If there's anything worth doing that we won't do, sooner or later, I don't know what it is!

I won't go so far as to claim he's try anything once, because he's no fool. But when it comes to living life to the hilt, my friend Tyrone Power is the one man I know who's doing it. He's full of ideas for new adventures every time I see him. The astounding thing to me is his ability to make his plans materialize, every time.

He's different from me right off, you'd soon detect. I go with the tide, like it nice and comfortable. If I hate to argue for my rights, I duck out. I hate a fuss, and besides I never seem to win. Ty is exactly the opposite. He makes up his mind with that same speed with he moves physically, and he usually gets results.

Ty is not an escapist, but a realist. All problems imply their ultimate solutions to him. There's nothing counterfeit about Ty. Forcefully himself, he's a human being you can't forget because of his intensely human qualities. Sure, he has faults! I understand them and ignore them, just as he puts up with mine. He thinks and moves like a jet, and will snatch at any slowly executed thing and to it himself because he wants everything he wants now. He can forgive inadequacy instantly, but any form of stupidity, irks him violently. If he ever loses his temper it's when inefficiency irritates him. Bang! There's an explosion-and then it's over. He isn't the brooding type. Sometimes, for no visible reason, he'll be in a terrible mood for fifteen minutes. Then he snaps out of the blues with no hangover of self-pity, and is as considerate and exhilarating as ever.

He has changed in certain respects, and yet is the same as he has always been in other ways. My playing 'Cortez' in Captain from Castile meant I worked with him for almost five months steadily, a severe test of any friendship. It's the first picture we've ever done together in all the years we've known each other. I'm impressed by his thoroughly business-like conduct on sets. Once h was a great practical joker. The war must have sobered him completely where filmmaking's concerned. He's very serious whenever actually working, stops all kidding. He always knew his lines perfectly, I noticed. When we'd come to dialogue or scenes that didn't feel quite right to him he'd quietly discuss his beliefs with director Henry King, with whom had made seven pictures. Ty never behaved temperamentally, never created a scene that wasn't in the script. He's on of the very few top stars who modestly think of themselves as employees. He says he is being hired to do a specific job, act a certain role in a film. He realizes perfectly that he's not running the studio.

But he feels that in America it is the privilege of any employee to speak up politely. Letting well enough alone when you honestly don't consider it good enough is, to him, the also-ran's approach to life. He says all craftsmen must maintain professional standards as high as possible to go on being hired, and he believes any sane employer is happy when sensible suggestions add to the eventual profit. That savvy of Ty's that determination of his to make every picture of his as good as possible I every detail, wins the respect of everyone of his co-workers-and it explains a lot of the team work that goes into the making of any Power film. That pays off at the box-office, too.

Ty's interest in every part of our industry dumbfounds me. During the four months we were down in Mexico on location he had the Hollywood trade papers flown down so he could read them daily. I never bothered; I was busy enough working in the picture. He isn't in the movies to get rich and then get out of them, but because he's never been able to conceive of more fascinating work. He wants to continue succeeding on the screen so he is constantly re-estimating himself. When he was in high school ushering nights and Sundays in Cincinnati movie theater, he kept a careful check on the popularity of every film. He used a loose-leaf notebook from a dime store, and rated audience reactions to every star. He studied directors' twists on store is, compared values.

Now that he's on the inside he's just as hep to people's opinions. He cares what you think, invariably inquires and always listens. His first film on his return from war was his studio's most expensive production of last year and gratifyingly, 'The Razor's Edge' proved to biggest grossing picture when 20th toted up its profits for this year. Ty abhors ruts, so jumped a the opportunity to surprise audiences with a switch from a spiritually-uncertain hero to his current ruthless rascal characterization in 'Nightmare Alley.' As the ambitious carnival barker who connives to gyp everybody, including the women who enter his life, he demonstrates superbly what an excellent actor he has become. He's a heel who gets double-crossed. Can you imagine a fearful, vain star taking such a role?

Perhaps this untold tale explains his courage. When Ty was first signed by 20th the first thing he did when he could get away from all the bewildering routines for a newcomer was to revel in a little personal prelude to stardom. He made a sentimental journey by himself to all the still-standing sets where the stars he'd admired from afar I Ohio had made screen history. Secretly he was consumed with excitement at the possibility of following in their footsteps. He still is! His innate good taste, of course prevents him from mentioning his private pledge to become outstanding; but from the many outstanding films he has made you know how conscientiously he's live dup to his resolution. I just don't want you to assume Ty's triumphs are wholly luck. And, in that wonderful way, he's still sentimental. In his library you can come across twenty-eight hand-bound leather volumes. They contain the shooting scripts of his starring vehicles to date. These are his most treasured souvenirs, because so much of himself went to into each effort to entertain.

There's no complex living-the-character trait in Ty. At the end of a scene he automatically reverts to reality from his role. He doesn't have to be pampered with closed sets, or any of the nonsense that can be whipped up to keep a great star I the mood to do his best. No on here has a deeper appreciation of genuine art, in all its forms and shadings, than Ty has. But he has an ever-accompanying sense of proportion, and sense of humor. There's nothing hammy about him! To give you an accurate notion of how hard he works, he had only two weeks off between the two pictures he's just made. The rest of the nine months their filming consumed the literally reported every day. His superb concentration, and skill at snapping out of it, isn't a common thing in Hollywood. Ty's pride is what spurs him on.

As the swashbuckling Pedro de Vargas in Captain from Castile Ty returns to the type of screen adventuring in which he made his mark originally. It's as startling a contrast to his present punchy performance as a carnival barker as the forthright comments of fellow Marines when they saw movies; he's determined he will never be a bore, and this variety is his recipe. He has another earmark that you should know about He extends a helping hand as part of his creed. He says he remembers what it was like to be an unwanted nobody. He was one when he tackled the movies at eighteen, fresh from Ohio. He had to move a dozen times that first year here, from rooms to tiny apartments to Universal, and they let him go. 'No future in Power!' they stated solemnly. Ty was forced to give up, to leave town. So he started at the bottom again on the stage in Santa Barbara, on the radio in Chicago; it was a heartbreaking climb from working for almost nothing to eventually acting the role on Broadway that won him his 20th contract.

He was delighted to have Coleen Gray play her second role opposite him in 'Nightmare Alley,' and equally anxious for Jean Peters to click when she stepped from an Ohio campus into the feminine lead opposite him in 'Captain from Castile.' No demands for guaranteed 'name' draws, you see. Ty was thrown out of his first lead right here at 20th by a director with remarkable little vision; so, recalling how that hurt, he went out of his way to be helpful to these new leading ladies. He never tired of rehearsing with them, of showing them little camera tricks. I might add he isn't a wolf. His manners with women are ones of true courtesy, interest and wit such as he serves up can't be beat. I know, for I've often watched him with the ladies!

They don't have to be slaves to fashion to attract him. He doesn't like affectations in women any more than he does in men. He believes a woman can and should be just as good as sports as a man. Careers are their right also, he thinks, when they have the necessary talent. His own mother was a distinguished actress on the stage, later made a name for herself as a dramatic coach. She combined her beauty and brains with the bringing up of Ty and his sister. So he knows a woman's life is just what she wills to make it.

He's inherited his systematic set-up from his mother. His father was the epitome of impulsiveness, which was possible on the stage but wouldn't work in the Hollywood of Ty's era. Ty has a gift for organizing that would make him a top executive anywhere else. He detests being strapped with petty details, so he assigns them to assorted aides. Chief one is his swell secretary, Bill Gallagher, who's been with him for eleven years now, barring time out for the war, too. Bill is installed in Ty's studio dressing room suite, functioning with all kinds of filing cabinets that tell at touch where everything and everyone pertinent to Ty's life is.

I would say Ty's transformation into an able businessman is his most marked change since he's come back. He used to let someone else attend to all his business affairs, feeling that understanding a budget and finagling savings were matters beyond him. Experience has taught him that you can't grow in limited ways, skipping essential knacks. A person with Ty's deep love of luxuries must become well aware of how his salary goes or, after his big expenses and taxes, there won't be any investments. Having made up his mind to acquire a proficiency in business managing himself, Ty's doing marvelously well at it.

this determination of his has always been awe-inspiring to me. A friend of his who went through high school with him, Bill Walsh, now a Hollywood publicist who remains a pal although he's never worked at publicizing Ty, was on the football team that Ty couldn't make because he weighed only a hundred and ten pounds on entering high school. Bill says Ty was benched from the fourth team because the coach considered him too slight of build. Thereafter, during the noon period, Ty proceeded to play football with a gang of garage mechanics on a rocky field littered with broken glass. That's the driving spirit that is still pushing him ahead.

I have known him since he first began here at 20th. I'd been brought out to Hollywood from New York two or three years before he was, and I remember Maynard Morris, who was our agent and who also got John Payne into pictures, invited Ty and John and me to drop in at his apartment for drinks one afternoon. We saw one another around town, oftener when I moved to 20th. Then we lived on the same street in Brentwood for years. We'd say let's get together for some bowling, and somehow never did. I ran into him only once during the war. It was at a New Year's Eve's party when I had just returned from Saipan and he was en route for a year there.

His invitation to join him, Bill Gallagher, and two other friends from the studio to see the world by air with him is typical of his thoughtfulness. A year ago my vacation did coincide and with Ty piloting I was able to visit twenty-six Central and South American countries in a total air-travel time of only one hundred-and-twenty-hours! Crossing the Andes, Rio-a thousand memories. Ty had flown down to Rio eight years before as a passenger and swore then he'd return flying his own plane some day. You know he learned to fly before his war piloting, don't you? The studio forbade him to learn. Ty continued taking lessons secretly, and one weekend landed on director Clarence Brown's lawn just to give the Brown's guests a thrill. It did! It also broke the You-Can't-Fly ruling. After flying overseas in the war Ty's had no trouble qualifying for his present license: it ranks him as a commercial pilot for single and multi-engine planes. Ty's a safe and sane pilot, I'm glad to advise you. I took over the controls but once; it didn't give me any sensation or urge, so I'm content to remain merely a passenger. Letting the guys who know what they're doing do it.

I had a a hunch that Ty was building up to along vacation and another long airplane trip when he made two pictures one right after the other this year. Sure enough, about a month before the end of the second one he tipped me off that he was getting set to fly to Africa. 'How about coming along on this one, too?' he asked me. But just that morning the studio had given me the news that I was scheduled for a trip to Maine, come September, with director Henry King for the picture 'Deep Water,' so I was down at Howard Hughes' airfield at the ungodly hour of seven A.M. on Labor Day for the take-off, but this time I was on the outside looking in when Ty pulled back the throttle and started down the runway.

It's a different ship this time from the Beechcraft in which we flew some twenty-three thousand miles over Latin America last year. This is a converted DC3, equipped with six auxiliary gas tanks for that long hop over the South Atlantic. It also has all the latest navigational gadgets, plus a topographical camera for photographing possible sites for future location trips. But this trip, like the previous one, is primarily a good-will tour.

And what a tour it's turning out! The over-all mileage will be about thirty thousand miles and Ty and his three men flying companions (the same who went to South America) will have been gone ten weeks this time. From Los Angeles they headed for Dallas, then Miami, then Trinidad in the British West Indies. From there the route was to Natal, Brazil, and across the ocean to Dakar, in French West Africa. Then to Leopoldville, Belgian Congo; Capetown and Johannesburg, South Africa; Mozambique; Nairobi, in Kenya Colony; Addis Ababa in Ethiopia; Khartoum and Wadi Halfa in the Sudan; Cairo and Alexandria, in Egypt; from there the route reads Cyprus, Crete, Tunis, Turin (Italy), then home.

Our lengthy location trip to Mexico for 'Captain from Castile' shed further light on Ty's true self. We spent more than a month in Morelia, the capital of the state of Michoacan, using it as Spain for our film. Much of the architecture of two hundred and fifty years ago still exists there. The contrasts in Mexico fascinated us. For example, they love baseball. Ty proposed at a Lion's Club luncheon we attended in Morelia (see how modern they are?) that a benefit for needy children be staged, with a baseball team from the American movie company playing a Mexican team. Ty was captain of our team, played first base. And shone! Me? I'm the best grandstand sitter you ever saw! I cheered wildly at every decision of the Mexican umpire.

For our scenes showing old Mexico we went on to Uruapan. Extinct Popocatepetl, the volcano rising above Mexico City, had to be doubled by the currently active volcano Paricutin at Uruapan. Ty flew me over it, without telling me in advance we were going there! It was erupting violently that day and we headed into billows of angry smoke. There isn't a single living thing for ten miles around the boiling lava. A once green and fertile valley is now nothing but death and desolation. The Indian village near the volcano is completely buried, except for the tower of a cathedral which will soon be buried, too. It was terrifying sight. Ty flew half our whole company from Uruapan to Acapulco, where we filmed Cortez's landing in Mexico. And speaking of Cortez, I may as well admit I didn't read the best-seller from which our picture is made. I didn't want to know exactly what Cortez was like, for fear I'd be confronted with mental hazards. It's the first time I've ever played an actual person on the screen, and that way I safeguarded my own hopes of being convincing. At Acapulco we had curious crowds watching us work. A man came over to me and asked, 'Do you recognize this lady with the three children?' I had to confess I didn't. Twenty-two years previously, when I was thirteen one Anna Maria had been my mad crush during a New Jersey summer vacation. That's Ty's favorite location tale on me.

Ty's unceasing energy still amazes me. No matter how late he stays up he can be up early and full of vim. He used to stall any unwanted task; now he's different-he's a demon for getting it over with immediately. That's hard on manna me when I'm around him. However, on his credit side let me mention his new habit of social spontaneity. He doesn't hesitate to postpone any date if he's not in the mood for relaxing, and I think he's not in the mood for relaxing, and I think this is no minor declaration of independence for any man. He still reads his newspapers hurriedly while in his car and waiting for a stop sign to change. He still prefers classical music-Beethoven, Grieg, Schubert, Tchaikovsky, Debussy, Wagner, and Prokofieff, to be definite about his record collecting. His famous leading ladies are as lasting as their friendships with him as his fans-Gene Tierney gave him his white police dog. It was hers until she gave up her Franklin Canyon house, had no fenced yard in which to keep him, and then quite naturally though of Ty.

He's very positively close-mouthed about his intimately personal problems. He doesn't inflict his troubles on others. The more I think of his self-chosen reliance, and of this good taste of his, the more I like the guy!

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