JULY 1937

Is Tyrone Power in love? What does love meant to him? What have his romantic experiences been? How does he look at marriage, at women? What he's like, emotionally, has suddenly become of great concern. In his habit of half closing his eyes when he starts to smile there is--a provocative promise. This tall, dark newcomer suddenly giving Robert Taylor a run for honors, has created a big stir in Hollywood, as he has with the public.

Girls have been drawn to hi as automatically as he has been drawn to them. He is so vital. Women swear that his sense of humor--and his chuckle leaps into an infectious laughter--is the ultimate touch. He is, they vow, fervent, yet doesn't take himself "big."

I was over to his house the other day. In his own room an extremely masculine haven at the garden end of the low, rambling white cottage in which he lives, there are a couple of vivid sketches splashing the walls. Several pictures of himself and Loretta Young, romantic "stills" from their latest teaming. Then atop a mahogany chest was an enlarged informal shot of himself with Sonja Henie. Queening it on his desk was a beautiful, silver-framed close-up of the blonde star. It is affectionately autographed to "Darling...with Love."

Everywhere he goes socially, the vivacious talented Sonja is on his arm. But does he actually want to get married so soon? If so, what was all that flurry about his stepping out with Loretta while the skating wonder was away on an exhibition tour? It is rumored that that brief interlude upset the Young-Eddie Sutherland understanding, that the report of those dates threw Sonja into a frenzy. For when news reached her that Tyrone and Loretta were happily partying at the Trocadero, she flew in from the East fro a week's rest. Her studio gave her a luncheon, but it was plain that she hadn't made the continental dash simply for that. You've guessed the real magnet--Tyrone!

He is an amazing contradiction in person. Meet him briefly and he reminds you of the Buddy Rogers of years ago. Or of the Prince of Wales of yesteryear. He is completely attractive. Bring up stern reality and you'll be surprised. He not only has charm and tact; he has worked with his brain and with his hands. Although only 23 he has encountered so many different kinds of people, and from them he has learned so many ways of life.

Tyrone's dominating characteristic is a remarkable sensitiveness. Now, of course, it is this innate sensitiveness which causes hi to guess a girl's moods and easily fit in with them. He is obliging that way. He�s an old-fashioned gallant, with 1937 ginger!

His most embarrassing moment with a member of the opposite sex came when he was but sixteen.

I met a gorgeous girl at my mother's dramatic school," he confided. "We were living in Cincinnati then, Mother, my sister and myself. I ushered at the Orpheum and worked in a drug store after high school hours and I earned the money to buy my first Tux.

"I sorely needed one to escort such a vision to The Forthnightly. That was the society club and they were giving one of their dances when I fell so hard. She was blonde and had lovely long hair." Tyrone grinned at his description. He admitted then, "I can't resist hair that sweeps a girl's shoulders!

"I managed to borrow my uncle's car. It was huge--there was room enough in the back to put on a Shubert revue! Anyway, it helped me bolster up my pose as a nonchalant young man about town. When I parked in front of her apartment, I discovered the heater wasn't functioning. It was snowing like the devil and freezing over the engine. I had to apologize and jump out in the slush and push.

"But finally I clambered in again and role dup in front of the clubhouse as elegantly as I could. The pretentious doorman bent stiffly to open milady�s door. At the moment the fellow in front of us backed up and my uncle�s gleaming fenders folded right into the radiator. Tragedy! I wanly took the offender's name, checked the car, and somehow made the stairs. But when we had taken off our coats and were ready to step into the ballroom, I reached into my inner pocket--to pull out two blank pieces of cardboard. Later it developed that my cousin had borrowed my tickets to take his girl and had substituted those blanks. Have you ever had a cousin?

"Fortunately," he sighed, "we sighted some friends who knew we were supposed to attend the affair."

And once inside Tyrone had a whale of a good time. She was a divine dancer and he is very partial to girls who are smooth on a ballroom floor. He doesn't care to talk when the music's going dandy, incidentally. Girls who are continually dabbing on more make-up distress him and he dislikes the girl who invariable has to have two lights for her cigarette.

The blonde girl of the near tragedy episode who was clever enough to be really feminine, stands out as the most interesting girl he knew in his high school days. But there were others to come.

Instead of going to college, Tyrone began an acting career by trouping with his father's illustrious Shakespearian group. Then he came to Hollywood, joined a stock company one of the studios was then experimenting with. Here he was thrown in with a young struggling Hollywood crowd and was for the time being wrapt up in seeking opportunity.

He lived in tiny apartments. He had no automobile, and every cent went for actual expenses and clothes he needed to make a decent appearance. Once in a while he would double date with some of the other aspirants, go to a movie for a drive to the beach, have a fleeting evening of casual fun. But resolutely, I remember, he tempered himself.

He tot nowhere by avoiding kisses. The noble experiment was a frost. So Tyrone packed his suitcase and went to Santa Barbara to try acting with the community players.

It was there he met the second girl who mattered to him. She was all day exuberance shrine, almost. She was a different sort of girl, a girl who subtly teased him into enjoying the moment. She had a dashing roadster and she frequently invited Tyrone for weekends on her family's ranch. His spirits rose. For a year he was in one show after another. But he had to go on, he couldn't settle down to a frivolous society whirl.

When he signed a move contract he was sure he wouldn't seek another romance. At the studio he met Alice Faye and they went around for a month or so. It was just friendship. His meeting with Sonja Henie did lead to something, however.

"I'd only vaguely heard of Sonja,� he confesses. "She was giving her Los Angeles skating exhibition and was lunching at the studio. I no sooner looked down into her merry blue eyes and I was--er, impressed!

"She said, 'You are coming to see me tonight?' Not having planned to, I replied 'I haven't been able to get a seat.' Sonja twinkled. She reached into her purse. 'Here are two tickets, and you must come back during intermission and say hello and to my house afterwards for a little party I am giving!'"

Tyrone had made an immediate impression upon the little Norwegian marvel. Sonja is only in her early twenties as he is. But she has been fetter by Europe.

As keen to success in Hollywood as she was to capture all the skating trophies, the bond which links these two is their skyrocketing simultaneously and their great wish to be accompanied as actors. At Sonja's spectacular all-white house that night after her tremendous acclaim for her skating, her attention was all on Tyrone. She wasn't glad that he'd invited a girl to go to her performance. Not at all. Tyrone still doesn't catch on. "Why did she give me two tickets then?" he wonders, reverting to na�vet�. Sonja expected he'd throw one away and come alone!

She is accustomed to luxuries and he can't afford them. She spins around town in a big, all white, streamlined motor, with red leather upholstery. She will build a huge colonial home. Her picture salary is right at that very top, and whenever she skates she reaps thousands of dollars.

But Tyrone, who appreciated niceties, has had to skimp. And as soon as he was handed a raise he prudently mapped out a budget. His Uncle Frank, who isn't his uncle at all but a wise friend who's been the family lawyer for years, is investing for him so in the tomorrows there'll be interest coming in to live on. The one extravagance Tyrone indulged in is a snappy roadster.

He was assigned that lead in LLOYDS just as Sonja made her picture debut. After the cold mountains in which she grew up the eternal sunshine of Hollywood is a brand new treat for her. Tyrone has eagerly shown her California�s charms. They swim and bicycle--her father was the fastest bicycle rider in the world--and most often they go dancing.

Sonja studied dancing between the ages of four and twenty; so she shines at the Trocadero and the Cocoanut Grove. But she doesn't want him to spend money on her. The evening of the day I was at Tyrone 's last they were going to the movies.

They have so much in common besides their work. Both had Irish grandfathers, and both have inherited the quick wit of the Emerald Island. Both are impetuous, relying on hunches, and they have to control this impulsiveness. Tyrone has a stalwart appetite, and Sonja�s daily workouts to remain in perfect trim keep her from having to diet. "I always seem to fall for hungry girls," he laughs.

Sonja has been most assiduously chaperoned, and it is only now, in Hollywood, that she is experiencing American girls' independence. But Sonja has sensed that Tyrone doesn't especially care for overly athletic women, so though she has broken more sport records than any other man or woman in athletic history she artfully ignores that side of herself when she is with him.

She has become, naturally, grace personified. Yet she is sweetly feminine--except when she's a trifle imperious. Yes, Sonja is imperious at times and that merely captivates Tyrone all the more. He couldn't be attracted to a woman with no fire.

I am sure marriage is still the right thing," he has said to me emphatically. "I want to avoid the blunders which break up couples who start off so happily. For one thing, I don�t not believe in separations. Then I think, too, that a husband has to strive just as hard to make a marriage a success as the wife does.

"That's one important reason why I don't want to marry until I am older, until I have achieved permanence here. I couldn't find the time to be a very good husband now. To progress I have to be free to jump at chances. "Love," he added introspectively, "is a fundamental reply to something in me. It's a tremendous inspiration and influence."

His dates with Loretta Young were not a deliberate stepping out on Sonja. He and Loretta were each invited to dinner at the home of the vice president of their studio. Each discovered the other was going alone. They were working together, and it struck them as silly to part only to meet an hour or two later. They went out again; Sonja was always skating, and Tyrone was lonely. Loretta, at a standstill in her romance with Director Eddie Sutherland--he has been previously married and her religion prohibits marriage with a divorced man--was in a quandary. Here was an amazingly refreshing newcomer who was temporarily minus his girl friend. She said yes when he asked her out, as what young lady wouldn't?

But Tyrone and Sonja are devoted to one another. She is filling a place no other girl could. she not only is a superb companion but she is going through the identical grooming, facing the same perplexities, learning what Hollywood is all about as an equally surprised overnight victor.

Perhaps you read a columnists' tale about Sonja having to stop telling Tyrone where she was going to open next when she was away on tour. Tyrone bought his first orchids when he proudly escorted her to the premiere of LLOYDS OF LONDON. then recollecting that the King of Norway always sent carnations and a personal telegram to Sonja when she had competed for her nation, he decided he should send orchids once a week, to remind her of him, as she skated in each Easter city. His flowers were magnificent, Sonja guessed he couldn�t' afford the gesture and refused to say where her bookings were taking her. The columnist played up this intimate incident.

But here is the real topper to the story.

Tyrone went downtown to his Uncle Frank's. The staid attorney was beaming. "This really is fine publicity for you, my boy, this account of you sending orchids!" Tyrone gasped, "Oh, you think so?" Uncle Frank expanded. "Yes," he declared authoritatively, "that press agent yarn is worth a lot to you."

Tyrone pulled out the bill from the florist; the orchids had distinctly not been anticipated in his budget, and he owed for every one he'd ordered! "I trust, sir," said the new man of the moment with all the savoir faire he could muster, "that the gag is worth this much to you."

Uncle Frank looked at the bill and darn near fainted!



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