Jane Powell: Garrison Keillor’s Small-Town Sage

With her bright blue eyes, sunny personality and voice like a canary, Jane Powell graced countless MGM musicals in the 1940s and ‘50s, including “Royal Wedding,” “Rich, Young and Pretty,” “Small Town Girl” and the landmark “Seven Brides for Seven Brothers.”

A native of Portland, Ore., Powell began singing on the local radio at age 2. By 12, she was hosting two radio shows.

Powell made her Broadway debut in the musical “Irene” in 1973. On television, she portrayed the manipulative Rebeka on the ABC serial “Loving,” Alan Thicke’s mother on “Growing Pains” and, earlier this year, JonBenet Ramsey’s dance instructor in the CBS miniseries “Perfect Murder, Perfect Town.”

Powell, 71, lives in New York and is married to another ex-child star, Dickie Moore. This Sunday, she’s back on the small screen in the Showtime family fable, “The Sandy Bottom Orchestra,” based on the novel of the same name by Garrison Keillor and his wife, Jenny Lind Nilsson.

The film is a lighthearted look at an eccentric musical family living in a small Wisconsin town. Powell plays Delia Ferguson, the warmhearted, understanding friend of the town’s renegade (Glenne Headly).

Powell, who is appearing off-Broadway in Bill C. Davis’ comedy “Avow,” recently talked about her latest projects and her career by phone from her New York apartment.

Question: I know you have continued to do theater, but you haven’t done many TV shows or movies until this year. Why did you stay away from TV for so long?

Answer: There just hasn’t been anything that interesting to do. I just loved this. I thought it was just charming, and I must say that the producer, writer and director were really on top of the whole thing.

Q: Delia is such a nice role. She’s such an understanding, wise person.

A: I was very pleased with it and surprised it was as big as it was. I was only on the shoot for three or four days. I was just amazed it was that big a part by the time they finished with it. And isn’t Glenne Headly lovely? I think the whole thing was cast so beautifully. I forget the name of the fellow who played the father [Tom Irwin]. I thought he was just wonderful. He had a directness. The movie is a valentine, I think.

Q: Would you talk about “Avow”?

A: I have received some lovely reviews. I play a mother part, and she ends up being a grandmother, but I start as a mother. It’s very funny and a really lovely play. We are all very happy. It’s very nice when you find something that you really do enjoy. This is the first time I ever [originated] a part [on stage]. So that was another thing that was very exciting to me.

Q: Do you love performing as much now as you did 50 years ago?

A: It’s completely different now. [The early work] was a part of my life where I had to work. Now, I only work when I want to. I do the things--the good things--that I really want to do as long as I don’t have to go away from home. I don’t like being away from home. That’s one reason why I don’t work as much as I used to, because so many things are on the road. I just don’t want to be away from my husband, my dogs and my home. I don’t sing that much any more because that also takes you on the road.

Q: You began in movies when you were just 14, but you didn’t seem to have any problems surviving Hollywood. How did you avoid the problems which beset many child actors?

A: I didn’t have strong parents. I guess I just never believed who I was. I always thought they were talking about somebody else because my whole life I felt like I was watching myself doing this and I was never really there.

I keep saying I was like a fly on the wall watching my life go by me. Maybe that was my savior. But whatever it was I am very grateful God was in my corner.

There were stages when I left the studio where I wasn’t wanted because they weren’t making musicals anymore. They didn’t know what to do with me. It was hard there for a while, but I guess I thought something was going to happen, and it has.

Q: You sang on radio in Portland, Ore. How did you make the transition from radio to movies?

A: I had two radio shows in Portland, and we were going to L.A. for our vacation and the station asked while I was down there to go do this talent [radio] show. I did, and the next day I was signed at MGM. It was kind of easy.

Q: Your first film was 1944’s “Song of the Open Road” with W.C. Fields. What was Fields like to work with?

A: I really don’t know. That was my screen test really. I wasn’t aware too much of anything. I was trying to get through the day.

Q: One of your most popular films was 1951’s “Royal Wedding” with Fred Astaire. Was he as much a task master as it has been reported?

A: He wasn’t any more a task master than anybody else. We were all very professional, and we all worked very hard. But I don’t think they could say very much about Fred because he was a very private person. So I think the publicity went out that he was a task master. But everybody was. It was just the way it was.

Q: “Seven Brides for Seven Brothers,” which you made in 1954, is a near-perfect musical. Did you and co-star Howard Keel know it was something special while you were making it?

A: No, we certainly didn’t. As a matter of fact, it was a sleeper. They didn’t think it was going to do anything. MGM thought that “Brigadoon” was going to be the big moneymaker that year.

As it happened, it didn’t turn out that way. We were the ones that went to the Radio City Music Hall, which was always such a coup.

* “The Sandy Bottom Orchestra” can be seen Sunday at 8 p.m. on Showtime. The network has rated it TV-G (suitable for all ages).