Tyrone Power Sr.

Power's screen career didn't start until 1914, when he was already 45 — late by any standard, though he'd spent the preceding three decades working extensively in stage and touring productions worldwide (Wikipedia). He came into silent films as a leading man, then shifted toward villainous roles, which turned out to suit him better and keep him more consistently employed. 1916 was a particularly active year. He took the male lead in Where Are My Children?, directed by Lois Weber and Phillips Smalley — a serious, socially charged film about birth control that was daring for its moment — and also appeared in the Selig production John Needham's Double (Wikipedia). He wasn't just filling out a roster. These were projects with something to say. In 1921, producer William Fox cast him in Footfalls, and that same year he appeared in Griffith's Dream Street, which used the experimental Photokinema sound-on-disc system. Hard to say if Power fully understood he was participating in a technical turning point, but he was there. The mid-1920s kept him busy in A-list productions: Janice Meredith (1924), a Hearst-produced Marion Davies vehicle, and The Red Kimono (1925), produced and partly written by Dorothy Davenport, the widow of Wallace Reid — another film that pushed social boundaries the way Where Are My Children? had a decade earlier (Wikipedia). He finished out the silent era in several substantial productions before landing what became his signature sound-era role. The Big Trail (1930), directed by Raoul Walsh and shot in a widescreen process called Grandeur, gave Power the villainous Red Flack — a bull whacker — in what turned out to be his first and only talking picture. The film is remembered now largely because it introduced John Wayne as a star, but Power's presence in the cast wasn't incidental. He was a known quantity brought in to anchor a technically ambitious production. He died in December 1931, mid-way through filming a sound remake of The Miracle Man; his role as the preacher was completed by Hobart Bosworth (Wikipedia).