Ty & Loretta: Sweethearts of the Silver Screen

Written like the childish content of a '50s fan magazine, TY & LORETTA is a lame attempt to wring some significance out of the fact that they co-starred in 4 pictures (doc claims it was 50 before Loretta Young rebelled against Darryl Zanuck and left 20th Century-Fox. "Sweethearts of the Screen"- what phony hype.

Bryan Cooper, who cranks out this junk, is the writing culprit, but the interviewees aren't much help. Judy Lewis has some nice heart-on-sleeve comments as Young's real-life daughter, but so-called historian Maria Ciaccia is completely embarrassing. Her analyses are strictly gush and she demonstrates (in this short as well as another Tyrone Power tribute I've seen) an elementary school level vocabulary. She fits well in this age of gossip and mindless celebrity worship.

Obviously if you're a fan the teaming of Young with Power was fun to watch, but it doesn't represent even a blip in film history.

This is one of the DVD features on the Tyrone Power Matinee Idol DVD collection.

Despite the comments of a reviewer here who seems to have had an agenda, Tyrone Power and Loretta Young were a very popular couple in the beginning of Power's career. And certainly one of the most beautiful.

According to my own interview with Judy Lewis some years ago, Young would have married Power in a heartbeat. This has been verified in several interviews she gave. She disliked Annabella, who married Power after appearing with him and Young in Suez. When she finally told him she had hoped to marry him, he said, "Gretch (her real name was Gretchen) you should have tried harder." Since Zanuck was desperate to break up Power and Annabella, and wound up blacklisting Annabella, he would not have taken kindly to Larreta marrying him either.

I did not find any of this DVD filler inane nor did I think that one of the interviewers had a school girl vocabulary. She is someone I have seen interviewed many times.

This is a DVD set for Tyrone Power fans. If you are not one, I do wonder why you would have bothered to get this set and watch any of the interviews. I don't think it was necessary to be so insulting.

Without some interviewees with good background and film history, this short video comes across as hype. It's good to have Loretta Young's daughter, Judy Lewis, give some background. But as reviewer "lor" notes, most of this 2008 video made for the release of the DVD of this film, sounds more like fan mania.

Besides some narration, those interviewed and who comment include Lewis and Maria Ciaccia, a writer and film historian, and Coleen Gray, actress and a co-star with Power in "Nightmare Alley" of 1947.

Some of the background of Power and Young and their five films is interesting. Young's difficult relationship with Fox head, Daryl Zanuck, is interesting, and his role in not letting the two develop into a longer-term arrangement such as marriage. But, considering that Young and Power stayed friends indicates that that might be an exaggeration.

I think Lewis and Gray best described the popularity of the two stars together. Lewis says they had great chemistry, "and I think it was their beauty and the productions that they were in." Gray said that she went to see Tyrone Power movies when she was young and living on the farm. Then a decade later she was in a movie with him. She walked 2 ½ miles from her family's farm in Minnesota to the town theater, "with my ten cents clutched in my hand," to see "Love is News." Gray says, "I think they were the two most beautiful people I'd ever seen."

Lewis said of her mother, "She didn't think of herself, really, as an actress. She just had fun. She said her life really began when they said, 'Roll 'em.'"