A Few Note 27th Anniversary of His Death : Fans Meet to Recall Tyrone Power

New York TV producer David Susskind, awkwardly trying to make small talk with a young assistant not long ago, finally confessed that he really missed Tyrone Power. The assistant admitted that she had never driven one of those.

Outside the gates of Hollywood Memorial Park Cemetery on Friday, across Los Angeles, were thousands of people who had never driven one of those either.

But inside about 50 people, from his toddler grandchildren to his aging fans, gathered at actor Tyrone Power’s white marble tomb, 27 years to the day after he died on a movie set in Spain.

The Power face, the Power name--a name that was a London stage headliner back when only coyotes and rattlesnakes had the run of Hollywood--doesn’t ring bells with the TV generation the way it once rang cash register chimes at the box office.

Still Draws a Crowd

But Power, the stage actor turned reluctant swashbuckler whose movie roles paralleled those of Rudolph Valentino, who likewise lies entombed not far away, proved Friday that he can still draw a Hollywood crowd. The crowd members ranged from a woman wearing a fur coat against the 70-degree “chill,” to a street person who repeatedly warned, “I might have to leave to do a movie tonight,” to fans who have followed movie stars for decades from opening nights to last rites.

It was a far quieter scene than 27 years earlier, when Power, the star of “Witness for the Prosecution,” “The Razor’s Edge” and “Captain from Castile,” was buried. Then, 3,000 shoving fans mobbed celebrity mourners, one woman kissing the hearse as it took the body to the grave.

Among those gathered Friday was Tyrone Lamont, 45, whose movie-smitten mother named him after Power, and Taryn Power, the daughter whose first memory of her father was as a 5-year-old kneeling at his graveside, the place where she stood Friday with a small sheaf of white carnations, her father’s favorite flower.

Power’s daughter said she finds it “very touching and very moving that people still come to pay respects to my father.”

Recites Favorite Poem

She has come here for perhaps 10 of the 27 memorial services over the years. But Friday was “the first time I’ve ever done anything like this,” and in quick, nervous words, she recited her father’s favorite poem. It was a verse, “High Flight,” written by a Canadian air force pilot, in which the pilot-writer “put out my hand and touched the face of God.”

“That’s real heavy,” said Frank Bowler, 20, black-jacketed with a blond brush-cut. The Christian New Wave musician, down from San Francisco to answer a citation for making too much noise preaching in Hollywood, came to honor his late grandmother, “a big fan,” and found the cemetery to be “the most peaceful place in Hollywood, so I applied for a job here. I’d do anything to work in this place.”

As for Power’s enduring appeal, “It’s his godliness, him being such a good man--a gentleman. Things aren’t like that anymore. But I open doors for ladies still, I try to be the way my grandmother would want me to be. A gentleman, like him.”

Actor Lawrence Tierney, who unlike many in the crowd had at least met Power, delivered a eulogy that scolded as “despicable” the writers who have chronicled the alleged bisexual activities of the thrice-married actor who on film regularly romanced such leading ladies as Anne Baxter and Rita Hayworth.

When it was over, when the Marine honor guard had stepped off, when autograph books had been signed and the regulars had dispersed, cheerily calling out “See you next year!” Mary Romanek still stood looking at the tomb.

“I’ve been a fan for about 10 years,” said the Santa Monica woman, 29, who collects Power movie posters and finagles friends to driving her to see his films. “He had a lot more presence, more charm than the others had. Just the fact you’ve got this guy dead 27 years, and look at all these people 27 years later--he had to have something special.”