The Girl Next Door...And How She Grew by Jane Powell

Author:Jane Powell [Powell, Jane]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Memoir
Publisher: Untreed Reads Publishing
Published: 2014-03-15T00:00:00+00:00

9

I STILL THINK of 1951 as a year of milestones. In March, a month before my twenty-second birthday, Royal Wedding premiered. We had made it the year before, and it was the first film in which I played an adult. I got the role quite by accident—I replaced both June Allyson and Judy Garland! June was taken pregnant and Judy was taken ill. Then, on July 21, I gave birth to my first child, our son, G.A. (pronounced Jay), named Geary Anthony Steffen III after his dad.

I was so thrilled when G.A. finally came along! I’d always said I wanted ten children. Ten was a ridiculous number, I know; I think I just picked it because it sounded round and impressive. But I did love the idea of a big house full of children. I wanted the sort of family you read about in books like Little Women.

Despite (or maybe because of) my eagerness to be pregnant, it took Geary and me almost a year to conceive. When it finally happened I was ecstatic. I loved being pregnant, the whole process, even though I was sick as a dog for three or four months. I was pregnant twice during the three and a half years I was married to Geary—our daughter, Suzanne Ilene (know as Sissy), was born on November 21, 1952—and both times I was sick, and both times I was blissfully happy. I felt clean, productive, virtuous, radiant as an Ivory soap commercial: For the first time I really felt like a woman.

I’d just about completed work on Royal Wedding when I found out I was pregnant with G.A. Royal Wedding was my first important film, if you call Hollywood musicals important. At that time musicals were thought of as froth and fun—nothing else. In this movie Fred Astaire and I played brother and sister. (His real sister and dance partner, Adele, never appeared in movies.)

Royal Wedding was produced by Arthur Freed (not Joe Pasternak) and directed by Stanley Donen. Astaire and I, a Broadway dance team, were opening a show in London amid mad preparations for the upcoming marriage of Prince Philip and Crown Princess Elizabeth. It was a runaway hit. Our big number had the world’s longest title, “How Could You Believe Me When I Said I Loved You When You Know I’ve Been a Liar All My Life.” I also got to sing a beautiful love song, “Too Late Now,” to Peter Lawford, an English lord who made my heart thump (and Fred got to moon over Sarah Churchill, the real-life daughter of Britain’s former prime minister). Needless to say, we all ended up getting married on the same day as the royal couple.

Our reviews were excellent. (I’d never taken dancing seriously and we certainly didn’t have much time for rehearsal. Fred and I didn’t rehearse together much because he had already taught June and Judy the dance routines!) Variety’s comment was typical: “As a dance partner Miss Powell serves very well; her pert cuteness making up anything lacking in interpreting ability.

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