Over ten years a thin, dark-eyed but already good-looking boy of twelve walked on fast-growing lanky legs into a Cincinnati movie palace to see a picture called, “Seventh Heaven.” People were saying that a new star had been born in this film; that it was a masterpiece of modern photography; that the performance of Charlie Farrell, and of Janet Gaynor especially, were fine and emotional and very moving.

But the boy didn’t care about the work-of-mouth campaign that was making “Seventh Heaven” such a success. He rode over and parked his bicycle outside the theater and went in because he’d made some extra money running errands for a drugstore, and because it was Saturday afternoon, when he always went to the movies.

He chose a seat I the second row-the first was full of other children-opened a package of Jujubes, and settled himself comfortably on his spine. Five minutes later he was tingling all over with first love.

The young preadolescent’s name was Tyrone Power, and his new affinity was the projected shadow of Janet Gaynor; and today these two have all Hollywood whispering curiously-because not only is he still in love with her, she is in love with him, breathlessly, completely…..

To have held onto a seemingly hopeless devotion for ten long years, through the endless change from boy to young to man; to forget, at periodic intervals, those figures labeled vaguely in his mind as blonde and brunette and Mabel and Nickie and Sonja and a goodly number of other names; but always to remember at last the nebulous adoration of a distant and unattainable love-this is the amazing thing, the fact that is so incongruous with Tyrone and his generation. Usually a movie fan is unfaithful in relation to his favorite star’s success or failure. Usually he shifts his worship from one to another as his attitudes change.

But when Hollywood’s newest young contract actor was given a minor role in “Ladies in Love,” and on the set of that picture met Janet Gaynor, its star, for the first time, he could say nothing. Tyrone was not a fellow actor being introduced to one of the employees at Twentieth Century Fox, he was the boy who during ten years-as an errand boy and a soda jerker and an Orpheum usher and a road-show stock player-had seen every Gaynor picture four times, and had tacked her photograph over his dresser to look at when he combed his hair. He was a fan meeting a star, and so was speechless.

Janet said, “How do you do”; was momentarily appreciative of his eyes; waited for some sort of answer. When he merely stared at her, dumbly, she thought with disappointment: “Oh.” And turned away, dismissing him from her mind.

She was still so unattainable to him that he didn’t even consider telephoning her to ask for a date. His adoration of her was detached thing; it had no physical importance; it was a disembodied emotion, ideal because it demanded nothing. When he was away from her he still thought of her as the Janet Gaynor of the screen, a shadow, a kind of dream-and she was I his mind only occasionally.

So it was that he could sincerely beau Sonja Henie about town, as he had beaued so many other girls about so many other towns.

Nevertheless, the day after he met Janet he went to a florist and had three-dozen red roses sent-anonymously-to the Gaynor dressing room. The next day he wrote a check and established a standing order for the flowers to be delivered, wherever she was, three times a week and from different florists so she could not checkup on the person who was sending those roses that filled her studio dressing room and, after the picture was finished, the entrance hall of her house for three months, to little Miss Gaynor’s bewilderment. “But I haven’t’ the faintest idea who’s sending them,” she told the publicity department honestly, when they asked.

”Some fan, I guess,” she added; and she was right.

During the next two weeks she was too busy to think much about red roses, anyway. She was through at 20th and went under contract to David Selzinick to make “A Star is Born” in Technicolor, and she knew that it was her last chance-her only chance-to retrieve her failing film fortunes, her weakening box-office value. Here was a magnificent story, made to order for her: She must make of it her rebirth to stardom.

She worked like fury-and when the picture was previewed she knew the greatest personal triumph of her life. Janet Gaynor once again was one of the most important actresses in Hollywood.

This circumstance was, in all probability, one of the minor contributing factors to what happened then. This and the realization between Sonja Henie and Tyrone that their friendship had run its course.

On the morning after the opening of the new Gaynor picture Tyrone came out of the studio café and met a friend-a studio worker who also was an intimate of Janet’s. “Darling,” he said, “didn’t you see ‘A Star is Born’ last night? My God, don’t miss it-she’s marvelous. I’ve never seen such beauty, such-such-“

”In other words you like it,” the friend said, smiling. “I’m going tonight.”

Tyrone was staring into the distance. “You know,” he said finally, “I wonder if she ever found out who sent her all those roses?”

The friend began to laugh. “Why--you did, didn’t you? Good heavens. I never imagined-“

”How did you know?”

“You just gave yourself away. How did you know about the flowers, in the first place, if you didn’t send them yourself?”

He smiled sourly. “All right. She’s so wonderful-d’you suppose something would explode if I phoned her sometime? I’d like to very much. I mean, do you think she’d mind?”

”I’ll ask her at dinner tonight,” the friend assured him. “That’s the best way to find out-“ and went away before Tyrone could protest.

Janet’s friend gave Tyrone both the town house and beach cottage numbers. He called Janet the next night, and that was the beginning. He asked her to lunch at the Beverly Hills Brown Derby, and since she didn’t have an engagement for the next day she accepted; that cracked the shell of reticence, so that over the Spaghetti Derby he talked volubly, brilliantly.

She looked at him closely then, saw that in addition to his eyes, the dimly remembered nicety of his mouth and the good hairline were actual, too. His mind, young, but sharpened by precocious experience, was quick with inherent intelligence. He had enthusiams about things; he had vitality. And his eyes worshipped her….

It was after he had paid the check and they were preparing to leave that she was suddenly aware of a miracle; a hurt, old and long-present, was gone-replaced by a happier thing. She knew then that she must see Tyrone again. The settled in by having dinner together that night.

As I tape at his typewriter Janet Gaynor is in New York and Tyrone is with her. She had intended to be gone only a little while but even that was too long for young Mr. Power. He might have been able to wait until she returned if the mail hadn’t begun to bring him little gifts from her-if the telephone hadn’t rung so often to say, “One moment, please. New York is calling.”

she fell in love with him because she couldn’t help herself, but also because she needed him-and this love-more terribly than she had ever needed anything before in her life. In order to understand that, you must know Janet Gaynor and the story of those ten years during which Tyrone Power grew to manhood, ruing which she lived out her twenties and began the third decade of her life.

It’s a story of many loves, of heartbreak and of great happiness, and it begins with a man named Herb Moulton. He was with a Los Angeles newspaper and she was a young actress; her friends will tell you that he adored her too much at the time, and so was unhappy when she discovered-very suddenly-a young and very remarkable fellow named Charles Farrell, with whom she was to make a picture.

Here was real, magnificent love for Janet. Although, at the time, Hollywood considered their romance a publicity gesture, the thing they held for each other was compounded of a stronger faith and a stronger emotion than any that had gone before for either of them.

It was the first tragedy for Janet Gaynor when they quarreled finally, irrevocably; she married Lydell Peck, an Oakland attorney, almost immediately, and of course the inevitable happened. After her divorce from him there was a long blank period-without significance in her memory-during which she felt no emotion about anything, or anyone.

It was broken by one Dr. Veblen, a New York dentist, for a time and then, later she saw a little of Gene Raymond and Al Scott. Al she had known for years, all during the time he had been Coleen Moore’s husband, so that didn’t count. Gene might have meant more to her but he met Jeannette Macdonald…

A little bewildered, Janet faced a turning point in her life. Her career was at stalemate; and the thing she had always feared had happened to her at last; she had decided to fall in love with a man, but he had slipped suddenly away before she had had a chance to tell him so.

Janet’s rally was a brave one. She went into “Small Town Girl” determined to make it a good picture, and her success was double, because she found Robert Taylor, too. They went everywhere together: to previews, to nightclubs, to dances. And Janet was happy.

She could not believe it actually, when he discovered Barbara Stanwyck.

On that day when Janet first talked with Tyrone over a table at the Derby, her heart beat freely again--

A few months before she had seen the rebirth of her own professional star. Today she saw, at least potentially, the rebirth of herself as a woman.

Consider these two: this young man n his early twenties, this woman. If you are inclined to cynicism, to laughter at his young impulsiveness, remember that although he is twenty-three in years he is a shrewd and mature man mentally. The length of his life does not matter, so long as he has lived much of it; and Tyrone has wasted no single day or night, ever.

He is in the top flight of a generation of boys who prefer their women to be older, because precociously they have known too many involved young girls too well. This is a generation which was born to a new era; which was blasé about liquor by the time Repeal made it legal; which grew old early because it was forced to by things like War and the Jazz Age and Depression. At nineteen, his girls were twenty-two and twenty-three; by the time he was a stock player in New York and Chicago, he fell most in love with women who, relatively, were as experienced as he.

the things he and Janet do together, their conversation, their mutual interests, entirely aside from the more personal fact of their adoration for each other, are on the same mental plane. She likes to dance and he doesn’t, very well; so they dance occasionally. He goes to all the rehearsals of her radio broadcasts and criticizes her work detachedly. They go to previews, they drive, they see the shows that come to Southern California.

But, primarily, they like to dine quietly at her house and then spend the evening reading plays together-Ibsen and Shakespeare and Saw and sill impromptu things like “She Stoops to Conquer” and the ebullient “Private Lives.” With characters divided between them, they act and read the various parts with great solemnity; their favorites are romantic comedies, written for the great universal audience.

There are those in Hollywood who are directing pitying glances at this young man who dares lose his heart to a woman who has held so many young hearts in her hand.

His friends will tell you that in New York he asked her to marry him, but that cannot be confirmed as yet.

I think Janet will consider for a long time before she marries again. At present she is busy proving something to herself. If her interest in Tyrone survives the outcome-then perhaps….