If I were asked to suggest a hand expressive of our post-war hopes for a better world, I would without hesitation choose the wonderfully moulded, strong hands of Tyrone Power. They are the hands of a fine artist whose mind and heart have been opened by thought and experience to the world in which he lives. They are hands shaped by heritage to the actor's art, trained to precision by war and fitted by extraordinary mental and physical development to work with other young hands in building a brave, new world.
As Tyrone Power sat across the table from me, I studied his intense, handsome face, then returned to the hands which had told me so much at almost a glance.
"How unusual in an actor," I thought to myself. For the second time I examined features of his hand which are more often to be found in doctors and ministers than in actors. But there they were-the full Mount of Venus, the well-developed Mount and finger of Jupiter and the fine-curved, deep-reaching had line. In combination they reveal the heart which beats for mankind and the mind which reaches out to share the sufferings of others. Men who are guided by selfless principles and are unconsciously motivated by the compulsion to move forward with other in the evolutionary process of life have these collective feelings.
I could not resist shaking my head in unbelief. "But this can't be," I said. "You are the first actor I have ever met who is not egocentric. Talk about the needle in the haystack. I think I've found the needle."
I had listened with great interest to Tyrone's account of his preparation for the role: Talking to men who had embraced the Indian philosophy of life, spending hours in solitude to capture the consciousness of the spiritual which Larry Darrell acquired.
Tyrone's life falls into two sections, divided by the war, and it is "The Razor's Edge" which begins the new and more important chapter. The feeling for humanity revealed in his hand began long ago, forming quietly and slowly, coloring his thinking more and more. The war abruptly thrust him from his well-ordered existence into condition which demanded the very best of him, mentally and physically. It called for strength above that which he possessed. Somewhere along the line, perhaps in the new kinship he found with his fellow men in moments of grave danger, his consciousness of the broader life expanded, his sense of brotherhood with those who make up the world, the good and the bad, opened like a flower in the sun.
The Tyrone Power who came back from three years of war service was not the same Tyrone Power who entered the Marine Corps as a private.
Still there have been other men whose mental and spiritual faculties have been intensified by war and who have returned to civilian life only to gradually lost their idealism in their readjustment to society. It might have happened in Tyrone's case but for the fact that Darryl Zanuck saved the role of Larry Darrell for him-saved it for almost three years. That is another strange piece which fits into the mosaic. It is as though Tyrone had been born to play the hero of "The Razor's Edge."
In breathing life into "Larry Darrell", he has progressed beyond measure in his own spiritual development.
In the hands of man are the reflection of all that he is and all that he will be. The hands are seismograph on which are recorded the shocks of childhood, the parental influences, the inborn strengths and weaknesses.
Tyrone's graceful fate line runs to the Mount of Jupiter, which is found beneath the index finger. It signifies leadership in the skills and the arts, and it speaks of ability to be a useful member of society. His creative wealth, extending far beyond the acting art, is attested to by the balancing elements of masculinity and femininity in the shape of his hands and his fingernails. The truly great creative being has within himself the combination of the masculine and the feminine. No man ever wrote a great work or painted a powerful picture without a strong mixture of the feminine within him, nor has any woman made an impress upon the world of art lacking masculine power.
The Mount of Luna, to be found midway on the outer curve of the hand, and the headline reaching into it, stamp him as an idealistic, imaginative type. His skin texture points to his sensitiveness. He is a broadminded man, tolerant and forgiving of the weaknesses of others, as the wide space between his heart line and his head line show.
Before I cam to his heart line, I knew that emotion must have played a vital part in Tyrone's development as a thinking and deep-feeling man. The heart line told me that and more. Emotion has shaped him and will continue to exert considerable influence over him. In matters of love, his warm, passionate nature is released without restraint. He loves with all his being and gives himself completely. Love has never been casual or light with him. His smooth fingers, another sign of emotional in the human hand, confirm the heart line.
We now come to his parental birthright, which is revealed in his right hand.
I was amazed to find that although there is a great similarity in both hands, the parent hand, dominated by his famous actor father whose name he bears, is a wild, chaotic hand. There are lines of sheer genius in it, but the total effect is an uneven one and lacks proportion.
In Tyrone's own personal hand, the left hand, the lines are balanced. The whirls of a strong subconscious appear in both hands, but only in that of the son's is it harnessed and linked firmly with the head line which dips into it. The measure of control in the parent hand comes from Tyrone's mother, a gentle, artistic woman, who taught her son to love beauty and value order. Her relationship with her son was extremely beautiful; it was to mother that he turned for consolation through most of his youth. But Tyrone's mother was also restless and torn by the need to constantly move. The parental hand reflects this quality, which she had in common with Tyrone's father, though not to the same extent.
But it is the father's unruly, poetic nature which overrides all else. His stormy subconscious compelled him, great actor though he was, to seek escapes. He was constantly driven and harassed by feverish impulses throughout his career. His need of solitude to fight the disordered emotions which poured through him was acute. Like his son, the sign of dominance in his profession-the bending of the fate line to Jupiter-was in his hand. Tyrone has the innate sense of rhythm which must have belonged to both of his parents, for the lower knuckles of his two thumbs project in a marked manner. It has enabled him to almost automatically sense the pattern of drama and has given him remarkable timing. His love of music stems from it.
Tyrone's early life is mirrored in his fate line, which starts deeep on the outer part of the hand and brings to mind the picture of a boy given to dreaming. Even today he is prone to retire at times to this "Peter Ibbetson" type of dream world. The broken marriage of his parents is clearly etched in the early formation of the fate line and the shock of this to his happy nature is recorded. Until the age of ten, at least three influences figured in his life-his father, mother and sister. At ten, a strong but painful influence appears and with it a great disappointment. It is my conclusion that it was at this point that he began to understand the erratic nature of his father, accepting his many weaknesses, putting behind himself his childhood illusions and even loving him in a curious, shy way.
His sister gave him comfort and companionship during the years when the adult world of his father and mother seemed harsh and terrifying. Tyrone was a physically weak child and since there was only a slight age difference, he turned to his delicate, affectionate sister to assuage his loneliness. She has been a strong influence in his life and even today the line of influence continues.
New traces of influence, many of them appear in that portion of the fate line which begins after his father's death. These were lean days for him, days in which every dram of his inherent persistence was drawn to survive the disappointments of Hollywood and Broadway. Because of his warm-hearted nature, he reached out to absorb the love and devotion of others and to return it in full measure. The line of influence which belongs to Annabella begins shortly before their marriage, which is marked in Tyrone's hand at that age of twenty-five. It is an influence line which one would expect to find I the marriage of a sensitive, serious young man and a vivacious young woman-even at times, curving at others. If not altogether a harmonious line, it does denote different cultures blending together, stimulation, great attraction-in short, an exciting influence.
A triangle is formed on Tyrone's head line at the age of twenty-eight. This type of triangle signifies a significant new experience, vigorous in force. For Tyrone it was World War II.
,p>I told him that war service for him, whether he cared to admit it or nit, had been a baptism of fire, shocking in its impact. But from the beginning, he had hardened his will to it and had learned to endure it stoically. I told him, too, that while strong men have broken down to cry on the battlefield, his own agony in seeing his comrades killed was unutterable and almost too much to bear.
"All that you say is true," he admitted, smiling gently and wisely, loving truth in all its forms.
We talked for a time of the lessons in human comradeship which he had learned during the war and of the spirit of sacrifice which had come to fruition within him. Like "Larry Darrell," his spiritual awakening had grown out of the war and , like "Larry," he had returned to his old life with a feeling that he was a small link I the chain of humanity and that from now on he must shed the outworn in quest of the absolute.
"Since I have known this new philosophy," he told me, "people seem drawn toward me in a much stronger and in a more decisive way than ever before."
The future is a golden one for Tyrone Power.
There will be many new influences in his life in the years to come.
The deepening of his fate line and its turning to Jupiter lead me to believe that he will make a distinctive contribution in production and direction to the motion picture industry. It will be fresh, new and adventurous.
He will give of himself to the world of tomorrow which the veterans of the war and the new generations will make. With millions of others, his is the understanding that as different colors compose the beauty of the rainbow, so do different cultures combine to create the human race in its nobility.
He stands for the new post-war American who is determined to fight fiercely for the belief that all the peoples of the world can live peacefully together, as our great country has so eloquently demonstrated in its history.
I find myself marveling at his generosity of spirit and his ethical riches.
I had looked at the hand of a great man in the making.
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