May 5 Tyrone Power

To celebrate Tyrone Power’s birthday I watched Nightmare Alley. Tyrone plays a carney barker working with Zeena mystic played by Joan Blondell. He loves everything about the carnival. Joan is married to her partner whom she has been working an act in vaudeville. He is an alcoholic. Joan decides to put him in treatment. Tyrone buys a bottle of moonshine. When he sees the man he puts it in a trunk to hide it from him. As they talk Tyrone pulls out the bottle and gives it to him. The next morning the man is dead. The bottle was wood alcohol used as part of the act. Tyrone goes to the trunk and pulls out a bottle. It is the moonshine. He hides the bottle in the truck.

Tyrone and Joan revive the mind-reading act that was done in vaudeville. She is blindfolded and he holds up an item and she tells what he is holding. There is a code. I can’t figure out how they are selling tickets or making money on the act. Tyrone is interested in Colleen Gray a fellow performer Electra. The sheriff comes to arrest a few of the workers. Colleen for wearing a skimpy costume, the Geek for eating live chickens and another. Tyrone talks him out of it and the sheriff leaves without arresting anyone. Joan and Tyrone are going to leave the carnival and go onto better things. Tyrone and Colleen spend a lot of time together and her companion decide that she and Tyrone must get married. Tyrone decides to take the act into nightclubs with Colleen.

One night a woman tries to trick him. He sees through the trick. She invites him to his office to find out how he did it. She is a psychoanalyst who records what her clients say for further research. Tyrone sees this and decides that it is a new racket that he would like to get into when his night club contract ends. He works with the analyst in a con for $150,000. He is given $150 one dollar bills. He goes back to the analyst to get the money and he falls apart. He goes to the station where his wife meets him. He puts her on the train and he leaves the station. He becomes homeless and an alcoholic. He goes to a carnival and is offered a job as a Geek. That night he goes wild and his wife sees him and goes after him.

Tyrone is really good in the film. He starts off as a charming, handsome and ambitious man to a middle aged worn out alcoholic. The makeup at the end of the film has him look like the beast that he is playing.