Classic Box Sets: Tyrone Power

The son and grandson of celebrated stage stars, Tyrone Power began acting at seven. He struggled to break into pictures however and was originally used by 20th Century... more >

The son and grandson of celebrated stage stars, Tyrone Power began acting at seven. He struggled to break into pictures however and was originally used by 20th Century-Fox supremo Darryl F. Zanuck as handsome arm candy for his musical stars, Alice Faye and Sonja Henie.

Yet Power also struck up a dependable partnership with Don Ameche and they sparked well as chalk-and-cheese brothers in Henry King's lavish disaster drama, In Old Chicago (1938), despite being consistently upstaged by the mellifluous Faye and the Oscar-winning Alice Brady (whose cow eventually causes the infamous 1871 fire).

The engaging Second Fiddle (1939) - in which Power's Hollywood press agent falls for the ice-skating Henie to the tunes of Irving Berlin - proved to be one of his last escort outings, as he was promoted having cut such a dash in Rouben Mamoulian's classic swashbuckler, The Mark of Zorro (1940). Ably abetted by the voluptuous Linda Darnell and the hissable Basil Rathbone, Power established himself as a man of action and he reinforced the image in Zanuck's token gesture towards the British war effort, A Yank in the RAF (1941), even though he still had to look enchanted as Betty Grable's London-based chorine performed some less than memorable numbers.

Power's greatest talent was to hold the screen while bringing out the best in those around him and this smouldering passivity is most readily evident in Edmund Goulding's adaptation of Somerset Maugham's The Razor's Edge (1946), which earned Anne Baxter a Best Supporting Oscar as the tragic dipsomaniac, who proves as powerless as socialite Gene Tierney to provide Power with the purpose that he eventually finds in Himalayan Buddhism.
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DVD Extras

• 5 discs.

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Cast

Tyrone Power

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