Tyrone Power times two: the father and son actors who both died from tragic on-set heart attacks
When Tyrone Power Jr held his father, Frederick Tyrone Sr, in his arms as he died from a massive heart attack, the future Hollywood megastar was only 17 years old.
In a bitterly ironic twist, Tyrone Jr had only recently connected with his dad, after they spent most of his childhood apart as a result of moving with his mother and sister to Cincinnati when she divorced his father, while he simply continued to follow his theatre-acting career wherever it took him. From the ages of seven until 17, Tyrone Jr and Sr kept in touch by writing letters to each other, and when the young boy told his father that he wanted to follow in his acting footsteps, he was given nothing but encouragement.
Tyrone Jr was therefore hugely excited when his father finally invited him to join him in Quebec, Canada, summer of 1931, for what could only be described as a crash course in the craft of acting. Suddenly, the boy who admired his father from afar but didn’t truly know him was bonding over a shared passion for performing, and it soon led to him landing his stage debut in a production of The Merchant of Venice (starring his father) at Chicago’s Civic Theatre.
Subsequently, once Tyrone Sr landed the lead for The Miracle Man, the patriarch and bloodline ventured to Tinseltown, where, while shooting, Tyrone Jr’s father succumbed to a fatal heart attack two days before Christmas at only 62. Unfortunately, in barely half a year, the younger Tyrone had reconnected with his father, begun his acting career, and lost him.
The tragedy could have stunted his progress, but instead, he resolved to mimic his father by sticking to theatre while netting small-fry roles in a couple of Hollywood features. In 1936, he landed the lead in Lloyds of London, and this launched him to movie stardom, rising through the ranks of leading men thanks to his undeniable screen presence and dashing good looks. He was officially cemented as the second biggest box office draw in the industry three years later.
Over the next two decades, Tyrone Jr starred in beloved movies like The Mark of Zorro, Blood and Sand, Nightmare Alley, and Witness for the Prosecution, all while racking up three marriages and a host of other relationships with some of Hollywood’s most beautiful women, such as Lana Turner and Anita Ekberg, fighting for his country during World War II as a fighter pilot, and developing a chain-smoking habit of three to four packs daily. It often seemed like he lived his life at 100 miles per hour, and the man who returned from the war looked notably older and less healthy than the youthful matinee idol he had been before.
With the benefit of hindsight, it’s obvious that Tyrone Jr wasn’t doing his heart any favours by living the way he lived. In the end, it only took until 1958 for history to repeat itself. The magnetic star was in Spain shooting the epic historical film, Solomon and Sheba, when he collapsed in the middle of a swordfight scene with long-time co-star and good friend George Sanders. He passed away on the way to the hospital, where a doctor officially labelled his cause of death as “fulminant angina pectoris”. Amazingly, he was only 44, but it felt as if he’d fit several lifetimes into that relatively short number of years on Earth.
In a bitter postscript to his story, the man hadn’t been honest with his colleagues on Solomon and Sheba and had also ignored several warnings that could have saved his life. Eight months before the shoot, he visited his doctor for a routine check-up, and something unexpected cropped up on a cardiogram. After an initial panic, he was assured it was a mistake by the hospital’s equipment. He must have felt like something was amiss, but chose not to seek a second opinion.
Perhaps he was frightened because he knew heart problems ran in his family, or maybe he didn’t want a diagnosis, because that would have made him uninsurable in Hollywood. Either way, Tyrone Jr ignored the warning, and on November 15th, 1958, he joined his father, who had died in virtually the same way, in that great theatre in the sky.
