1943) Sensations of 1945 (1944) The Great Morgan (1946) Screen Snapshots: Famous Hollywood Mothers (1947) (short subject) Screen Snapshots: Hollywood Holiday (1948) (short subject) Duchess of Idaho (1950) The Faith of our Children'' (1955) (short subject)