Was Tyrone Power quite good in Nightmare Alley

Fine work from the man from Ohio.

I felt power and Flynn were completely miscast while Eddie Albert and Ava Gardner were perfect, in Sun Also Rises. Perhaps Gregory Peck as Jake, and RICHARD TODD as Michael would have made Ferrer work. Of course the problem was no one wanted to play the gelded Jake, and no 9ne wanted to play a Jew, and no one could figure out what to do with Flynn

I always like Tyrone power best when he is playing a bit of a heel, so Witness and Nightmare are perfect to me. I think perhaps his best acting was in Razor’s Edge. He was playing a nice boy, but not a dope. His scenes with Ann Baxter, where she tries to tell him how good her poetry was, were interesting. He was a little aloof, not giving her the attention she wanted yet clearly remembering her fondly. Later when he speaks of her he loves her but with clear limits. It’s a really interesting ,nuanced way to play a delicate relationship. He does a really nice job at the end with Gene TIERNEY , letting her know that he knows what she did to Sophie.

Nightmare alley is a great favorite with so many unexpected turns. Psychiatry was in its heyday at the time. Probably most of the people working on that film were in analysis. So presenting psychiatry as one more type of con was pretty daring. The end was pretty gruesome

Nightmare Alley provided Power with one of his most textured and multi-layered roles - arguably his most daring one - and is rightly considered a highlight of his too-short career. Had circumstances been different, I expect some very interesting work would have been seen as he transitioned into more maturing years, as was the case with contemporaries like, say, Fredric March or Melvyn Douglas.

In addition to some mentioned in other posts, among his later roles that I imagine must have been especially challenging was that of Alec Holmes in Seven Waves Away (alternately known as Abandon Ship and Seven Days From Now), the surviving officer to whom the unpleasant duty falls to decide which of the occupants of an impossibly overcrowded lifeboat will remain, and which must be cast adrift. Unlike Witness For the Prosecution, which allowed him to pull out the emotional stops, this role required that his inner conflict be concealed under a mask of steely resolve and cold practicality. Those dark eyes of his, which could so effectively convey romantic allure in youth, had become intense and haunted in later years, qualities that served this role well.

And since we're talkin' 'bout Ty, I'm gonna tack this one on here that I've only just seen for the first time: 1952's Diplomatic Courier, a rather dry title that's inadequate to the task of selling the delights this very lively film offers, and it's everything a tale of cold war international espionage should be. As a State Dept company man whose normal job is so routine that he describes himself as merely "a postman," Power's Mike Kells is unexpectedly pressed into intelligence service by superiors when his contact - possessing documents which must not fall into Soviet hands - is assassinated and, lacking any of the requisite training and experience, he must draw upon all his improvisational skills and deductive instincts to recover the now-missing documents. Along the way, he encounters fun-seeking-but-aimless young widow Patricia Neal, Hildegard Knef as a desperate young woman of whose loyalties no one can be sure, and is assisted throughout by an uncharacteristically exuberant (and scene-stealing) Karl Malden. In roles small and smaller can be seen not-yet-well-known players like Lee Marvin, Charles Bronson and Michael Ansara.

While moving a mile a minute, this well-crafted thriller can take itself seriously without compromising needed moments of lightness. Barreling ahead with all the velocity of the various planes, trains and automobiles transporting its characters to their around-every-corner adventure, its pace and shifting tones are expertly navigated by director Henry Hathaway, and is a rollicking example of the form with all the intrigue, second-guessing, double-crosses and hair-breadth escapes any aficionado could want. And as the alternately puzzled, suspicious and determined man out of his depth, Power is more than up to all of it.                        

  

Nightmare Alley & The Razor's Edge are my favorites of his movie. He fit right in well in both movies.

I heard there will be a Guillermo del Toro remade of Nightmare Alley sometime this year. Bradley Cooper will reprise the role of Tyrone Power.

I like Bradley Cooper, will he be as good as Tyrone Power? I think a better question is will the remade be able to carry that atmosphere as the original? Something about the black and white that gave the movie a more haunting feeling. Guillermo del Toro likes too much of CGI. We will see.