"People ask, and I say he's a private in the marines." Annabella smiled softly. "I think I am prouder to say that than if he is a general or an admiral."

As this is written, Ty Power is finishing CRASH DIVE, his last picture till after the war is won. When you read it, he will be in training with the Marines at San Diego. He can't wait to go. His impatience is such that sometimes Annabella gets mad at him. In words only she gets mad, because inside she knows exactly how he feels.

Since the day of Pearl Harbor they both knew he'd be going, though neither said so. Annabella wasn't in the room when Ty happened to switch a radio dial as the news crashed through. He went to find her. Tyrone keeps his emotions in hand. If his eyes blazed, his voice was quiet. "Well, we're in for it now," he said.

Her eyes widened. Her shoulders lifted in a small Gallic movement. That was all. But each knew what the other meant more surely than if they'd cried ft from the housetop. Later Annabella put that moment into words. "It was the first goodbye."

This is the story of how one man worked out his place in the scheme of war, how one woman met his decision. It's interesting, not because they're movie stars, but because their experience is representative. Their thoughts, their feelings, have been and are being duplicated a million fold all over America. The central figures here are no longer Tyrone and Annabella of Hollywood, but Mr. and Mrs. Ty Power in the year of our Lord 1943, which is separating more husbands and wives than any year in history.

To Annabella, the word "war" means "your man is going." One is synonymous with the other. Through four years of her childhood, all the story she heard was war, and all the men went. Her father was gone for four years. Her grandfather enlisted as a liaison officer and worked with the Americans. She learned that war was terrifying and, at the same time, that you must endure the terror. When American went in, her reaction was automatic. It meant Tyrone would go. Even as the blow fell, she steeled herself to meet it. That's not courage, she says--just a reflex left over from childhood.

coming up...

In Europe all the men went. It came as a surprise to her that here men are drafted in many categories. Because of his dependents, Tyrone had been classified 3A. "Maybe it's a miracle," she thought. "Maybe it won't happen--anyway, not yet." But she's no good at self-deceit. When they heard of this friend who had been drafted, the other who'd enlisted, she couldn�t misread the expression that crossed Ty's face. Her first instinct had bee right then. If they didn't tell him at once to go, he'd himself. And as any true woman would, terror or no, she loved him for it.

People told Tyrone how important movies were to the war effort--as an education force, as entertainment for the soldiers, as a prop to civilian morale. He said: "Movies will still be made after I go." They told him the government needed his income tax. He grinned. "With all the billions they need, they won't miss mine." They went on persuading and hoping against hope. He went on grinning and looking around.

He didn't want a commission. He's a man with a taste for thoroughness. Whatever he learns, he must learn from the rudiments. As he saw it, and officer's primary function is to lead and handle men. How can you handle men unless you've been one of them.

He had no equipment for such specialized branches as engineering, science, ordnance. He could fly, but they wouldn't take him as a flyer. Fist he was overage. Second, while educational requirements had been lowered, they still weren't low enough to include Tyrone, whose formal studies had ended in high school. by a process of elimination, he reached the conclusion that, without special training, the most useful thing a man could do was just to go in.

The decision was his own. Annabella stayed on the sidelines. She doesn't even remember when they first put into words what they said without words on the day of Pearl Harbor. Sometimes you remember a conversation. He takes you into a corner and says, "Listen, darling--" and it becomes a thing you don't forget. But not with this. He must have said it in the middle of something else--in the car, maybe--. she knows only that she lived so long with the thought of his going, that when he said it at last, it came without shock.

As she left it to him to choose his own time for speaking, so she left his other decisions to him. For reasons as wise as they're charmingly expressed. Most little girls, Annabella thinks, want to be little boys. She never did. She loved being a girl--she loved dolls and pretty dresses, she loved everybody to be nice with her, and that her father had a little preference for her because she was a girl. Now for the first time in her life she wants to be a man. Because during wartime, girls are doing the best they can, but still they are just second. Second to men. Well then, since you can't be a man, at least you must not make it difficult for him, already it is tough enough. The girl has t help, but not toe suggest and advise--which is, perhaps, to confuse and irritate. It is he who takes the danger, it is he who must take the decision. So when Tyrone talked, she listened. when he asked, she answered.

Several circumstances combined to send Ty to the Marines--the formation in this country of a glider school, a talk with General Denig of the Marines, a training film he saw, a visit to Camp Elliott. he could get glider training either in the army or the marines. Then he met General Denig. the general stuck a deeply responsive chord when he said: "We're first and foremost a combative outfit. No matter in what capacity you join, you first job is to learn how to use a gun. A doctor goes out with a gun and a scalpel. A correspondent goes out with a gun and a typewriter. He picks up the gun first and the typewriter second. If it's still around. And it he's still around.

Ty chuckled. that, he thought, was the spirit. He found it again in a March of Time release, called THESE ARE THE MARINES, a film that showed the devil gods in training. If you've seen it, you know how tough that training is. It appealed to something fundamental in Ty. Leaving the theater, he mused; "I'd better give up smoking, I'll need all my breath," then remembered that he wasn't a marine yet.

tough cookies...

At Camp Elliott al the men were pretty tough cookies. He liked their combination of independence and discipline. He liked the fact that no one got preferential treatment. He met the head of paratroops, and promptly decided h was the kind of many you'd like to work under. Instinctively you gave him respect and confidence. If anyone could get you out of a jam, this fellow could. To make it short, Ty liked the marines.

So one day he and Annabella took the train to Washington and were very gay. Most of us will recognize the mod as she described it. "It's as when you go to the hospital for an operation. You act as if you were doing that every morning. You talk a little louder, you laugh a little harder. You try to be so normal, and of course you are not, because when you feel normal, you don't have to try."

Came the afternoon in Washington when, before leaving the hotel, he took both her hands. "Darling, when I come back, I'll be in." She nodded, she kissed him and watched him go. then she went out herself. Always when she's nervous, she has to walk. she walked around and around the Navy building, forcing her mind away from herself and Ty, thinking of all those other men, all those other women, here and all over the other women, here and all over the world, struggling toward the same high goal--the liberation of peoples, including the liberation of her own beloved France. She and Ty were two little humans among many, taking their place in the onward march, taking their importance from unity with the rest.

Meanwhile, having passed his physical, Ty was being inducted by Major Howard. "Raise you right hand," said the Major who read the oath of allegiance.

"I do," said Ty. That�s all there was to it, not counting the thrill that chased itself up his spine.

Neither in Hollywood nor Washington had he mentioned the purpose of his trip. But newspaper men are no dopes. As he came out at six, there were the newsreel cameras and the whole damn works. He grinned at sight of Tony Muto, Fox Movietone man. He could see Tony, once this job was done, hightailing it to a phone booth. Their boss Darryl Zanuck, was in town, With the proper pride in his calling, Tony'd kill himself to get there first with the news.

Ty got back to the hotel before Annabella. Each time she looked at her watch, she'd decide, "Not yet," afraid was almost as if he's returned from the wars to see him waiting, hale, unscarred and smiling.

crucial moment...

"Did you do it?"

"I did it."

And when that scene was finished, they went downstairs to drink a toast to the marines.

Later Tony called and Annabella heard Ty whooping over the phone. what he'd foreseen had happened, but with a twist that Capra might have invented.

"What can I do for you?" Zanuck had asked.

"Nothing, chief. Thought you'd like to know that Ty Power just enlisted in the marines."

Pause, long enough for choking. then: "That's all I need to make my day complete Henry Fonda enlisted in the navy this morning."

It was all Ty needed. His spirits ran over. The joke was irresistible. the James boys had done it again.

Back in Hollywood, he made an important phone all. "Is this apprentice seaman Fonda? This is marine private Power. Want to hear what your boss said?" Annabella swears she could hear Hank's bellow. She thought it was funny, too, but not that funny.

Ty's on inactive duty until after the making of CRASH DIVE, with orders o report, once the pictures; finished, to the commandant at San Diego.

Annabella's worked out her own formula--one step at a time. She thinks only of today. today he is with her. When he goes to San Diego, she�ll think only of San Diego, where she can visit him, and he can come home on leave. She'll face tomorrow. Apropos of which she said something which seemed a clear reflection of her won lovely spirit. "We are so close," she said quietly, "and Tyrone is so important to me--if he would disappear, it is as if I would disappear myself. Well--you don't go through life feeling sad because some day you must die."

they neither force nor a voice the subject of his imminent departure. Above all, they don't dramatize it. Mostly, according to Annabella, they talk silly things about it. As for instance: "How long will it before you begin to miss me?"

"Half and hour."

"You are very gallant. Now I will tell you what I think. I think that for one month the excitement of new things will be stronger than anything else. But after one month I hope you will begin to feel no so good."

Or he tells her of an encounter with some studio wit. "You�re going into the marines?"

"Yes."

"You know you're a coward, don't you? Anyone who quits 2oth Century Fox for the marines is a coward."

carrying on...

Which makes Annabella the brave one, since she went back to work at the same studio. During the years of her marriage, she's appeared on the state but not in the movies. this was by no set purpose. There's never been any question between her and Ty of marriage or career. They're both too well balanced. Had the right screen part come along, she'd have taken it.

Things happen, she thinks, always at the right moment. It just happened that soon after Ty enlisted, they asked her to do SECRET MISSION, a story she liked, in which she plays a French girl in the Paris of today. Before, she would have done it for fun. Now she does it because to be busy helps, but, too, because the money is important.

She wants too much to be able to keep their house. "If only for that, the work would be worthwhile. Because our home, it is our life. Even if I am along in it, he is there in a way. And for him, when the war is over, it will be good to come back to our lovely, happy house. He will be tired of having an awfully little bed in an awfully little corner.

The one thing she won�t do is sign a long-term contract. Because imagine he goes to some other place, and he has a week's furlough--she must be free to go to him--maybe it would be for the last time before he sails far away. No picture, no money in the world would be worth her freedom of movement then. No, not even the house.

but that's tomorrow. She'd rather talk of today. And today she thinks it's comical that, in his pictures, Tyrone has worn every uniform but never the uniform of the marines. So she doesn't even know what her husband will look like.

"But I have an idea," she informs you gravely, while her eyes shine. "Not to brag, being the wife, still, I have an idea that Tyrone will look--not too bad."

[ back ]