Vintage Hunk: Howard Keel

Howard Keel was a 6'3 dynamo with one of the great movie musical voices. Most fans know him from his 10-year stint on the popular hit TV series Dallas, but movie buffs remember his great, short-lived musical career at MGM.

From 1950-1955 Keel won cinema immortality in some of the great Hollywood musicals of all time. Annie Get Your Gun, Showboat and especially Kiss Me Kate show him to be a sexy, handsome actor with a great booming voice.

Sadly, his movie career declined with the collapse of the studio system and the end of the great MGM musicals.

Harold Clifford Keel was born in Gillespie, Illinois to an early life of poverty. It was so bad that one of his teachers started bringing him lunch every day. After the death of his father, Keel moved to California where he graduated from high school at age 17.

Legend has it that Keel's land lady overheard him singing and encouraged him to take vocal lessons. After understudying John Raitt in Carousel and moving on to the the long-running Oklahoma, Keel was given the lead in the 1947 London production of Oklahoma. Being the first postwar musical to hit England, the play and Keel were smash hits on opening night. Keel's future then seemed assured when MGM signed him to a contract and gave him one of the plum musical roles of the decade: Frank Butler in Annie Get Your Gun. Both he and Paramount dynamo Betty Hutton as the exuberant Annie were very well received (left).

From 1950-1955 Howard Keel was in one great MGM hit after another. Showboat was a marvelous film with a brilliant score by Jerome Kern, and Kathryn Grayson and  Keel cast as a perfect movie couple. Unlike other famous singers of their day who tried to make it in movies (Dick Haymes, Perry Como and even Frank Sinatra), Keel was a hugely masculine star who had the looks and talent to fully inhabit each role. His voice matched his looks, and while not conventionally handsome, he was tall, sexy and totally masculine.

Howard Keel's best movie role was in the glorious Kiss Me Kate, again with Grayson and the added presence of Ann Miller, Bob Foss and Tommy Rall. Kiss Me Kate was originally shot in 3D and is one of the best Broadway to film musicals. Keel was never sexier than in his role as Petrucio (right), with his great beard and wonderful costumes that showcased his imposing physique; but the real joy is watching he and Grayson, who brought out the best in each other.

Following Kate was the big hit Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, then the vastly-underrated Kismet, directed by Vincente Minnelli, where Keel's sexy, macho style was perfectly on display in this desert epic. During this period he was lent to Warner Brothers to co-star with Doris Day in Calamity Jane, another giant hit, earning the Academy Award for the great ballad "Secret Love," movingly sung by the dynamic Day. And Keel was wonderful as the gruff Wild Bill Hickok. Then in 1955 Keel starred in his last MGM musical: Jupiter's Darling, which was also Esther Williams' last MGM film. While not a success, the film is actually quite good and Keel is one sexy Hannibal.

The death of the Hollywood musical left Keel in an entertainment no man's land. Reduced to summer stock and nightclubs, he had pretty much decided his career was over when he was asked to be the oil baron Clayton Farlow on Dallas. The success of this series reinvigorated Keel's career, and riding on this late career success he recorded a number of albums.

Keel died of cancer in Palm Desert, California at age 85. He was married 3 times and had 4 children. His last marriage of 34 years was a great success.

Keel was a natural movie star whose 5-year reign as King of the MGM musicals produced some of the great treasures in movie history. Sinatra and others are more famous, but no one was better than Howard Keel in musical films.