One of Tyrone Power?s friends who is contemplating matrimony asked him the other day for advice on making a success of marriage.?

?If you have to ask for that advice, you?d better stop right there!? Ty answered.

But he admitted there were rules he had learned, and he felt that they helped to keep a marriage ticking along. He listed the rules this way:

?Continue as best you can to be as thoughtful and considerate in all things as when you were trying to convince her it was a smart thing to do in marrying you. That?s where the work begins. Before marriage she has to take your word on many things, but afterwards you darned well have to prove them! You may tell her you are the tidy type, for instance, but she soon learns different if your socks and shoes are scattered all over the floor.

?Get away from home together as often as possible. You gain much closer contact that way, free from the influence of every day life. Discovering new places, seeing new things together adds excitement and stimulus to something which might have become routine and therefore dull.

?Get away from home alone once in a while. It give you a new perspective on problems and values, and a chance to take stock of your own irritating faults and shortcomings as well as the other fellow?s A fresh slant brings eagerness to be together again.

?keep you sense of humor in working order. Laughing together at a problem will resolve many a minor situation which, if taken seriously, can become a situation beyond easy mending.

?Most important, never take marriage and its success for granted. That's the death knell.?

Ty and his wife, Annabella, celebrated the seventh anniversary of their marriage this year. Admittedly, seven years is no great shakes as a record of marital felicity. If isn?t even remarkable in Hollywood! Most couples out there manage to stay happily married for twice that long r longer; if the contrary seems to be true it is only because of the glaring publicity accorded the divorce of any individual even remotely connected with the movies, or because the misbehavior of an occasional celebrity is detailed in spicy length on Page One of the nations? newspapers.

In the case of Ty and Annabella, however, the reaching of the seven-year milestone is noteworthy on two counts. It marks a personal victory for them over as formidable a set-up as two young stars ever faced in marriage-they had not three but four strikes on them when they started out. It also proves how wrong the town?s wiseacres can be; back in 1939 the omnipresent busybodies glibly and confidently predicted the Power marriage would not last six months!

?Sorry to disappoint them this way,? Ty said with a smile, ?but we?re still going strong and headed for the home stretch!?

No blind luck or happenstance kept them going strong; it took a lot of doing on both their parts. Considering all the hurdles they had to take in stride, it took a heap of doing!

?In essence, I suppose, the picture isn?t much different today,? Ty admitted. ?However, if we have licked things this far, there is o reason we can?t go on licking them.? As it did for countless others the war posed a serious threat to Ty and Annabella?s happiness. Any prolonged separation of husband and wife is hard on a marriage, and Ty was in service well over three years. He enlisted as a buck private in the Marine Corps in August, 1942 (one of the first of Hollywood stars to go it the rugged route) and was not discharged until January 14, 1946. In the interim he rose in rank to a 1st Lt., was assigned to the Marine Transport Command, and after the necessary flight training stateside, was sent to that Pacific. There he was based in turn at Kwajalein, Saipan, Okinawa, and Kyushu, and also flew on special missions to Guam, Omura, Nagoya and Tokio.

Annabella, meantime, was serving with a USO entertainment troupe which made a complete tour of the European theater of operations in a production of ?Blithe Spirit.? At one time, when Annabella was in Italy and Ty in Saipan, they were some 10,000 miles apart. Idly figuring his chances of visiting her (purely wishful thinking on his part, of course) Ty correctly calculated one day it would be shorter to head west than east!

Like other devoted couples, they attempted to bridge the separation with letters. Each wrote long typewritten letters every other night, recounting such of their experiences and adventures as were not censorable, saying ?I love you? over and over in a thousand different ways, and planning eagerly for the future they would share together once the chaos of war was finished. Because each was constantly on the move, there were weeks at a time when they completely lost any contact with each other; delayed mail sometimes would arrived 20 or more letters in a bunch.

?Those were the worst times,? Ty recalled. ?naturally we were half-crazy with worry that the worst had happened.?

The inescapable separation war brings to a fighting man and his wife was not the only problem Ty and Annabella had to face and whip in their marriage; there were four other destructive influences, peculiar to Hollywood and themselves, which might have spelled disaster but for their common sense and great love. These same four factors, of necessity, still color the picture of their marriage today.

First is the nature of their profession. Being actors, each is a sensitive, highly emotional individualist. Add to this the great emotional strain of their work. Together, they cannot help but spell bitter clashes of personality and conflict of reaction, neither of which acts exactly as a soothing syrup for marital bliss.

?Even more dangerous, perhaps, is the unusually close relationship which must exist between actors making a picture,? Ty added. ?So close a relationship which must exist between actors making a picture,? Ty added. ?So close a relationship, both physical and emotional, is demanded that frequently the kind a simpatico usually existing only between intimates is established with a comparative stranger. Mix that with an unstable nature, and someone is apt to go off the deep end.?

Second is gossip. It isn?t easy to keep a marriage on an even keel when you everlastingly are hearing and seeing in print that things are in a mess. Slowly but surely insinuations or outright statements gnaw at the roots of happiness until suspicion and even self-doubt is born. Then things are in a mess, and the divorce court usually gets two customers.

?Apparently there are only three things an actor is supposed to do-become engaged, get married, and then have a baby or get a divorce,? Ty said. ?When you?ve done the first two, by heavens you have to do the third or else! Actually it isn?t the one rumor itself that?s malevolent; it is the endless repetition of that one rumor that gets one your nerves and eventually does the damage. Laugh it off? Easy enough to say, but not so easy to do!

Third is the matter of two careers in one family as is true in Ty?s case. Too frequently to be dismissed as coincidence, such tangent interest admittedly have put the skids under many a Hollywood marriage. However, Ty pointed out, there are advantages as well as disadvantages in such a union, and the overall balance still is an open question in his mind.

?The disadvantages are obvious,? he said. ?There are enforced separations through conflicting shooting schedules or long location trips which disrupt important mutual plans. There are the times you both come home physically and emotionally exhausted, with nerves on edge and tempers worn thin, making it easier to fall into a bitter quarrel about some ridiculous triviality. There is the subtle or unconscious battle for professional domination. And finally there is the problem of making a sudden transition into the private world of domestic problems and responsibilities after living fore the preceding eight hours in an alien world of make believe. It isn?t as simple as merely closing the door of a dressing room, or driving out the studio gates!

?Compensating for all this, however, is the greater understanding of each other?s natures and problems when both husband and wife are in the same business.. For example, a many who come home emotionally exhausted form playing heavy dramatic scenes all day cannot be expected to make as great a display of emotion over his wife as, say, a many who has been running a bank or selling shoes for eight hours. An actress wife understands this, and accepts it ipso facto, because she has known the same emotional fatigue in her own work; a non-actress wife reasonable might expect an ?explanation? of such apparent lack of interest in her. Unfortunately it?s something you can?t explain in words, and either you understand it or you don?t. Recently I was so engrossed in thoughts about the day?s work that I drove right past my own house on the way home. Far from being offended, Annabella thought it a huge joke! Then, too, there are times when neither of you happen to be making a picture, and that means wonderful holidays together which are doubly enjoyable because they happen so rarely.?

Finally there was the worry of Ty?s studio about his abandonment of the single state. All is serene in that department now, but there was a time when his marriage threatened to have an adverse effect on his career at a crucial point in its progress. As a glamorous and eligible bachelor, Ty naturally was the object of a million fans? romantic daydreams, and as such, was a valuable asset to the studio. Understandably, his bosses did not relish seeing this pleasant state of affairs placed in jeopardy. Also the studio was rumored to be none too happy about his choice of a wife. If he was determined to marry, a Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm bride would have been preferable to a young matron with a 9-year-old daughter. Fortunately Ty?s loyal fans soon proved they favored both his marriage and his choice of a wife.

How, in the face of such undermining influences, and despite the prolonged wartime separation which seems to have produced an epidemic of post-war divorces all over the country, has the Power marriage managed to survive?

?Probably,? Ty said, ?because it had a sound basis in the beginning and nothing has changed.?

That no change has occurred in their feeling for each other, at least, was amply evident in the ardor of their meeting in Portland, Ore. When Ty?s ship brought him home from the Pacific. That hug and kiss, front paged the next day from coast to coast, was no carefully rehearsed act for the cameramen. It was plain, old-fashioned love, out in the open for all the world to see!

?Surprise, or no, it was the thrill of a lifetime to see her standing on the dock!? Ty said. ?For once I didn?t give a hang how many people caught me kissing my wife!?

Immediately they embarked on a second honeymoon (their first had been spent in Paris in 1939) to celebrate the end of their long separation. First came two glorious weeks at a secluded desert spot, after which they returned to Hollywood for Christmas with the family. And what a day that was! In the afternoon, and far, far into the night, the house was thrown open for all Ty and Annabella?s friends to come by and say hello and welcome home.

An unusually close and happy bond, incidentally, exists between Ty and Annie, his 16 ear old stepdaughter. He isn?t exactly fatherly toward her-she always calls him by his first name-but he does exert an acknowledged paternal influence over her life. They have long father-daughter talks about her problems, and he takes a firm hand in disciplining her whenever necessary. Usually a temporary indifference to her studies at University High School brings that on, and the worst punishment he can met out is to deprive her of riding her horse for a week. An excellent horsewoman, she?s quite a ?hoss trader? too; she owns three beauties which she swapped for one Ty gave her.

After Christmas Ty and Annabella went off on a spree-two weeks of shows and parties in New York and two weeks of winter sports in Canada-to wind up their personal celebration of the war?s end. Then they returned to Hollywood and work, Ty going at once into the heavily dramatic lead in ?The Razor?s Edge,? and Annabella to start preparing for her next picture, ?13 Rue Madeleine,? the exciting O.S.S. story in which she will star. (Both Ty and Annabella are under contract to 20th.) More important to them, they also returned to being Mr. And Mrs. Ty Power of Hollywood, Cal.