Tyrone Power Sr.

After an extremely prosperous 30 years of acting on the stage and touring around the world, Power moved into silent films in 1914. Initially playing the leading man in films, he soon switched to playing villains and proved highly successful.

In 1916 Power played the male lead in Where Are My Children?, a serious film about birth control and social issues directed by pioneer woman director Lois Weber and her husband Phillips Smalley. That same year Power appeared in a Selig film called John Needham's Double. When not acting on Broadway, Power appeared in films. Producer William Fox found him a great character part at Fox Studios in Footfalls (1921). Also in 1921 Power appeared in D.W. Griffith's Dream Street in which experimental synchronised sound was used, using the Photokinema sound-on-disc system. In 1924 Power was in the cast of the sumptuous Janice Meredith, a Hearst produced Marion Davies vehicle. In 1925 Power appeared in a film called The Red Kimono, a film as daring as Where Are My Children? had been a decade earlier. The Red Kimono was produced and partly written by Dorothy Davenport, the widow of Wallace Reid. Power finished out the decade and silent era in several A-list silent films.

In 1930, Power had a final great role as the villainous "bull whacker" Red Flack in Raoul Walsh's widescreen epic The Big Trail, which was Power's first and only talkie and provided an unknown John Wayne with his first starring role. Power then prepared to film a sound remake of The Miracle Man, which had been a great silent success in 1919 for Lon Chaney. A few scenes had been shot, but before filming could be completed Power died of a heart attack in the arms of his 17-year-old son at the end of 1931. He was 62. His part of the preacher in The Miracle Man was taken up by fellow veteran actor Hobart Bosworth.

He is now usually referred to as Tyrone Power Sr., to distinguish him from his son, star actor Tyrone Power, who would die at the age of 44, also of a heart attack .