PERT AND PERKY JANE POWELL : NO MORE MISS GOODY TWO-SHOES

Jane Powell, the pert and perky girl-next-door of MGM movie musicals, has turned into a powerful and wealthy soap opera matriarch.

She still looks pert and perky, however, and wears a size 2 dress on her 5-foot-1 1/2 inch frame.

Powell made her debut on ABC’s “Loving” last week playing Rebeka Beecham, the rich and powerful matriarch of the 4B ranch in Wyoming, who has come to the mythical Eastern city of Corinth to visit her younger son son, Linc, and stir up trouble for his girlfriend, Lorna.

“I’ve been very interested in soap operas since they’ve become so good,” Powell said in an interview. “Some of the finest acting is on the soaps and the quality of the productions has become so good that I have wanted to do one for a long time.

“Playing this part is wonderful because she is not the usual girl next door, she is not Miss Goody Two-Shoes and all of that.”

Powell began her movie career at age 14 and--with much publicity--received her first screen kiss from Robert Stack in the 1948 film “A Date with Judy.” She appeared in a series of MGM musicals, the best of which probably was “Seven Brides for Seven Brothers.”

“I really got tired of being Miss Goody Two-Shoes,” she said, “and I thought I was getting too old for the parts I was playing so I left the studio in the late 1950s. They were getting ready to fire me, anyway, although I didn’t know that at the time. They weren’t going to do musicals anymore.”

She contented herself with doing musicals in summer stock and one, “Irene,” on Broadway, and touring with her own autobiographical song and dance show. On television she has guest starred on such series as “The Love Boat” and “Fantasy Island.” But Rebeka--she is bemused by the spelling--gives her a chance to break away from music and comedy into something more dramatic.

“I’ve done quite a few comedies,” she said, “and I’ve wanted to do something different, to do a dramatic television play. This kind of takes the place of that.

“Rebeka is a very strong woman, with a lot of backbone to her. She is sophisticated, travels a lot--to New York and San Francisco and Paris--and gets to wear pretty clothes.”

Is she a troublemaker like Joan Collins’ Alexis in “Dynasty?”

“Well, I guess she will be,” Powell said, “like anyone who has a mind of her own and finds things aren’t going the way she wants them to go. She may not start the trouble, but if it comes her way she takes care of it.”

The scripts, the production quality, the clothes and sets, all have impressed Powell.

“The clothes are wonderful, the sets are beautifully done and the furniture is beautiful,” she said. “People who watch want to see pretty clothes and pretty houses, or else they can watch ‘Leave It To Beaver.”’

The actress lives in Connecticut, keeps an apartment in New York and finally has broken completely with Hollywood by selling her Los Angeles home. She says she watches talk shows, old movies and documentaries on television, but she doesn’t watch soap operas.

“I’m afraid I’d get hooked,” she said. “When I used to be on the road a lot I would turn them on, like you would a radio, for noise. I didn’t know one from the other but I would find myself getting hooked on them. I don’t like starting a habit that is difficult to break and I understand soap opera watching is very difficult to break.”