Despite a movie career that spanned two decades, Jane Powell seems to be quite content to live fully in the present.
Now living in Connecticut — about as far away from Hollywood as you can get in the continental United States — Powell is in Salt Lake City this week to emcee her sixth National Veterans Creative Arts Festival tonight in Gardner Hall and then Kingsbury Hall. (Co-host Bo Derek is scheduled to arrive later today.)
Powell's timing also coincides with the release of the two-disc, 50th anniversary special-edition DVD of her best-known film, "Seven Brides for Seven Brothers."
Producers frequently send to her DVDs and videos of her films from the 1940s and '50s, Powell said by phone, "but I rarely get to them." As a result, she hasn't yet watched the newest release of "Seven Brides," but added, "I understand it is quite good."
At the time that "Seven Brides" was being filmed — on the studio backlot, not on location ("MGM couldn't afford that") — no one had an inkling that it would become a classic. "I never thought about that; I just did my job."
Her job was to play Howard Keel's naive young bride on the Oregon frontier, where she suddenly finds herself whipping his six younger brothers into shape.
Powell's big-screen career, which began when she was discovered on a radio show in the mid 1940s, petered out in the late '50s when Hollywood lost interest in her girl-next-door persona. But she went on to star on Broadway and several regional stage productions, including many with her "Seven Brides" co-star Howard Keel. (She and her family were in Salt Lake City in the summer of 1966 when Powell starred in "The Unsinkable Molly Brown" at the former Valley Music Hall in North Salt Lake, opposite Utah native Art Lund.)
Powell is especially excited to be involved with the yearly National Veterans Creative Arts Festival, taking place this year on the University of Utah campus and the nearby University Park Marriott Hotel. The variety revue she hosts "is so stirring. They're all so talented, and it's very American and patriotic. It's like the Fourth of July twice over."
Many of the participants, in both the visual-arts exhibit and the musical revue, are disabled. "This is one of the most rewarding things that I do," Powell said. "It's just so wonderful to see our patriots achieving so much. If you come away from the show not crying, there's something wrong."
Powell was under contract to MGM for 27 years. Her other major films include "Royal Wedding" (1951), where she replaced June Allyson and Judy Garland (June was pregnant; Judy was ailing), and "Hit the Deck" (1955).
In her 1988 autobiography, "The Girl Next Door . . . And How She Grew," she quipped, "I didn't quit movies. They quit me."
She's also filmed an exercise video geared toward people with arthritis, and she's popular on the lecture circuit, where she offers advice on fitness in the golden years.
A couple of "trivia" facts of local interest:
— The pivotal avalanche scene in "Seven Brides for Seven Brothers" was filmed in Corral Creek, Utah.
— Powell christened the U.S. Peter Skene Ogden — honoring the man for whom Ogden is named. The ship was later torpedoed and sank in World War II on Feb. 22, 1944.
If you go. . .
What: National Veterans Creative Arts Festival
Event: Art exhibit
Where: Libby Gardner Concert Hall, University of Utah
When: Tonight, 6 p.m.
How much: Free
Phone: 584-1252
Also. . .
Event: Variety revue
Where: Kingsbury Hall, U.
When: Tonight, 7:30 p.m.
How much: Free
E-mail: ivan@desnews.com