It All Started with Tyrone Power

AH! ROMANCE! It has to start somewhere. With me, it all started with Tyrone Power. The movie was “Love Is News,” the year was 1937 and I was eight years old. It was the first Tyrone Power movie I ever saw.

My mother sat next to me and I remember her leaning over and whispering, “Sit still, Sondra. Why do you keep wiggling around in your seat?” I didn’t answer her. How could I tell her that this beautiful, larger-than-life man was MAKING me wiggle. I felt the heat rise to my face and my ears were starting to burn. He sat across the table from Loretta Young. If their conversation was romantic, at eight years old I would not have known it. I remember he was eating and it embarrassed me to see him chew. A wave of shyness came over me, and somehow, for whatever reason, I knew I was in love.

My understanding older brother knew how I felt about Tyrone Power and took me to see every movie he ever made. Brother Bernard didn’t even wait until it came to the neighborhood movie; he took me to all the premier openings in New York City. During his time with the Air Force in World War II we missed some, but that was okay because I was beginning to substitute David Pressman (the boy across the street) for Tyrone Power.

Early teenage years were not romantic. Most of my friends were part of the Frank Sinatra craze. They “swooned” to his music. They screamed at the sight of him and the going joke at the time was, “Did you hear about Carol?” “She died of constipation because she heard Frank Sinatra sing, ‘Do Nothing Till You Hear From Me’” (Duke Ellington). They thought it was all so romantic.

Through the heartache of rejection and the sweetness of acceptance we learned about romance. What I did not learn until many years later was that music is the very essence of romance. It lingers. It’s part of you forever. It transforms you from your lovely memories of yesterday and delivers you to right now as you danced with Al Fishman,

(Irving Berlin’s “Dancing Cheek to Cheek); as you kissed Martin Perez, (Glen Miller’s “Moonlight Serenade”); as you thought of your brothers at war, (Sammy Fain’s “I’ll Be Seeing You”); as you walked hand-in-hand with Billy George, (Jule Styne’s “I Don’t Want To Walk Without You, Baby”); as you reminisced about the letters and dates with soldiers, sailors and marines (Cole Porter’s “Every Time We Say Goodbye”).

It may have all started with Tyrone Power, wiggling and burning ears, but for me, as long as the music is heard, every day, “Life Is a Fine Romance” (Jerome Kern).

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