page_title: Tyrone Power
section_title: 1950s
hierarchical_section_title: Tyrone Power / Post-war career / 1950s
caption_attribution_description: English: Cropped screenshot of Tyrone Power from the trailer for the film Witness for the Prosecution. Español: Tyrone Power en un fotograma de publicidad de la película "Testigo de Cargo".
context_page_description: Tyrone Edmund Power III was an American film, stage and radio actor. From the 1930s to the 1950s, Power appeared in dozens of films, often in swashbuckler roles or romantic leads. His better-known films include The Mark of Zorro, Marie Antoinette, Blood and Sand, The Black Swan, Prince of Foxes, Witness for the Prosecution, The Black Rose, and Captain from Castile. Power's own favorite film among those that he starred in was Nightmare Alley.
  Though largely a matinee idol in the 1930s and early 1940s and known for his striking looks, Power starred in films in a number of genres, from drama to light comedy. In the 1950s he began placing limits on the number of films he would make in order to devote more time for theater productions. He received his biggest accolades as a stage actor in John Brown's Body and Mister Roberts. Power died from a heart attack at the age of 44.
context_section_description: Power was becoming increasingly dissatisfied with his costume roles, and he struggled between being a star and becoming a great actor. He was forced to take on assignments that did not appeal to him, such movies as American Guerrilla in the Philippines (1950) and Pony Soldier (1952). In 1950 he traveled to England to play the title role in Mister Roberts on stage at the London Coliseum, bringing in sellout crowds for twenty-three weeks. Another disappointing role for Power, Diplomatic Courier (1952) is a cold war drama, directed by Henry Hathaway, but received very modest reviews. It took its place among several other American spy movies, released previously, with similar material.
  Power's movies had been very profitable for Fox in the past, and as an enticement to renew his contract a third time, Fox offered him the lead role in The Robe (1953). He turned it down (Richard Burton was cast instead) and on 1 November 1952, he left on a ten-week national tour with John Brown's Body, a three-person dramatic reading of Stephen Vincent Benét's narrative poem, adapted and directed by Charles Laughton, featuring Power, Judith Anderson and Raymond Massey. The tour culminated in a run of 65 shows between February and April 1953 at the New Century Theatre on Broadway. A second national tour with the show began in October 1953, this time for four months, and with Raymond Massey and Anne Baxter. In the same year, Power filmed King of The Khyber Rifles, a depiction of India in 1857, with Terry Moore and Michael Rennie.
  Fox now gave Power permission to seek his own roles outside the studio, on the understanding that he would fulfill his fourteen-film commitment to them in between his other projects. He made The Mississippi Gambler (1953) for Universal-International, negotiating a deal entitling him to a percentage of the profits. He earned a million dollars from the movie. Also in 1953, actress and producer Katharine Cornell cast Power as her love interest in the play The Dark is Light Enough, a verse drama by British dramatist Christopher Fry set in Austria in 1848. Between November 1954 and April 1955, Power toured the United States and Canada in the role, ending with 12 weeks at the ANTA Theater, New York, and two weeks at the Colonial Theater, Boston. His performance in Julian Claman's A Quiet Place, staged at the National Theater, Washington, at the end of 1955 was warmly received by the critics.
  Untamed (1955) was Tyrone Power's last movie made under his contract with 20th Century-Fox. The same year saw the release of The Long Gray Line, a successful John Ford film for Columbia Pictures. In 1956, the year Columbia released The Eddy Duchin Story, another great success for the star, he returned to England to play the rake Dick Dudgeon in a revival of Shaw's The Devil's Disciple for one week at the Opera House in Manchester, and nineteen weeks at the Winter Garden, London.
  Power's old boss, Darryl F. Zanuck, persuaded him to play the lead role in The Sun Also Rises (1957), adapted from the Hemingway novel, with  Ava Gardner and Errol Flynn. This was his final film with Fox.  Released that same year were Seven Waves Away (US: Abandon Ship), shot in Great Britain, and John Ford's Rising of the Moon (narrator only), which was filmed in Ireland, both for Copa Productions.
  For Power's last completed film role he was cast against type as the accused murderer Leonard Vole in the first film version of Agatha Christie's Witness for the Prosecution (1957), directed by Billy Wilder. The critic for The National Post, Robert Fulford, commented on Power's "superb performance" as "the seedy, stop-at-nothing exploiter of women." The movie was a well-received box office success. Power returned to the stage in March of 1958, to play the lead in Arnold Moss's adaptation of Shaw's 1921 play, Back to Methuselah.
caption: Power as the accused murderer in the 1957 adaptation of Agatha Christie's Witness for the Prosecution
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