You'd never think it to look at him, but the United States Marine Corps has a tough tope sergeant who can attest to the fact that dark eyed, sensitive almost to handsome Tyrone Power is a fighter. He fought for recognition in the Marine Corps during the war in the same quiet, gentlemanly way in which he fought his way to stardom both in Hollywood and on Broadway. And that pleasant, courteous, almost gentle manner of Ty's fooled the Marine Corps at first just as it has fooled a lot of people who underestimated either his acting ability or his popular appeal.

Ty Power enlisted in the Marine Corps in August, 1942. He reported to Camp Elliott, in San Diego, California, on January 4, 1943, as a private. He never sought a commission by mail, as many other famous men did; and he never asked for a deferment on the grounds that he could be helpful to the morale of our enlisted men as a civilian.

But he was bound to have a hard time as a Marine recruit. He knew he would. Those rugged, battle-hungry men took one look at this handsome movie star profile and decided to toughen him up. They baited Ty unmercifully. They rumpled his bed after he'd made it; they mimicked hi speech; they tripped him up; they called out in high, falsetto voices, "Oh, you handsome movie star!" whenever Ty emerged from his barracks.

Finally, just before applying for admission to Officer Candidate School, Ty took a deep breath and decided he might as well have it out. He went to his top sergeant and asked whether it was all right with the top kick if Ty invited one of his tormentors to meet him out behind the barracks. Ty Power had to prove he could fight.

His top sergeant glared, drew himself up to full height, and said, "Power, you know better than to ask me a thing like that. You know that any private found fighting will land in the guardhouse--."

"Ok, Sarge," said Tyrone Power politely, "that's what I was afraid of--"

And then, as Private Power about-faced smartly and started to leave, the sergeant's vice stopped him: "But as your top sergeant, Private, Power, let me say that if someone should tell me of a disturbance behind the barracks some evening. I'd have a hard time hearing what was being said, and I'd be awfully busy looking someplace else."

Tyrone Power grinned a most unmilitary grin. He said heartily, "Thank you, Sergeant!" and turned and strode off. That night, the racket behind the barracks was ear-splitting, but neither enlisted men nor officers were able to hear it. No one made a move to break up the fight, yet Ty Power had taken on one for the Marine Corps' top sluggers. People were afraid to look at the handsome movie star when the door of the recreation hall opened and Tyrone Power walked in.

He entered just as he always did; polite, charming, smiling, gentle of speech and of manner. He didn't have a mark on him. But the Marine Corps' top fighter had a little difficulty with a wisdom tooth, and found it advisable to go to the hospital for a few days. After that, Ty Power was accepted by this tough fighting groups as one of them, and went on to distinguish himself at Officer Candidate School, graduating with the rank of Second Lieutenant and advancing to First Lieutenant before being discharged in November, 1945.

"Tyrone Power fools people," a friend of his said as we drove out toward Beverly Hills, and the long, low, white stucco ranch style house where Tyrone Power lives with his wife, Linda Christian, and their two daughters. "Most people don't realize, for instance, that in addition to keeping himself in top physical condition, he works hard to overcome the insipid type-casting that is one of Hollywood's greatest weaknesses."

While he was working on MISSISSIPPI GAMBLER, on loan-out to Universal International, he was also working evenings, holidays and weekends with Charles Laughton and Paul Gregory on JOHN BROWN'S BODY. Everyone but Tyrone Power was amazed at the success of a story which, until this capable trio got to work on it, had always been thought of as a classic epic poem. People said, "No one will understand it." They said, "Who's interested in the civil War? You'll be playing to empty houses."

But when the drama opened in San Diego, it not only opened to a packed house, it played to an audience that stood on its feet as one man, after the curtain came down for the last time, and roared its approval of the drama and Ty. The thrilling experience, Tyrone Power said that evening after his friend had introduced us, "...Made you remember America's heritage of outrage--it made you remember what America is all about. It made you remember that Americas been split with discord before, but in the end, America has always been united by a lot more than ever divided it. It was a thrill to take JOHN BORWN'S BODY on the road and to interpret it for millions of people who'd never been even heard of John Brown or, for that matter, of Stephen Vincent Benet."

This wasn't Tyrone Power, the movie star, talking. The excitement in his voice and in his mobile expressive face wasn't kindled by any desire to "give a good press." He was completely unaware of himself and the impression he might be making. He didn't wait for questions but spoke easily and entertainingly--and it was an effort to get him to talk about himself and to bring the conversation back to Tyrone Power. He was a charming and delightful host, with the ease of manner, the culture and the graciousness for which producers and directors are forever searching. He is interested in everyone and in everything--and anxious to have all share his own enthusiasm.

"One of the most wonderful things about this experiment of Paul Gregory's of just taking a book, a stage, and a handful of actors, with no props, no orchestra and no scenery of any kind, is the enormous freedom it gives. Just think," Ty said excitedly, gesturing toward the floor to-ceiling shelves stacked with books in his own lamplit library, "all a producer has to do in order to bring a story to the public is to select a book. Then he calls his actors and director together, rents a theatre--and there you are! It gives theater production a kind of freedom it's never known before. It gives us the opportunity to take a chance on doing something new."

Tyrone Power has spent his life taking chances on something new--and fighting for what he believes in. H thinks that the only thing wrong with the movies is their reluctance to try ideas that are original.

"As Charles Laughton says," Tyrone Power explains this, "what would a man be like if he never took a chance form the time he was fifteen years old on? How exciting would he be by the tie he was fifty? Ty is emphatic about it.

Tyrone Power’s own life is as good an answer to the rewards of being willing to take a chance as anything could be. At an age when most movie stars are having trouble holding their stomachs in and their chins up, or worrying about receding hairlines, Tyrone Power looks and acts like a man of thirty. He is literally charged with vitality. He has a secretary come to the big house outside Beverly Hills every night and he works on story ideas, reads and answers his mail, reads and discusses the dozens of scripts that are sent to him as a possible movie or stage vehicles, and uses the long distance phone constantly to contact members of his family, friends, other actors and agents.

One of the people he calls most frequently is his mother, former actress Patia Power, "I told you not to worry about me. You're the one to worry about. Have you been resting and doing everything the doctor told you to do? Yes, Linda's fine--I except her and the baby home next week."

The rumors about a break-up of his marriage to Linda Christian seem unfounded. It's hard to believe he's not devoted to his lovely, dark haired wife when you see his face light up as he mentions her name; when you hear the real loneliness in his voice as he says, "I'll certainly e glad to get her back home again..."

So far, Ty Power has been much too busy to be any part of Hollywood's night life. When his wife is away, the light in hi study is burying far into the night as he works or reads. When Linda Christian and their two adorable babies are at home, the family is always together, either in their own home or at the nearby beach.

Tyrone Power is serious, hardworking, and has always had to overcome handicaps, beginning with the handicap of a famous name. Fighting to take a name for himself, he made the usual rounds of the Broadway casting offices and was delighted, at first, to find that the famous Power name opened doors to him. But once on the other side of the door, the young Power found that people only wanted to reminisce about his father, recalling his great successes on the stage and making his son feel that he would never have the talent his father had.

He turned to Hollywood. But, after a few small parts, he decided to go back to New York and fight it out the hard way, avoiding the people who might have seen him for his father's sake, living on five dollars a week while he fought to make people give an ear to this Tyrone Power. Then he finally made a hit in "On Stage," and the tables were turned. Hollywood came to him.

Tyrone Power has become one of Hollywood's most durable stars and one of its steadiest money makers. He receives over a thousand fan letters a week from teen-agers and their mothers. Hi has starred in over forty pictures, his most memorable being THE RAZOR'S EDGE and the recent I'LL NEVER FORGET YOU.

After his smashing success with JOHN BROWN'S BODY, Ty would do another play if he could find something he can consider not only right for him, but something that is a challenge. Because, as the Marine Corps found out, Tyrone Power doesn't stay typed and ticketed; sooner or later he'll break out in a finish-fight and do something no one thought he would do. In the meantime, after having finished THE LONG GRAY LINE at West Point, he left for Italy to star n LORENZO THE MAGNIFICENT, while wife Linda Christian is starring in a story based on the painting of the Mona Lisa.

Linda will probably leave her tow babies with her mother, and the long, low house, with its Spanish type porch that runs the entire length of the building will be quiet and empty. It's a house that, unlike its pleasant, hardworking occupants, really looks like the home of a move star. The furniture in the living room is low and is all upholstered in a white, rough-textured material that matches the floor-to-ceiling drapes at the wide picture window. The rugs are white, the furniture is white, the walls and ceilings are white, and the only touch of color is the magnificent Goya painting that hands above the fireplace.

It's a quiet house, that has about it the feeling of a home, even when the mistress and the babies are away from it. Perhaps that's because the tall, dark-haired man who sites behind the library door, working and reading and telephoning friends, devotes much more time to being a host, husband and father than he devotes to being the average person's idea of a moody, temperamental movie star.

"He has some fans," said a member of the Twentieth-Century Fox public relations department, "who have been writing to him for almost twenty years. And when he was doing MR. ROBERTS in London, two young girls came every single night, occupying the same two seats in the fourth row. On the last night, Tyrone sent someone out front to invite the girls to come backstage and meet him. it was the night he was due to be presented to the late King George and Queen Elizabeth, and he barely had time to make it back to the hotel to change, then dash back to Buckingham Palace. But he wanted those tow girls to know how much he appreciated their loyalty."

We were driving back down the steep hills and the narrow, winding roads. Below us, in the valley, lay the millions of lights that have beckoned so many people to fame and fortune, or to heartache and loneliness--Hollywood, with its incessant, bitter fight for the few places on the top; its vicious competition; its unbelievable rewards. The man beside me stopped the car for a minute to look down at it. He was a man who worked with stars like Tyrone Power day after day and week after week; who knew their weaknesses as well as their strength, and who sometimes found it difficult to be both truthful and flattering when he talked about them. In the minute of silence before he shifted gears and drove on back toward the studio, this hardworking an somewhat cynical public relations man said thoughtfully, "I guess it's a pretty old-fashioned word to use in this town, by Ty power is really a gentleman. That guy finds time to be nice to everyone, and --even in this town--I've never heard anyone say anything to his discredit, as a person or as an actor. And yet, when the cards are down, Ty Power will fight for what he believes in just like one of the swashbucklers he plays on the screen. And that's what comes across to the women, I guess -- all the charm of an old-fashioned gentleman and all the courage of a U.S Marine."

And while new stars flash on the screen and flash off again, Tyrone Power's appeal to the women of America has made him a twenty-year favorite at the box office and promises to be just as good twenty years from now, because it's a cinch that Ty Power will never stop fighting to be a better a actor on the screen and to bring better plays to the stage whenever and whererever he can find them.

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