MasterClass: Tyrone Power Teaches Chemistry
Today, we are learning from Tyrone Power and the totally unmanageable, all-encompassing chemistry he shared with every person he ever performed opposite. The man was an unbroken eye contact menace, a genuine magnetic force, and honestly, we are just lucky he never dabbled in cult leadership (in real life).
Hello students and colleagues, time to gather your notebooks, pencils, laptops, or maybe just your tablets that you’re pretending to take notes on but actually doing endless jigsaw puzzles on a random app instead. Anyway, if your first question is whether this header image is the worst meme I have ever made--the answer is no. I have made much worse.
Today, we are learning from Tyrone Power and the totally unmanageable, all-encompassing chemistry he shared with every person he ever performed opposite. The man was an unbroken eye contact menace, a genuine magnetic force, and honestly, we are just lucky he never dabbled in cult leadership (in real life).
Tyrone Power (or Ty-Ty as his friends called him, and by “his friends” I exclusively mean myself) is obviously a well-known classic Hollywood figure, and I suppose it could be disingenuous to call him underrated. However, as in his life, there remains a dismissive tendency to reduce him to a pretty face. That v. pretty face turned skill to happenstance and effort to chance. That pretty face combined with his obvious ease around women and his willingness to cry great big splashing tears on screen made him just a touch too adjacent to femininity for critical respect. How can this be trusted?
Alas for his critics, he was astonishingly popular and his films made bank, so his work had to be acknowledged and explained, and it was: pretty face; charming presence; likable boy. The blight of every beautiful actor to exist as an image--their levels left unexamined. BUT NOT ON MY WATCH! NO MORE, TY-BOY!
So, while I can (and will--with no notice and when you least expect it) opine with fervor on the Mariana Trench-depths of Tyrone Power’s work and efforts, today is for a narrower subject: chemistry. Chemistry is that effusive something that cannot be compelled. It usually satisfies most when the pair or group onscreen are equal nurturers to the dynamic--but, sometimes, one person just does more; creates more; is more. They do not need to grasp or struggle toward the effusive something, because they are the effusive something. That’s Tyrone Power. That’s behind the continuing durability of his presence and performing persona.
Ty had chemistry with everyone--EVERYONE. His ability to match his co-stars’ particular energies and idiosyncrasies becomes apparent in the fluid way his characters live on film. In The Mark of Zorro (1940, dir. Rouben Mamoulian), the way he interacts with Linda Darnell is very different from his interactions with Basil Rathbone, and yet again different from his interactions with Gale Sondergaard and others in the film. He shifts and modulates himself in an instant to fit with the person with whom he is sharing time and space.
With Linda Darnell (a repeat co-star), he is open and expressive, and there is a sweetness and playfulness present.
With Basil Rathbone, he comes to command and to posture--and theirs is the most flirtatious relationship in the film.
Ty -That’s a good effort, Capitán!
BR -The next will be better, my fancy clown.
Ty -The Capitán's blade is not so firm?
BR -Still firm enough to run you through!
Of course, there has been speculation about Tyrone Power's personal life and sexuality for many years, but as he did not leave behind a stated historical record, I am basing it on his own screen persona when I say that Ty Power is the ultimate old movie bi. He invented being a bicon. Let the record show! ("My fancy clown" is a great nickname to tell your crush that you care, okay.)
Power always focused so entirely on his co-stars, and because they have his full attention, they also have the audience’s full attention. The attentiveness usually manifests in eye contact. He loved long stretches of unbroken, sometimes unendurable eye contact. It acts as caress, a threat, a question, a promise--sometimes all of these at once, as seen in his scenes with Orson Welles in Prince of Foxes (1949, dir. Henry King). While Welles often liked to verbally and physically dominate in his acting, Power always dominated scenes in subtler ways. Opposite each other, they are shocking. Ty lets Orson physically control the scene, yet retains influence over the interaction anyway. He is too fluid and quick to be pushed over.
Neither was Power interested in pushing over anyone else either. I think about moments like this scene in Jesse James (1939, dir. Henry King). Ostensibly the scene is focused on Ty’s Jesse in conversation with Henry Hull’s loud, blustering Cobb. But, for emotional weight, the film actually needs the audience to focus on Nancy Kelly’s quiet, but vital Zee. Although Hull is stating important information to the plot, Ty physically moves his focus and eyes to Nancy Kelly. The audience’s attention follows too. What we lose by ignoring exposition, we gain in understanding the emotional motivations of the characters--Zee, in particular.
Tyrone Power’s acting choices were often subtle, but his characters mostly were not. In his pre-war films, he is buoyant and effervescent; all movement and flailing limbs and--in the 1930s especially--occasionally a high-pitched squeak. In Love is News (1937, dir. Tay Garnett) opposite Loretta Young, he floats. When he starred in the film’s post-war remake That Wonderful Urge (1948, dir. Robert B. Sinclair) opposite Gene Tierney, he is grounded. The post-war Ty Power is more contained. Gene Tierney is his perfect co-star. When it comes to silent staring contests, no one matched him like she did. Solemn eyes and deep feelings.
in The Razor's Edge (1946, dir. Edmund Goulding)
But, when they perform joy, it brings joy. And That Wonderful Urge is a glorious bit of let chaos reign we’re going to live and die on this chemistry filmmaking.
Tyrone Power had such a charismatic and fun presence, one is forgiven for not noting that he mostly played an alarming number of characters with charming, yet societally destructive tendencies. A whole spectrum of “hmmm, well this is troubling, but I guess we’re letting him get away with it. Good for him maybe?” If you have never seen The Black Swan (1942, dir. Henry King), I truly could not properly prepare you for the level of ethically horrifying moments present. Truly unjustifiable. He scampers around with perfect ease, however: flirting with absolutely everyone and letting George Sanders call him “the prettiest thing I’ve ever seen.” The dynamics of his relationship with Maureen O’Hara is a clear-cut nightmare, but they dubiously pull it off through sheer force of will (from her) and unbroken eye contact (from him).
Perhaps the pinnacle lesson in chemistry comes from two of Ty’s darker films: his final film, Witness for the Prosecution (1957, dir. Billy Wilder), and his favorite role, Nightmare Alley (1947, dir. Edmund Goulding). In these, he not only has precision chemistry with each one of his costars--modulating his performance to their energies in every moment--but he also plays his ultimate trick on the audience. Playing a slippery wronged man in Witness for the Prosecution and a scheming quasi-spiritual leader con artist in Nightmare Alley, he looks out of the screen and manipulates us! He knows exactly what to do to draw us in--look into his eyes closer, closer, closer--until we’re locked in, believing it all, following him anywhere. It’s Ty Power’s world, and we’re just lucky he never started a cult.
Additional notes:
Every time I wrote “Chemistry” in this post, please know that I out loud replied, “Yeah chemistry!” like I was in Guys and Dolls, and it took maximum restraint not to type it out like that.
Ty-Ty even had sustained eye contact with my cinematic nemesis Randolph Scott, and that is honestly hurtful to me.
originally published on The Classic Film Collective on 07/08/2021.