eMoviePoster.com

What are the objects in the corners of some images? Learn More

Tyrone Power Jr. was born Tyrone Edmund Power, Jr. in Cincinnati, Ohio in 1914. His father was the very noted stage actor Tyrone Power Sr, who also made some movies. Surprisingly Tyrone Jr. was a frail, sickly child, and his parents moved to California in the hopes it would help his health. When he was a small boy his parents divorced, and his mother later moved to Cincinnati, where her family was from, and she was a stage actress, and also as a drama and voice coach. Tyrone spent the summer of 1931 with his famous father, but his dad died later that year. He tried to follow in his father's footsteps in movies, but found few parts. He went to New York, where he appeared in a few plays, and in 1936 he was signed to a contract by 20th Century Fox. After a few small parts, he was given the lead in Lloyd's of London (although he was 4th billed!), and that made him a major star. He became Fox's answer to Warner's Errol Flynn and MGM's Robert Taylor, and he starred in 21 movies (including Jesse James, The Mark of Zorro, where he showed great prowess as a swordsman, and Blood and Sand) between 1937 and 1942, when he joined the Marine Reserves. He made Crash Dive in 1943 while serving, and then his next movie was The Razor's Edge in 1946. The following year Power tried to change his image with the lead in the gritty film noir, Nightmare Alley, but the film (although excellent) did not do well at the box office, and he returned to action movies. But Power was tired of playing the same sorts of roles over and over, and in 1950 he went to England and played the lead in Mister Roberts on the stage, and then John Brown's Body on Broadway, and on a national tour, followed by another play, The Dark is Light Enough. In between he did some movies, but his heart was not in them. In 1957 he made Billy Wilder's Witness for the Prosecution, where he was wonderful as Leonard Vole. It makes one wonder how many other fine performances he might have given had he not been pushed into so many action movies. The next year Power was back on stage, but he signed to play the lead in Solomon and Sheba, returning him to the swashbuckling type of role he had tried to get away from for so long. Ironically, he died of a heart attack while filming a dueling scene in 1958. He was just 44 years old. Tyrone Power's name is synonymous with being a great lover, but all he really wanted was to be a great actor. One wonders if his great looks that made women swoon didn't hurt his career just as much as it helped him.

If you know who did the art (if any), please let us know.

Important Added Info: Note that this personality poster is printed on a heavier photo paper-like stock, not what the studios used in the 1920s and early 1930s. Since the poster clearly dates from either the late 1930s or very early 1940s, it probably just means that they found better printing technology at this time

Note that starting in the very early 1910s (around 1912, when studios realized that people were more likely to go to a movie if it had a star they liked in it), studios created sets of special "personality" posters, which theaters that showed their movies could hang in their lobbies. These had a big advantage over posters for specific movies, because they could be used whenever a movie with that star was shown, which meant they could be used over and over! Because studios realized this, they made these posters on a high quality paper stock, sometimes with a "linen" texture, and sometimes with elaborate border designs, and almost always with great quality color printing. They almost always measured exactly 22" x 28", the same as "half-sheets" (which were then known as "displays", except that they were taller than they were wide, and that the images almost always had a "full bleed", meaning that there were no blank borders. They almost always showed a head and shoulders image of the star, and the image on these posters is often very close to actual life-size! They almost always have the name of the star and the studio they worked for at the bottom. Even though there were many sets of these from many studios over a period of approximately 30 years (they were rarely made after the early 1940s), very few survive, likely partially due to World War II paper drives, and partially due to the fact that they were never folded and the paper they were made of sometimes aged poorly.

Note that William Fox (later Fox Films, and beginning in 1935, as 20th Century-Fox) owned one of the leading Hollywood studios in the 1910s, and remained at the forefront of Hollywood for the next several decades (although they ran into big trouble in 1929, when they went bankrupt after trying to buy MGM, which is a very long story!). Through the decades, they had a great lineup of stars, and they created many sets of personality posters to promote them (we know of ones from the 1910s and the 1920s, and also ones from the 1940s, but we are not sure if they made more than a few in the 1930s, perhaps related to their financial troubles at that time). You can tell their different sets in two ways. One is that all of the posters from a set have the same border design and the stars and studio names are written in the same font and layout, although oddly, their personality posters from the 1940s usually have no printing on them, just stars' images and names, which is completely different from how almost every other studio created theirs. The other is that you can look at the age of the star in the image (although that might possibly be deceptive, because they might have sometimes used a slightly younger version of a star!). These posters are extremely rare as it is likely few theaters ordered them, and fewer still saved them, and in addition, they could be easily torn, and if they were not stored carefully, they would become fragile, and it is likely many were damaged and discarded for that reason! Note that some of the later Fox personality posters from the 1940s are NOT printed on high quality paper stock like that used for their earlier ones. All of these posters do not always age very well, and can become fragile (usually resulting in chips around the edges of the poster). Because of their fragile nature and their age, we intend to send all of these personality posters in large flat packages, and never roll them into tubes (unless the buyer insists)! PLEASE DO NOT BID ON THIS POSTER, UNLESS YOU ARE WILLING TO PAY THE COST OF SHIPPING IT IN A LARGE FLAT PACKAGE!

Our address for UPS or FedEx only is:
Bruce Hershenson,
306 Washington Avenue, West Plains, MO 65775