Mr. Tyrone Power, the dark duke of the cinema kingdom of Graustark otherwise black Irish, which he is, and acts like a British diplomat, which he might have been because his grandfather was.

He was sitting over there in the corner of his living room, shadowed by a tall case of Shakespeare.

“Of course,” he said. “Of course, I’m going back to the legitimate stage sometime. It’s in my blood.”

The Powers, man and boy, have been acting for ore than one hundred years, and if Tyrone Power III doesn’t go back to the stage and carry on the tradition, then I hope the banshees get him, and I pray that all the Tyrones buried in the ould sod fling back the peat and stalk the earth again, haunting him and mocking him. The duke is afraid they will unless he takes up where his father left off.

So we have an idea Mr. Power will never be completely happy until he is trouping

And when he goes out to do some characters from his beloved Shakespeare, we believe Mrs. Power will be with hi. The duchess-Annabella-is not a Shakespeare addict, but she’s a Tyrone Power addict. What Annabella really like is poetry. Her favorite poem goes like this, if I remember my Poe:

It was many and many a year ago; In a kingdom by the sea; That a maiden there lived whom you may know; by the name of Annabel Lee--

Annabella tucked her de-Garboed feet under her and said in measured hand-picked English, “Isn’t it love-love-“

”Lovely,” her husband volunteered.

”Thank you, Ty,” said Annabella. “Isn’t it a lovely poem?”

Yes the poem is all right, but we thought Mr. Power was speaking of his wife when he said lovely, and he probably was. Somehow, sitting there next to Annabella, we couldn’t’ get excited about Annabel Lee, even if she were born many years ago by the sea, for no other reason than to love and be loved; and we lay odds-on that Mr. Poe’s Annabel Lee was not as lovely as Mr. Power’s Annabella.

”I got my name from that poem, you know,” she explained. “My mother always loved it, and when I became an actress we selected the name Annabella. My real name is Ann Charpentier.”

Mr. Power smiled at his wife. She had made the statement without hesitation and he was proud of her, for she still is pretty much of a stranger to the King’s English, even to the Hollywood version, which often is not English at all.

The duke and the duchess had just returned from church, for it was Sunday morning. I had reached their home in Brentwood before the California sun had brushed away the mist, which looked like fog to me but which must be mist, because fog, rain, hail and poverty are forbidden in southern California. We came to a wall that was overrun with flowers and stopped at a gate. My escort yelled into a telephone at the gate and the barrier swung open. The password was “Studio.” But don’t try to use it if you ever get to Hollywood, for they change the password just about every day. We went up a driveway that was flanked with flowers, and ahead of us was the castle of the duchy of Powers. It is a large white house with a small front lawn, a bid back lawn and was permeated with the fresh odor of mowed grass. It is an austere house, not unfriendly, but neither is it cozy.

The duke opened the door and his handshake was firm and friendly. He was wearing brown and his trousers were rolled up almost to the top of his sock.

”I have been out in the back,” he said. “Out around the swimming pool. A bit damp out there. Dew.”

He showed us into the living-room, explaining that Mrs. Power would be along shortly. He sat in one corner by his Shakespeare library and ordered beer. Mrs. Power tripped daintily down the winding stairs and joined s, but not in taking beer. Then came a lull. The first question of an interview is always the toughest. Mr. Power looked at me rather closely, then he grinned. On the screen Tyrone Power never grins, but smile that warm smile of his. He grinned a boyish, friendly grin. “Have another glass of beer, “ he said. “It will break the ice.”

It did. “Do you like Shakespeare? I just got some new Shakespeares in.” He jerked his head toward a bookcase. “Swell, aren’t they?”

Mrs. Power’s lips moved but made no sound. The I realized she was repeating the word “swell,” trying to get the American accent. “Yup,” I said, “they are humdingers.”

”Humdingers?” Mrs. Power looked flabbergasted.

Mr. Power explained to his wife that a humdinger is something grand.

He left his beer on a table and took me to his bar in a small alcove just off the living-room. There was no decoration except a few old theater posters. All of the posters blazoned the fact that Tyrone Power’s father or great-grandfather was starring in some show. There was reverence in Mr. Power’s voice as he said: “It took me a long time to collect these They are very old posters. Some of them were used in London and some in Boston. They and my Shakespeare are among my proudest possessions.” He glanced at his wife when he said that and his looked seemed to say,” “Of course I am proudest of you.” Mrs. Power smiled at him.

The duke took another hitch in his trouser-legs as he walked into the back yard and around the flower beds that lay like a ribbon of rainbow. Mrs. Power pointed out the different flowers and discussed them, and Mr. Power beamed at her and was proud of her knowledge.

Unlike Crown prince Gable, the duke does not like dirt. And unlike court Jester Lombard, the duchess does not like chickens, except to eat. The Powers enjoy flowers and grass, but they prefer to hire people to do the work of caring for them.

The duke’s idea of a swell time is to be nice and clean and cool, and to sit in his comfortable armchair and read Shakespeare aloud to his wife. He acts Shakespeare when he reads him.

If the Powers lived south of the Smith and Wesson Line, they would be called “quality folks.” They both are gently born, and although they are friendly in a well-mannered way, there are no backslapping characteristics about them. They are proud and sensitive. They are not night-spotters and are always in each other’s company when they are not working.

It is quite apparent that the duke and duchess never bore each other. They sit for hours and read, and seldom speak unless they have something worthwhile to say. Trivia bores both of them.

Mrs. Power does not burden her energetic brain with too many housekeeping problems. She is the confident mistress of the Duchy of Power, but she had rather read the classics than cook. The family can well afford plenty of servants and Mrs. Power sees no need of giving her time to the details of running a house.

She pays a great deal of attention, however, to her husbands diet, for the duke really is not a brawny he-man. When he first went to 20th Century Fox, after being kicked around he weighed only 155 pounds, but now he weighs about 165 and is husky enough. His studio insist that he is quite an athlete, and even goes so far as to say in its sales talks that its star is proficient in boxing, wrestling, swimming, horseback riding, fencing, hunting, fishing, rowing and aviation.

We don’t believe that the duke is proficient in all of those tings. Back in high school he went in for athletics but flopped. In fact, when he was graduated on of his teachers told him, “Well, Tyrone, you weren’t much in athletics but you sure were hell on acting.”

Mr. Power is a serious-minded student of the theater and of life. He is the best conversationalist on serious subjects I met in Hollywood. He can discuss literature because he reads it and understands it. He knows the theater because he was born into it. Some movie actors know little or nothing about the persons they portray, but not Ty Power. When he was cast in “Lloyds of London,” he studied the history of the great insurance house, and today he ca talk about ships and sealing-wax, about cabbages and kings. He is an authority on the life of Jesse James and on the folklore of the Ozarks. His next picture will be “Brigham Young,” and he often pores over the history of the Mormons.

Sometimes he gets excited when he reads and will call out to his wife, “Listen, Annabella. Listen to this.”

Then he will get up from his chair and walk back and forth, holding the book in his left had and gesticulating with his right. He will read passages aloud to her, slowly, distinctly and with feeling. Hi is an excellent reader.

His library is by far the best I saw in any star’s home-good, thumbed volumes of history, biographies and classics. His wife is teaching him French so he can read French drama in the original. However, they seldom speak French to each other, as Mrs. Power wants to get in all the practice possible with her English.

Their likes and dislikes are quite similar. They furnished and decorated their home together. Mr. Power selected most of the old prints, but his wife always was with him when he purchased them. They both are students of furniture and porcelain. They designed their own glassware and had the glass blown in Italy.

The duke was a moody and somewhat grouchy man until he met Annabella. Ambitious almost to a fault, if ambition can be called a fault, the young actor with the great name had taken a beating from life. Of course, he hadn’t been kicked around as Clark Gable was, but Power is not the happy-go-lucky man that Gable is. He is more sensitive and his emotions were a bit scrambled. The difference is that Mr. Gable is Teutonic and Mr. Power is Gaelic-moody, tempestuous, Irish. He is only twenty-six now and barely was twenty-three when he became a star, but nevertheless he had become impatient and thought that fate was dealing to him from a cold deck.

Then one day he and his mother saw Annabella perform, and Mrs. Power said, “There’s one of the finest actresses I have ever seen.”

In 1938 [sic] they were married. They had many barriers to overcome, but they scaled them. Mr. Power was a pretty good actor until he married Annabella, and now he is, as his father was, one of the real hopes of the American theater. Mrs. Power deserves much of the credit.

Unquestionably, this could was gambling with happiness when they got married. Gaelic and Gallic, mixed in matrimony, can be dynamite. It is hard enough for two stars to get along because of professional jalousies, but when an Irishman marries a French girl the result might well be a clash of temperaments.

They both know this. Mr. Power is too well mannered to discuss his marriage. But he did say, “My marriage has made me very happy. One doesn’t really start living until he is happily married.”

”He reads pat-pat-“

”Patiently to me English.”

”She reads to me in French,” the duke grinned.

And that’s as good an explanation as any of why an Irishman fell in love with a French girl and why they are making a go to if. But really, to understand the duke and the duchess and their marriage, we much study their backgrounds. So next week we’ll flip the pages back to 1913, when Anne Charpentier was born, and to 1914, when Ty was born almost between curtain-calls.