Wikipedia has updated its section on Janie's TV career with some very useful info for collectors of Jane Powell TV shows. One of my favourite Janie TV moments is the 'Passion Impossible' sketch on the Jimmy Durante show in which Janie plays a flirtatious young woman looking for love on a TV dating show, the prize catches are Jimmy Durante and Don Knotts! The sketch is great fun throughout and really shows Janie's natural feel for comedy. There is more on Janie's TV career in the wikipedia article below.
JANE POWELL IN TELEVISION:
During the 1950s and 1960s Powell appeared regularly on television. These credits included guest spots on nearly all the major variety shows of the period such as perry como, The Andy Williams Show, The Kraft Music Hall, frank sinatra, The Ed Sullivan Show, The Hollywood Palace, The Red Skelton Show, eddie fisher , The Dinah Shore Show, The Dean Martin Show, the smoothers bothers , alan king , This Is Tom Jones, The Garry Moore Show, The Jerry Lewis Show, The Judy Garland Show, gordon Macrae and The Bell Telephone Hour. She did a stint as one of the What's My Line? Mystery Guests on the popular Sunday night CBS-TV program. She also appeared as guest panelist on the same show. TV specials included "Meet Me in St. Louis", "young at heart", "Feathertop", " anniversary standard oil show in 1957", "danny thomas show 1967" , "victor borge show", "Ruggles of Red Gap" on Producers' Showcase and "Hooray for Love". She also hosted on a one-off basis versions of the chevy and bell telephone shows. Dramatic guest spots included both The Dick Powell Show and The June Allyson Show. She also had a failed TV pilot for a sitcom called "The Jane Powell Show." Powell was also a regular guest on TV variety shows in Australia when she visited there to perform her nightclub act. She also had a one-off TV special in that country in 1964.
In the 1970s she appeared in 3 TV movies Wheeler and Murdoch, The Letters and Mayday at 40,000 Feet!. She also guested in a TV musical version of the story of Jesus Christ called "the Cruxifixtion". Guests spots on TV anthology programs included The Love Boat and Fantasy Island.
In the 1980's she again guested on the love boat and fantasy island. Another guest spot was On "murder she wrote". She also spent 9 months in 1985-6 playing generally unsympathetic character on the daytime soap Loving, which she said she thoroughly enjoyed[2].
At the end of the 1980s and the beginning of the 1990s she also had a regular guest spot on Growing Pains (playing Alan Thicke's mother).
She was a temporary replacement on As The World Turns for Eileen Fulton as Lisa Grimaldi in 1991, 1993, and 1994.
In 2000 she appeared in two TV movies in supporting roles in The Sandy Bottom Orchestra and Perfect Murder, Perfect Town.
Her last major TV appearance was a guest spot on Law & Order: Special Victims Unit in 2002.
Like nearly every star in show business she has also appeared on numerous TV Talk shows to promote her latest project. Her most significant effort here would be a week's co-hosting The Mike Douglas Show in 1970 where she talked openly for the first time about her son's drug addition problems.
