Good stuff! With reference to the articles about military service, I was watching Ken Murray's Hollywood, My Home Town on TCM the other day and who should I see but Marine private Tyrone Power, playing drill sergeant with the other men in his unit. The whole thing was staged for the camera (you kinda have to be a sergeant to be a drill sergeant, I would think) but it was fun seeing Ty in his real uniform, on the real base, with other real marines.

Who is Ken Murray you say? Here's some info:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ken_Murray

Wow, great info. Peachtree! Had never heard of Ken Murray to be honest. Will try to catch that on TCM, if possible.


(BTW, speaking of military articles, the Motion Picture Oct. 1950 was removed as it was already on the tpower.com site. Sorry about that (no point in repeating info).)

I recall this footage is also in the new TP Movie Idol Collection. I don't recall which exact featurette has it, but it has Ty leading troops on base.

I totally didn't remember the footage in one of the featurettes (thanks for letting us know!) so I went looking for it -- it's in "Tyrone Power, My Father" on the Day-time Wife disc. However, they cut out the last line of Ken Murray's narration, so here is a transcript of the entire thing:

"When the war came, it changed a lot of lives in Hollywood. This was taken at Camp Pendleton, near San Diego, four days after it opened. That drillmaster is Private Tyrone Power. These are authentic pictures. They're not clips out of an old movie."

Ty's segment is followed by shots of Private Glenn Ford, also a Marine at Camp Pendleton, shining his boots, and Navy Ensign Robert Stack teaching as a machine gun instructor at Alameda Naval Base. Glenn Ford had an interesting second career as a military man -- he served in WWII, Korea and Vietnam and during the latter went on missions with the Green Berets! Although not shown doing military service in the Ken Murray program, Jimmy Stewart was a bombadier pilot during WWII in Europe and survived some extremely tough missions. There's a wonderful book about his WWII service, Jimmy Stewart: Bomber Pilot, by Starr Smith.

Ty Jr. (or IV depending on how you're counting these things) mentions that Ty was in Hiroshima right after the atom bomb. I can't even begin to imagine the horrors he must have witnessed. :(

I thought that myself after hearing that.

One can only imagine how Ty was personally after returing to Hollywood after all that. Filming Razor's Edge must have been more spiritually searching than we could imagine after Ty's WWII experience.

I had heard that about Jimmy Stewart, but wasn't aware that Glenn Ford remained in the service after the war. Thanks for those tidbits!

MV

Wow, had no idea about Glenn Ford's ongoing military career! Great info. Peachtreee. (Actually, the only latter info. I recall on Ford is the mention he gets in Frank Capra's bio. where he gave Capra a hard time apparently.) Still, he was great in "Gilda" any time with R. Hayworth, imho.

Didn't Jimmy Stewart finish up as a brigadier general? Thought he did.