Tyrone Power Had “Real Glamour”

Press, Volume XCIX, Issue 29112, 26 January 1960, Page 2

Tyrone Power Had “Real Glamour”

“He had something I think very few people have now—real glamour. He was a star for 20 years and that’s something that’s almost unheard of these days,” said Mrs Gilchrist Calder. She was speaking of Tyrone Power. For nearly six months she played with Power as his leading lady, the minister’s wife in Shaw’s “The Devil’s Disciple” to Power’s Dick Dudgeon.

Mrs Calder, known to English audiences as Claire Austin, is in Christchurch with her husband, a British Broadcasting Corporation television producer and director who is travelling under an Imperial Relations Trust Bursary. She played with Power a year or two before he died. It was on an extended tour of the English provinces. Power, she said, was not satisfied with anything but the best. “We all had to work hard to match him,” she said. “We had great difficulty in getting one particular sedne right. So we would rehearse it. he and I, about two or three times a week, in every conceivable way. Rehearsal like that is something unheard of for a play on tour.” Power behaved like a star “but in the nicest possible way,” said Mrs Calder. “Most Charming” “I loved playing with him. I think he was one of the most charming people I have ever met. And he stood up to touring—which on all counts is extremely hard work—very well.” Mr and Mrs Calder have already visited Australia, flying there by way of the United States, and will be in New Zealand for about two months and a half. Mr Calder's work is mainly producing and directing social •documentaries “nearly all of them controversial,” he said. “I was the first person in the world to do one on prostitution.” And one of the players he directed then was his wife. It was the only time that Mrs Calder has worked under her husband’s direction in television. Her television work is mainly in plays. Her theatre career began in

repertory in Dundee. “I learnt my trade there,” she said. She was in a film that Tyrone Power made, “Seven Waves Away.” and for three months played Alison, the wife, in “Look Back in Anger.” by John Osborne, spearhead of the “angry young men” school.

This play—originally set in a crowded bedsitting room rented by a young couple in an English Midlands city—has since been filmed with Mary Ure as Alison. But, Mrs Calder said, she thinks it might have lost atmosphere because some of the action of the film moves outside the single room.

“In the play it was really claustrophobic—as the place got hotter this one room became really oppressive.

“I played Alison unsympathetically for the first scenes because I thought the trouble and tension were her fault half the time. In the end she became sympathetic because she had been through so much, like losing her baby, and had softened. I enjoyed the complete switch of character.” Works in London

Now Mrs Calder works mainly in London “because it is so much easier.” The Calders live in Richmond and she prefers not to be away from home. Her present trip is “just about all enjoyment” but, from it, she has developed an admiration for Australian and New Zealand women.

“I just don't know how they keep it up," she said. “I don’t think I’ve ever met women so fantastically capable before. “They can do everything—they cook beautifully, they can sew, they can paint a house and put up a brick wall. Their children are beautifully cared for. They start early in the morning and they’re still full of the joys of spring at midnight.”