"I know I'm taking a gamble with all you're trying to keep on top you've got to risk your neck once in a while."

Tyrone Power speaking, ladies and gentlemen. Tyrone Power, one of Hollywood's most successful stars, explaining why he took a daring chance on his movie fame last summer. Why he appeared in Liliom behind the footlights of a summer theater at Westport, Connecticut-seating capacity 350.

"When you're on the way up, you don't have to worry about getting soft. Circumstances take care of that. Your life is filled with perpetual challenge. But once you're a star, you either have to create challenges for yourself, or pretty soon-well, you find you aren't a star any more. Unless you keep on your toes all the time, you're likely to be caught flatfooted. Your routine of success can become a rut. And I've known many a rut to become an eventual gutter."

Not many acclaimed young actors would have the courage to subject themselves to the hazards of a summer theater performance. The straw-hat circuit-that's what they call these little theaters perched on the edge of meadows, housed in barns, which attract the summer fugitives from the heat of the large Eastern cities. The stages are makeshift-production is usually nothing to brag about. Everyone, form star to usher, pitches in to work without distinction or reserve.

The Westport theater is an unglorified barn on the edge of a meadow, and it isn't infrequent for lines for dialogue to be interspersed with a loud baa-a-a-a from the sheep grazing nearby. Sensitive actors insensitive audiences take it on occasion for a criticism of what's going on behind the footlights.

When Tyrone first announced that he and Annabella would appear in LILIOM for producer John C. Wilson, who managed this informal theater, Hollywood shrugged-made all the sounds which added up to a lusty "oh, yeah," and dismissed it from its collective mind. A publicly expressed yearning for the spoken 'dray-ma' is nothing new in Hollywood.

But when it became apparent that Tyrone and Annabella were seriously studying the script-that they were even rehearsing over their morning coffee-cinematown was not only bewildered-it was downright incredulous.

"A dangerous adventure"; a "foolhardy notion"; "a gamble with his screen fame"-their plans were called.

Personal appearances in the theater, especially on the straw-hat circuit, have never been connected with current great success on the screen. Temporarily eclipsed stars, those who want to give new impetus to a career getting a little brown at the edges, resort to this shot in the arm to help their shrinking egos.

Occasionally it has proved to be good business. There is instance after instance of bargain-counter film players getting back into the big Hollywood money through a stage appearance.

Producers couldn't see Betty Grable for dust until she smashed through to a hit in DuBarry Was a Lady. Then they took off their blinkers and dug deep into their pockets for her resumed screen services. For an actor-acclaimed, idolized, honored and highly paid as Tyrone Power is-to make a chance on a summer theater show, takes on the complexion of a gamble with loaded dice.

There is too much risk of failure-something unpredictable can so easily happen. No matter how lavish the production, how cautious the staging, or with what care a vehicle is chosen.

Katherine Hepburn went back to the theatre and was mauled by the critics. I took her a long time to recover professionally from the adventure. Vivien Leigh and Laurence Oliver bore numerous scars after their joint appearance in Romeo and Juliet.

Not for a moment did Tyrone minimize the hazards of a stage appearance. Especially of an informal one-without the trappings of a great theater, ostentatious production and many, many weeks of preparation.

"But," he laughed, when I talked to him about it, "a thing like that is a challenge. Not that I go around dreaming up hard things to do just to prove to myself that I can do them. But I don't dare get soft. I don't dare take whatever success I have had on the screen for granted. I've got to keep my mental toes. The brain needs as constant condition and exercise as a person's body.

"I like the theater. I've grown up in it. Nothing is so much fun as being in one of these summer production. Everyone has a wonderful time. Audiences are lazy and lenient, and you sort of take things in your stride.

"This wasn't the idea of a moment. I've planned it for two and a half years. I read plays and discarded them. I discussed the matter with John Wilson, who produced all the Noel Coward plays, every time I was in New York or he was in Hollywood. We wrote about it and talked about it. When LILIOM was suggested, that seemed to be it. And it had a beautiful part in it for Annabella."

"Of course," I pointed out to him a day before he left for New York to begin rehearsals, "a lot of people will say that you're doing it to show-case Annabella's talents."

"Let them," he said. "I don't care. It might sere that purpose. I have never felt that Annabella has had a real chance in Hollywood. She isn't a glamour girl-she is an actress. She is a very great actress in a town primarily concerned with presenting personalities."

Annabella wants to continue on the screen. But certainly not in innocuous, sleazy, thrown-together roles which would be an injustice to her abilities and capacities. Dozens of roles have been offered her in the last few months. She will continue to reject them until she finds one suitable.

Tyrone Power will tell you that he used his vacation to play in a straw-hat theater-at a salary that didn't cover expenses-because it was a challenge.

True enough! But it is quite possible that the fundamental reason-perhaps the unconsciously motivating reason, was Tyrone's desire to show the world and Hollywood--

Annabella-the actress they haven't really seen!

SIDEBAR

Westport, Conn.-Tyrone Power was on trial in more ways than one here last night, when as LILIOM in the second scene of Act 2, he stood before the stern tribunal of courtroom in the beyond. For the heavenly magistrate who was trying him forgot his lines and hopped over a page of the script.

A panicked stage-manager stood in the wings and stage-whispered the lines, trying in that climatic moment to take the judge back to where he digressed from the continuity of the play.

And a panicked magistrate, Eustace Wyatt, displaying no sign of his predicament to the audience, ad-libbed lines as he stumbled along.

"Poor Ty," the assistant stage manager, Elaine Anderson, exclaimed desolately when all her cues were clearly wasted effort.

Not an actor in the wings retained his poise. Annabella, who was offstage during the scene, clenched and unclenched her fists and stood like all the others with her eyes focused hypnotically on her husband.

If ever there existed a doubt as to the acting abilities of Tyrone Power it was demolished in that painful two-minute interlude here last night. He stands as a credit to Hollywood and the legitimate theater today for the magnificent balance with which he improvised replies to the strange passages the rambling magistrate fed him.

For two minutes it looked as if the worthy spirit which induced two stars of the movie firmament to step down out of their sugary security and take their places side by side with other troupers in summer theater might prove the most disastrous motivation of their careers. But out of the haze came a flash of hope. The magistrate repeated a line, the line at which he departed from the script.

"You said that," Tyrone Power ad-libbed the redeeming cue. Then he picked up the next passage of the script slowly, calmly, and magnificently. He gave the magistrate time to observe what he was doing. And backstage everybody sighed an audible relief.

As LILIOM, Tyrone Power is the most convincing young Hungarian ne'er-do-well I have ever seen. He has spark and animation, and the baby face you see in the movies becomes something real and interesting behind the footlights.

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