ERROL FLYNN ,AMERICAN ACTOR
ACTIONS FOLLOWED BY MGR
BORN JUNE 20,1909 -1959 OCTOBER 14
 |
| Add caption |
Errol Leslie Flynn[1] (20 June 1909 – 14 October 1959)[1] was an Australian born actor who achieved fame in Hollywood after 1935.[2] He was known for his romantic swashbuckler roles in Hollywood films, and became an American citizen in 1942
Early life[edit]
Errol Flynn at South West London College aged 14 (1923)
.jpg)
After early schooling in Hobart, from 1923 to 1925 Flynn was educated at the South West London College, a private boarding school in Barnes, London,[8] and in 1926 returned to Australia to attend Sydney Church of England Grammar School (Shore School)[9] where he was the classmate of a future Australian prime minister, John Gorton.[10] His formal education ended with his expulsion from Shore for theft,[11] and, he later claimed, for a sexual encounter with the school's laundress.[12] After being dismissed from a job as a junior clerk with a Sydney shipping company for pilfering petty cash, he went to Papua New Guinea at the age of eighteen, seeking his fortune in tobacco planting and metals mining. He spent the next five years oscillating between the New Guinea frontier territory and Sydney.[11] In January 1931, he became engaged to Naomi Campbell-Dibbs, the youngest daughter of Mr and Mrs R Campbell-Dibbs of Temora and Bowral NSW, a relationship which ended before 1935.[13]
Early career[edit]
In early 1933, Flynn appeared as an amateur actor in the Australian film In the Wake of the Bounty, in the lead role of Fletcher Christian. Later that year he returned to Britain to pursue a career in acting, and soon secured a job with the Northampton Repertory Company at the town's Royal Theatre (now part of Royal & Derngate), where he worked and received his training as a professional actor for seven months. Northampton is home to an art-house cinema named after him, the Errol Flynn Filmhouse.[14] He performed at the 1934 Malvern Festival and in Glasgow, and briefly in London's West End.[15]
In 1934 Flynn was dismissed from Northampton Rep. after he threw a female stage manager down a stairwell. He returned to Warner Brothers' Teddington Studios in Middlesex where he had worked as an extra in the film I Adore You before going to Northampton.[16] With his new-found acting skills he was cast as the lead in Murder at Monte Carlo (currently a lost film).[17] During its filming he was signed by Warner Bros. and emigrated to the U.S. as a contract actor.
Hollywood[edit]
With Olivia de Havilland in Santa Fe Trail (1940)
In collaboration with Hollywood's best fight arrangers, Flynn became noted for fast-paced sword fights, beginning with The Adventures of Robin Hood, The Sea Hawk and Captain Blood.[20] He demonstrated an acting range beyond action-adventure roles in light contemporary social comedies, such as The Perfect Specimen (1937) and Four's a Crowd (1938), and melodrama The Sisters (1938). During this period Flynn published his first book, Beam Ends (1937), an autobiographical account of his sailing experiences around Australia as a youth. He also travelled to Spain, in 1937, as a war correspondent during the Spanish Civil War.[21]
Flynn co-starred with Olivia de Havilland a total of eight times, and together they made the most successful on-screen romantic partnership in Hollywood in the late 1930s-early 1940s in Captain Blood (1935), The Charge of the Light Brigade (1936), The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938), Four's a Crowd (1938), Dodge City (1939), The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex (1939), Santa Fe Trail (1940) and They Died with Their Boots On (1941). While Flynn acknowledged his personal attraction to de Havilland, assertions by film historians that they were romantically involved during the filming of Robin Hood[22] were denied by de Havilland. "Yes, we did fall in love and I believe that this is evident in the screen chemistry between us," she told an interviewer in 2009. "But his circumstances [Flynn's marriage to actress Lili Damita] at the time prevented the relationship going further. I have not talked about it a great deal but the relationship was not consummated. Chemistry was there though. It was there."[23]
With Bette Davis in The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex (1939)
In 1940, at the zenith of his career, Flynn was voted the fourth most popular star in the US and the seventh most popular in Britain.[26][27] He was a member of the Hollywood Cricket Club with David Niven, and a talented tennis player on the California club circuit. His suave, debonair, devil-may-care attitude was characterised as "Errolesque" by author Benjamin S. Johnson in his treatise, An Errolesque Philosophy on Life.[28]
Second World War[edit]
Flynn became a naturalised American citizen on 14 August 1942. As the United States had by then entered the Second World War, he attempted to enlist in the armed services, but failed the physical exam due to multiple heart problems (including at least one heart attack), recurrent malaria (contracted in New Guinea), chronic back pain (self-medicated with morphine and later, heroin), chronic tuberculosis and numerous venereal diseases.[29]
This created an image problem for both Flynn, the supposed paragon of male physical prowess, and for Warner Brothers, which continued to cast him in athletic roles, including such patriotic productions as Dive Bomber (1941), Desperate Journey (1942) and Objective, Burma! (1945).[29][30]
Despite widespread criticism, Flynn's failure to join other Hollywood stars in military service was never explained by the studio, which had no desire to publicise the health problems of one of its most valuable assets.[31]
In 1943 he earned $175,000.[32]
Post-war career[edit]
In 1946, Flynn published an adventure novel, Showdown, and earned a reported $184,000 (equivalent to $2,230,000 in 2015).[33] In 1947 he signed a 15-year contract with Warner Bros. for $225,000 per film.[34] His income totaled $214,000 that year,[35] and $200,000 in 1948.[36]
After the Second World War, the taste of the American filmgoing audience changed from European-themed material and the English history-based escapist epics in which Flynn excelled, to more gritty, urban realism and film noir, reflecting modern American life. Flynn tried unsuccessfully to make the transition in Uncertain Glory (1944) and Cry Wolf (1947), and then increasingly passe Westerns such as Silver River (1948) and Montana (1950).
Flynn's behaviour became increasingly disruptive during filming; he was released from his contract in 1950 by Jack L. Warner as part of a stable-clearing of 1930s glamour-generation stars. His Hollywood career over at the age of 41, Flynn entered a steep financial and physical decline.[12]
Europe[edit]
In the 1950s, after losing his savings from the Hollywood years in a series of financial disasters, including The Story of William Tell (1954),[12] he became a parody of himself, sailing aimlessly around the Western Mediterranean aboard his yacht Zaca. Heavy alcohol abuse left him prematurely aged and overweight. He staved off financial ruin with roles in forgettable productions such as King's Rhapsody (1955) Hello God (1951) and Crossed Swords (1954). He performed in such also-ran Hollywood films as Mara Maru (1952) and Istanbul (1957), and made occasional television appearances.[37] As early as 1952 he had been seriously ill with hepatitis resulting in liver damage.[38]
In 1956 he presented and sometimes performed in the television anthology series The Errol Flynn Theatre that was filmed in Britain. He enjoyed a brief revival of popularity with The Sun Also Rises (1957); The Big Boodle (1957), filmed in Cuba; Too Much, Too Soon (1958); and The Roots of Heaven (1958). He met with Stanley Kubrick to discuss a role in Lolita, but nothing came of it.[39] Flynn went to Cuba in late 1958 to film the self-produced B film Cuban Rebel Girls, where he met Fidel Castro and was initially an enthusiastic supporter of the Cuban Revolution. He wrote a series of newspaper and magazine articles for the New York Journal American and other publications documenting his time in Cuba with Castro. Many of these pieces were lost until 2009, when they were rediscovered in a collection at the University of Texas at Austin's Center for American History.[40] He narrated a short film titled Cuban Story: The Truth About Fidel Castro Revolution (1959), his last known work as an actor.[41]
Personal life[edit]
Lifestyle[edit]
Flynn developed a reputation for womanising, hard drinking and for a time in the 1940s, narcotics abuse. He was linked romantically with Lupe Vélez,[42] Marlene Dietrich, and Dolores del Río, among many others. Carole Lombard is said to have resisted his advances, but invited him to her extravagant parties.[43] He was a regular attendee of William Randolph Hearst's equally lavish affairs at Hearst Castle, though he was once asked to leave after he became excessively intoxicated.[44]
The expression "in like Flynn" is said to have been coined to refer to the supreme ease with which he reputedly seduced women, though there is dispute about its origin.[45] Flynn was reportedly fond of the expression, and later claimed that he wanted to call his memoir In Like Me. (The publisher insisted on a more tasteful title, My Wicked, Wicked Ways.)[46][47]
His lifestyle caught up with him in 1942 when two under-age girls, Betty Hansen and Peggy Satterlee, accused him of statutory rape[48] at the Bel Air home of Flynn's friend Frederick McEvoy, and on board Flynn's yacht, respectively.[49] The scandal received immense press attention.
Many of Flynn's fans, assuming that his screen persona was a reflection of his actual personality, refused to accept that the charges were true. Some founded organisations to publicly protest the accusation. One such group, the American Boys' Club for the Defense of Errol Flynn—ABCDEF—accumulated a substantial membership that included William F. Buckley, Jr.[50]
The trial took place in late January and early February 1943; Flynn's attorney, Jerry Giesler, impugned the accusers' character and morals, and accused them of numerous indiscretions, including affairs with married men and, in Satterlee's case, an abortion (which was illegal at the time).[51] He implied that the women had cooperated with prosecutors in hopes of avoiding prosecution themselves.[52] Flynn was acquitted, but the trial's widespread coverage and lurid overtones permanently damaged his carefully cultivated screen image as an idealised romantic leading player.[53]
Marriages and family[edit]
Flynn and first wife Lili Damita at Los Angeles airport in 1941
His only son, Sean (born 31 May 1941), was an actor and war correspondent. He and his colleague Dana Stone disappeared in Cambodia in 1970, during the Vietnam War, while both were working as freelance photojournalists for Time magazine.[55][56] Neither man's remains has ever been found;[57] it is generally assumed that they were killed by Khmer Rouge guerrillas.[58] After a decade-long search financed by his mother, Sean was officially declared dead in 1984.[59] In 2010 a British team uncovered the remains of a Western hostage in the Cambodian jungle, but DNA comparisons with samples from the Flynn family were negative.[60][61] Sean's life is recounted in the book Inherited Risk: Errol and Sean Flynn in Hollywood and Vietnam.[62]
Flynn's daughter Rory has one son, Sean Rio Flynn, named after her half-brother. He is an actor.[63] Rory Flynn wrote a book about her father, The Baron of Mulholland: A Daughter Remembers Errol Flynn[64]
Death[edit]
Errol Flynn's coffin on a Union Station railway platform in Los Angeles.
Flynn's grave marker at the Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery.
By 1959, Flynn's financial difficulties had become so serious that he flew to Vancouver, British Columbia on 9 October to negotiate the lease of his yacht Zaca to the businessman George Caldough. As Caldough was driving Flynn and the young actress Beverly Aadland, who had accompanied him on the trip, to the airport on 14 October for a Los Angeles-bound flight, Flynn began complaining of severe pain in his back and legs. Caldough transported him to the residence of a doctor, Grant Gould, who noted that Flynn had considerable difficulty negotiating the building's stairway.
Gould, assuming that the pain was due to degenerative disc disease and spinal osteoarthritis, administered 50 milligrams of demerol intravenously. As Flynn's discomfort diminished, he "reminisced at great length about his past experiences" to those present. He refused a drink when offered it.[65] Gould then performed a leg massage in the apartment's bedroom and advised Flynn to rest there before resuming his journey. Flynn responded that he felt "ever so much better". After 20 minutes Aadland checked on Flynn and discovered him unresponsive. Despite immediate emergency medical treatment from Gould and a swift transferral by ambulance to Vancouver General Hospital, he did not regain consciousness and was pronounced dead that evening. The coroner's report noted the cause of death as a heart attack, with a significant incidental finding of cirrhosis of the liver.[66]
Both of Flynn's parents survived him, as did his former wives and estranged third wife, Patrice Wymore, and his four children. He is buried at Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery in Glendale, California.[67]
Posthumous controversies[edit]
In 1961, Beverly Aadland's mother, Florence, co-wrote The Big Love with Tedd Thomey, alleging that Flynn had been involved in a sexual relationship with her daughter, who was 15 at the time.[68][69] The book was later made into a play starring Tracey Ullman as Florence Aadland.[70][71]
In 1980, author Charles Higham published a controversial biography, Errol Flynn: The Untold Story, in which he alleged that Flynn was a fascist sympathiser who spied for the Nazis before and during the Second World War, and that he was bisexual and had multiple gay affairs.[72] He further claimed that Flynn arranged to have Dive Bomber filmed on location at the San Diego Naval Base for the benefit of Japanese military planners, who needed information on American warships and defense installations.[73] Higham admitted that he had no direct evidence that Flynn was a German agent, but claimed to have “pieced together a mosaic that proves that he is”.[74] Flynn's former housemate David Niven criticised Higham for his unfounded accusations; Higham responded that Niven was ignorant of his friend's activities.[75] Subsequent Flynn biographers were also critical of Higham's allegations, and found no evidence to corroborate them.[76] Lincoln Hurst reported that Flynn attempted to join the OSS in 1942 and was put under surveillance by the FBI, which uncovered no subversive activities.[77] Tony Thomas and Buster Wiles accused Higham of altering FBI documents to substantiate his claims.[78]
In 1981, Flynn's daughters, Rory and Deirdre, hired Melvin Belli to sue Higham and his publisher Doubleday for libel; the suit was eventually dismissed on the grounds that one cannot libel a person who is dead.[73][74] In 2000, Higham repeated his charge that Flynn had been a German agent, claiming corroboration from Anne Lane, secretary to MI5 chief Sir Percy Sillitoe from 1946-51, and the person responsible for maintaining Flynn's British intelligence service file. Higham acknowledged that he never saw the file itself, and was unable to secure official confirmation of its existence.[79]
In a 1982 interview with Penthouse magazine, Ronald DeWolf, son of the author L. Ron Hubbard, said that his father's friendship with Flynn was so strong that Hubbard's family considered Flynn an adoptive father to DeWolf. He claimed that Flynn and his father engaged in illegal activities together, including drug smuggling and sexual acts with under-age girls; but Flynn never joined Hubbard's religious group, Scientology.[80]
Journalist George Seldes, who disliked Flynn intensely, wrote in his 1987 memoir that Flynn did not travel to Spain in 1937 to report on its civil war as announced, nor to deliver cash, medicine, supplies, and food for the Republican soldiers as promised. His purpose, according to Seldes, was to perpetrate a pre-planned hoax that he triggered by sending an "apparently harmless" telegram from Madrid to Paris. The following day, American newspapers published an erroneous report that Flynn had been killed at the Spanish front. "The next day he left Spain," Seldes wrote. "There were no ambulances, no medical supplies, no food for the Spanish Republic, and not one cent of money. The war correspondents said bitterly that it was the cruelest hoax of the time. Flynn ... had used a terrible war just to advertise one of his cheap movies."[81]
Film portrayals[edit]
Duncan Regehr portrayed Flynn in a 1985 American TV film My Wicked, Wicked Ways, loosely based on Flynn's autobiography of the same name.
Guy Pearce played Errol Flynn in the 1996 Australian film Flynn, which covers Flynn's youth and early manhood, ending before the start of his Hollywood career.
Flynn was portrayed by Jude Law in Martin Scorsese's 2004 film The Aviator.
Kevin Kline played Flynn in a film about his final days, The Last of Robin Hood, made in 2013.[82]
The character of Alan Swann, portrayed by Peter O'Toole in the 1982 film My Favorite Year, was based on Flynn.[83]
The character of Neville Sinclaire (played by Timothy Dalton) in the 1991 film The Rocketeer is based on Flynn; the character's Nazi affiliations are based on Charles Higham's uncorroborated claims in his book, Errol Flynn, the Untold Story.[7
ERROL FLYNN THE " WALKING PENIS "
Errol Flynn may have been one of the first film stars to learn “the public never forgets.” By the mid-40s, Flynn’s career as a matinee idol and swashbuckling film star had dimmed thanks to scandalous reports of alcoholism, womanizing, and the alleged sexual assault of two underage girls. (To think how he would have fared in today’s TMZ-monitored society!) Even his 1959 death was tinged with salaciousness, when he reportedly died in the arms of his teenage girlfriend, Beverly Aadland, a former chorus girl whom Flynn had allegedly begun dating when she was only 15.
In 1961, Aadland’s mother, Florence, wrote a book about the relationship between her daughter and Flynn calledThe Big Love. Decades later, filmmakers Richard Glatzer and Wash Westmoreland, intrigued by the book, tracked down the publicity-shy Beverly Aadland in her Palmdale, California, home, managed to gain her confidence, and used her recollections of the May-December romance as the basis for their film, The Last of Robin Hood, which premiered last night at the Toronto Film Festival. Despite the fact that Beverly rarely gave interviews about her relationship with Flynn, the filmmakers say she gave the project her blessing before her death in 2010.The Last of Robin Hood, which is dedicated to Beverly, stars Kevin Kline as the charismatic aging Flynn, Dakota Fanning as Beverly, and Susan Sarandon as the aforementioned, tell-all-authoring stage mother whose own dreams of becoming a dancer were derailed by a car accident that left her paralyzed.
In the interest of Old Hollywood gossip, we’ve compiled some of the juiciestLast of Robin Hoodplot points, which refer to Flynn’s illicit romance, below:
Flynn first notices Beverly rehearsing as a chorus girl at the studio where he is working and summons her to his office via a third party. Shortly after, he invites her to “audition” for a part—an audition that happens to take place at a producer’s home at night. It is during this audition that Flynn takes Beverly’s virginity. (According to the film, Flynn does not learn that Beverly is 15 years old until later.)
A stage mom through and through, Beverly’s mother does not seem remotely alarmed when Flynn invites her daughter to an “audition” late at night, despite the fact that Flynn has a reputation as, to use Beverly’s father’s terms, “a walking penis.”
Although Beverly is unimpressed by Flynn, she eventually succumbs to his charm. Flynn, convinced that Beverly looks like a wood nymph, gives her the pet name “Woodsy.”
Flynn is able to woo Beverly’s starstruck mother and even encourage her to tag along on their dates as a third wheel because, as he tells her, he does not want the press to allege something unsavory.
After Beverly’s mother discovers that her daughter is sleeping with Flynn, Flynn is able to calm her nerves by promising that he will facilitate an acting career for Beverly. He takes her to an audition forLolita, where he tells director Stanley Kubrick that he and Beverly are “a package deal.” (Obviously, this negotiation tactic does not work out.)
In addition to drinking round-the-clock, Flynn begins using I.V. drugs to settle his back pain following a trip to Africa.
At Beverly’s 17th birthday party, Flynn announces to friends and family that he and Beverly will be married.
He produces a movie in Cuba so that Beverly can star calledCuban Rebel Girls. While filming, he falls ill and dictates a living will to Beverly so that she is taken care of in the event of his death.
About a year later, while leasing his yacht in Canada so that he can fund his final divorce and marry Beverly, Flynn complains of back pain. Beverly escorts him to a doctor’s home in Canada.
Alerted that Flynn is en route, the doctor and his wife invite guests over. Upon arriving, Flynn opts to amuse the crowd instead of be treated, regaling them with a story about the time his friends stole John Barrymore’s corpse from the mortuary and deposited it in Flynn’s living room as a prank.
Moments later, Flynn leaves the room saying, “I’ve never felt better,” to get some rest. When Beverly checks on him, she finds him dead.
The will Beverly transcribed for Flynn is deemed invalid because it does not have a signature. She does not inherit anything from the late actor.
Beverly’s mother is arrested for public drunkenness afterward and as a consequence, Beverly is put into a juvenile home. Her mother is found guilty of contributing to her daughter’s delinquency and put in jail for 60 days.
Beverly ultimately makes amends with her mother, who wroteThe Big Love against Beverly’s wishes, on Florence’s death bed.
Related:Errol Flynn Would Be Disgusted by the Behavior of Today’s Hollywood Stars
BEFORE she had even reached the age of 16, Beverly Aadland was the kind of girl who provoked hysterical essays about the moral decline of the young. She was the Mandy Smith of her day, except that unlike Mandy, she never married her ageing Lothario.
David English, the young Daily Sketch reporter who interviewed her in 1959 about her scandalous two-year affair with Errol Flynn, described her as "practically the nearest living thing to Lolita that I shall see in my life-time". But, he warned: "Age creeps up on the nymphet . . . the Lolita type is transformed into a dull if somewhat neurotic housewife."
When you remind Aadland of this now, she snorts and rolls her eyes. "Well, I wish the best for him, too." David English, of course, is now chairman and editor-in-chief of Associated Newspapers, while Beverly - once a wannabe starlet who danced in movie chorus lines - has fulfilled at least part of his prophecy. At 54, she is a four-times married housewife. Unconventional, perhaps, but neither neurotic nor dull.
She was only 15, the daughter of a dancer and an industrial chemist, when she met Errol Flynn, then 48, on the Warners lot. They were soon lovers and she became his "darling Woodsie" - so called because she reminded him of a wood nymph.
Flynn, by then less swashbuckling than vodka-sodden, had just completed a critically acclaimed role as a maudlin alcoholic in The Sun Also Rises and was now filming Too Much, Too Soon - a title that could easily have applied to his own life. His prodigious drinking was making it increasingly difficult to work; numerous creditors were after him; he was in bad health and he was being sued for child support by two ex-wives and estranged from the third. After two years of travelling the world with his Woodsie, he died of a heart attack in October 1959.
Forty-seven years on, Aadland has decided to go public again with an interview about Flynn for a Channel 4 Secret Lives documentary, to be broadcast on Monday. She has also agreed to meet me at the place she was named after: the Beverly Hills Hotel. As she walks through the lobby, she looks like an enormous red felt cowboy hat with legs. It is suddenly clear why Flynn dedicated his autobiography, My Wicked Wicked Ways, to "a small companion".
There are still traces of the child who shared his last, desperate years. Spewing out jokes as naturally as she curses, Aadland betrays no sign of bitterness at the way her life has worked out. She is matter-of-fact about the first night they slept together, claiming Flynn forced himself on her.
When he died, according to his lover, Flynn was planning to start a new life as far from Hollywood as possible: he would marry his "wood nymph" in their newly built house in Jamaica, they would have a baby, raise cattle and he would write books. All this would be financed by the "large pile" of illegal gold bars that Aadland says she saw stashed in the hull of his yacht Zaca, and which disappeared after his death.
There is little doubt that his roguish young companion gave Flynn new, if fleeting, hope and vigour. "I think it's because he was seeing the world through my eyes. The 'been-there, done-that attitude' wasn't there any more." Aadland's capacity to keep up with Fearless Flynn, and to provide him with youthful amusement, was largely why the affair lasted longer than his standard one night. She not only forgave him for virtually raping her at the outset, but also fell in love with him. Their relationship, she says, was like a constant game.
"We were always playing 'Can you top this?' We'd get into huge 'fights' in nightclubs, and he would swing out and take a phoney slap at my face. I would take it. Then I would come back with 'blood' coming out of my nose and people would go hysterical. Of course, it was ketchup," Aadland says.
"Once, he had me arrested in Paris for not having my passport. The gendarmes took me off and I was scared to death. They didn't need my passport, but Errol knew I never carried it with me, so it was a great joke."
In the smart Titchfield Hotel, Jamaica, the pair of them caused pandemonium by letting loose a swarm of baby birds. "How can you be dejected if you have 100 ducks and chickens running around in a first-class British hotel?" asks Aadland.
She also served as a kind of surrogate daughter to Flynn, whose real daughters lived with various estranged wives. "He loved to teach me. He would send me off to the bookstore with a list of things to read." But in the main, she recalls: "We were terrible, just terrible." During a two-year odyssey that included time in Hollywood, Africa, Paris, London, Majorca, Italy, and Jamaica, they made love, drank champagne, got arrested, worked on his autobiography and did "hours of talking".
Flynn, still idolised even then by millions of women, was a jealous lover. During a barge party on the river Seine for The Roots of Heaven, his last major film, the poet Allen Ginsberg made a pass at Aadland. "Very unattractive man," she says. "Errol picked him up by his shirt and the seat of his pants and slung him over the side. Someone screamed and they stopped the ferry and started throwing off life preservers." She laughs uproariously.
Meanwhile, in Jamaica, a house was being built. "There was a little chapel on the property and unbeknown to me - I didn't find out about it until after he died - he was having it refurbished so we could get married there."
A few months before his death, Flynn flew to New York and had a reverse vasectomy, a little-known fact that has surfaced only briefly in biographies. "He knew I wanted a baby. We were going to call it Woodland." Shortly afterward, at Aadland's 17th birthday party, he announced their engagement.
After his death, she became a nightclub singer, touring the country for about 15 years. Today, she lives in a rustic desert town in California with Ron, a contractor and her husband of 25 years, her 16-year-old daughter Aadlanda, and a collection of pets. Ron hunts and fishes, and together they barbecue in the snow, grow their own vegetables, speed around in a restored fire-engine-red '65 Mustang, and spend vacations in Mexico.
She says she has no regrets about her affair with Flynn. "I only regret that we didn't have a longer time together. I was very lucky. He could have had any woman he wanted. Why it was me, I have no idea. Never will."
Died October 14, 1959 in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada (heart attack)
Birth Name Errol Leslie Thomson Flynn
Nicknames The Baron
Satan's Angel
Flynny
The Tasmanian Devil
Rolly
Height 6' 2" (1.88 m)
Mini Bio (2)
Errol Flynn was born to parents Theodore Flynn, a respected biologist, and Marrelle Young, an adventurous young woman. Young Flynn was a rambunctious child who could be counted on to find trouble. Errol managed to have himself thrown out of every school he was enrolled in. In his late teens he set out to find gold, but instead found a series of short lived odd jobs. Information is sketchy, but the positions of police constable, sanitation engineer, treasure hunter, sheep castrator, shipmaster for hire, fisherman, and soldier seem to be among his more reputable career choices. Staying one jump ahead of the law and jealous husbands forced Flynn to England. He took up acting, a pastime he had previously stumbled into when asked to play (ironically) Fletcher Christian in a film called In the Wake of the Bounty (1933). Flynn's natural athletic talent and good looks attracted the attention of Warner Brothers and soon he was off to America. His luck held when he replaced Robert Donat in the title role of Captain Blood (1935). He quickly rocketed to stardom as the undisputed king of swashbuckler films, a title inherited from Douglas Fairbanks, but which remains his to this day. Onscreen, he was the freedom loving rebel, a man of action who fought against injustice and won the hearts of damsels in the process. His off-screen passions; drinking, fighting, boating and sex, made his film escapades seem pale. His love life brought him considerable fame, three statutory rape trials, and a lasting memorial in the expression "In like Flynn". Serious roles eluded him, and as his lifestyle eroded his youthful good looks, his career declined. Troubles with lawsuits and the IRS plagued him at this time, eroding what little money he had saved. A few good roles did come his way late in life, however, usually aging alcoholics, almost mirror images of Flynn. He was making a name as a serious actor before his death.
- IMDb Mini Biography By: Christopher E. Appel and James Jaeger
Errol Flynn (1909-1959) was an Australian-born film star who gained fame in Hollywood in the 1930s as the screen's premier swashbuckler. Tall, athletic and exceptionally handsome, Flynn personified the cavalier adventurer in a string of immensely popular films for Warner Brothers, most often co-starring with Olivia deHavilland in such screen classics as "Captain Blood" and "The Adventures of Robin Hood."
Flynn was born in Hobart, Tasmania, the son of professor Theodore Thomson Flynn, a world renowned Marine biologist, and Lily Mary Young. After an unhappy childhood that included physical and mental abuse by his mother, Flynn ran away to New Guinea where for several years he lived a life of adventure as a copra plantation overseer, constable, gold miner and guide up the dangerous Sepik River. In 1933, back in Australia, he was cast in a low-budget film, "In the Wake of the Bounty," which gave him the idea of becoming an actor. He drifted to England where he landed work as a bit player with the Northampton Repertory Theater and, after appearing in one film, "Murder at Monte Carlo," was discovered by a Warner Brothers talent scout.
Coming to America in 1934, Flynn was cast in two insignificant films before Warner Brothers took a chance on an unknown and starred him in "Captain Blood." Flynn shot to international stardom overnight, and throughout the 1930s he was arguably the most recognizable movie star in the world. His striking good looks and screen charisma won him millions of fans, including legions of women who threw themselves at him.
Flynn also became as famous for his hedonistic lifestyle as for his swashbuckling movie roles. By his own estimate he slept with 10,000 women in his lifetime, and his penchant for alcohol, drugs and brawling aged him prematurely. By 1950 his best days were behind him both professionally and personally. Dropped by Warner Brothers in 1952, Flynn roamed the world in his yacht making substandard films abroad, as well as one short-lived television show, "The Errol Flynn Theater." Near the end of his life he returned to Hollywood where he was rediscovered; playing drunks and washed out bums, he brought a poignancy to his performances that had not been there during his glamorous heyday.
Flynn, who was married three times, died in Vancouver, British Columbia, on October 14, 1959, of a heart attack. The coroner who examined the 50-year-old actor said he had the body of an 85-year-old man.
- IMDb Mini Biography By: Charles Culbertson
Spouse (3)
Patrice Wymore (23 October 1950 - 14 October 1959) (his death) (1 child)
Nora Eddington (12 August 1943 - 8 July 1949) (divorced) (2 children)
Lili Damita (29 June 1935 - 8 April 1942) (divorced) (1 child)
Trade Mark (3)
He is considered one of the greatest movie swashbucklers of the sound period.
Usually had a moustache
His playboy lifestyle
Trivia (67)
Father, with Patrice Wymore of Arnella (25 December 1953 - 21 September 1998)
Father with Nora Eddington of Deirdre Flynn (born January 10, 1945) and Rory Flynn (born March 12, 1947).
Ranked #70 in Empire (UK) magazine's "The Top 100 Movie Stars of All Time" list. [October 1997]
Father, with Lili Damita of photojournalist Sean Flynn (1941 - 1970).
It has been said that his 1959 autobiography, "My Wicked Wicked Ways," was originally to be called "In Like Me."
Was tried for statutory rape in 1942 but was acquitted.
When banned from drinking on a film set, he would inject oranges with vodka and eat them during his breaks.
Interred at Forest Lawn, Glendale, California, in the Garden of Everlasting Peace.
Chosen by Empire magazine as one of the 100 Sexiest Stars in film history (#86). [1995]
The hit song "Errol", by Australian band Australian Crawl, was about him.
The phrase "In like Flynn," stems from his 1942 trial for statutory rape.
His son Sean Flynn appeared in a few films but didn't particularly like being an actor. He switched careers and was a freelance photojournalist during the Vietnam War. He disappeared with another journalist as they followed the US Army invasion into Cambodia and both were thought to have been captured and executed by Khmer Rouge guerrillas. He is the subject of the 1981 The Clash song, "Sean Flynn."
He claimed to be the great-great-great-great-grandson of HMS Bounty mutineer Edward "Ned" Young. However research suggests this was not actually true. Flynn portrayed Fletcher Christian in the film In the Wake of the Bounty (1933). He was also the 23rd great-grandson of Robert De Vere. In addition, he is the 15th cousin twice removed of Olivia de Havilland, who played Maid Marian, his love interest, in The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938).
He was voted the 55th Greatest Movie Star of all time by Entertainment Weekly.
Grandfather of Luke Flynn.
His father was head of the zoology department at the University of Tasmania.
He was voted the 26th Greatest Movie Star of all time by Entertainment Weekly.
It was during a Parkinson (1971) interview that his good friend David Niven revealed that during the filming of The Charge of the Light Brigade (1936), Flynn was busy on a horse during a break applying makeup with one hand whilst holding a mirror in the other. An extra seeing this assumed (like most of the people around) that he was gay, and decided to "pock" the horse up the behind with his lance - the horse bucked, throwing Flynn to the ground. He got to his feet and asked who had done that, the extra volunteered, thinking that this would only add to his embarrassment. However, Flynn dragged him from the horse and gave him a sound beating. They were the best of friends after that.
He met his second wife while she was working at a snack counter in a courthouse during one of his rape trials.
His father, Theodore Flynn, taught biology at Queens College, Belfast.
Warner Brothers' publicity department tried to claim that he was from Ireland, when he was in fact from Tasmania, the small island state of Australia.
He and Olivia de Havilland acted together in 9 movies: The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938), Captain Blood (1935), The Charge of the Light Brigade (1936), Dodge City (1939), Four's a Crowd (1938), The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex (1939), Santa Fe Trail (1940), Thank Your Lucky Stars (1943) and They Died with Their Boots On (1941)
Although only 50, he succumbed to a massive heart attack at the apartment of Dr. Grant Gould in Vancouver while he was there to sell his yacht (The Zaca) to an old friend, George Caldough. The yacht was his "pride and joy", but due to financial difficulties, he was forced to sell it and had primarily lived on it during his final years. The autopsy showed he had the body of a 75-year-old man. His liver was so badly damaged that he could only have lived for another 9-12 months.
Although Australian, his genealogy shows both British and Irish descent.
He and director Michael Curtiz made some of their best pictures together, but he despised Curtiz (which was mutual) and the two fought constantly whenever they worked together. Ironically, his first wife Lili Damita was previously briefly married to Curtiz.
Declaring to his second wife that he wanted to experience everything in life, he began dabbling in opium in the late 1940s and quickly became a full-fledged addict. His opium addiction and the effects of the alcohol that ravaged his body over the years contributed to his premature death in 1959 at only age 50.
Mentioned in the song "Blood on the Rooftops" by Genesis.
His performance as Robin Hood in The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938) is ranked #16 on Premiere Magazine's 100 Greatest Movie Characters of All Time.
In 1980, author Charles Higham published a controversial biography, "Errol Flynn: The Untold Story," in which he alleged that Flynn was a fascist sympathizer who spied for the Nazis before and during World War II. In Disney's film The Rocketeer (1991), the major villain, Neville Sinclair, was a 1930s Hollywood actor who spied for the Nazis, an obvious reference to Higham's allegations about Flynn. The book also alleged he was bisexual and had affairs with Tyrone Power, Howard Hughes and Truman Capote.
Subsequent biographies - notably Tony Thomas' "Errol Flynn: The Spy Who Never Was" (1990) - have denounced Higham's claims as fabrications. Flynn's political beliefs appear to have been left-wing. He was a strong supporter of the Spanish Republic and a fervent opponent of ultra-conservative Gen. Francisco Franco in the Spanish Civil War, and was a supporter of Fidel Castro's revolution in Cuba, even hosting a documentary titled The Truth About Fidel Castro Revolution (1959) shortly before his death. According to his own posthumous autobiography, "My Wicked, Wicked Ways", he admired Castro and considered him a personal friend.
He was granted a 4-F deferment during World War II due to his weak heart, exacerbated by bouts of malaria and tuberculosis. During the filming of Gentleman Jim (1942) Flynn suffered a mild heart attack.
His mother had Polynesian ancestry, from Tahiti, through her four great-grandmothers--the mutineers of HMS Bounty sailed from Tahiti to Pitcairn Island, taking some Tahitian women with them. As of 2005, there were an estimated 55 descendants of the mutineers still living on Pitcairn.
Through his mother, Flynn was descended from the illegitimate daughter of an unknown mother and Sir Richard Neville, 6th Earl of Salisbury and 16th Earl Consort of Warwick, 181th Knight of the Garter. Neville in his turn was descended, through his mother, from Thomas Holland, a stepson of Edward "the Black Prince" Plantagenet, son of King Edward III of England and father of the later King Richard II. Flynn played the Black Prince in The Warriors (1955), commonly known in the USA as The Warriors.
Probably his most uncharacteristic screen appearance occurred in Thank Your Lucky Stars (1943) when he sang and danced his way through a pub number entitled "That's What You Jolly Well Get".
In The Case of the Curious Bride (1935), one of his earliest films, his role consisted of lying on a marble slab as a corpse.
There was also a flashback sequence towards the end of the film showing how Flynn was killed. The film in question has appeared at least twice on Turner Classic Movies during Errol Flynn festivals despite his very limited (certainly less than two minutes) screen time.
A chain smoker, in the last year of his life, he underwent hospital tests to see whether he had throat cancer.
Nearly died from food poisoning after eating uncooked ground hamburger meat mixed with raw egg yolk early in 1959.
In the early days of establishing his Hollywood career, he passed himself off as Irish in the belief that few people knew of Australia. He was born, educated and began work in Australia, later drifting between Papua New Guinea and Sydney (rumoured to have been a fighter for PNG) before stumbling on to acting. The Australian film In the Wake of the Bounty (1933) captured some attention for him in the States and so, owing enormous debts to the Australian Taxation Office, he moved to America. He said to the ATO, "I'm willing to forget if you are".
In the last two years of his life, Flynn caused a scandal by touring the world with his 15-year-old mistress Beverly Aadland, who was working as his secretary. Their affair was the subject of a 1961 book by Beverly's mother Florence Aadland entitled The Big Love', which describes how this mom intentionally pushed her daughter into the affair with Flynn. This affair is the subject of the movie The Last of Robin Hood (2013).
Once stated that his only regret was his non-participation in World War II.
He was considered for Leslie Howard's role in Gone with the Wind (1939). He was also allegedly considered for the role of Rhett Butler, but Bette Davis (who was to play Scarlett O'Hara) vetoed the idea.
Became seriously ill with liver failure in 1952 while filming The Story of William Tell (1953) in Rome.
Had a vasectomy in 1955.
In his final years he suffered from Buerger's disease, acute inflammation and thrombosis (clotting) of arteries and veins of the legs, hands and feet as a result of his excessive cigarette smoking.
Best remembered by the public for his starring in swash-buckling adventure films.
Independent writer/director Patrick Stark is creating a dramatic feature about the last days of Flynn's life in Vancouver, British Columbia.
The underlying causes of his death were myocardial infarction, coronary thrombosis, coronary atherosclerosis, liver degeneration, liver sclerosis and diverticulitis of the colon.
Though Flynn did most of his own stunts in Against All Flags (1952), he balked at the one involving sliding down through a sail on a rapier blade, which was originated by Douglas Fairbanks in The Black Pirate (1926); it was performed by a stunt double.
A recent Australian documentary on his life and career, narrated by Christopher Lee, included a film clip of Flynn being interviewed on his being nominated for the Academy Award for his critically acclaimed performance in The Sun Also Rises (1957). We are then told that the nomination "disappeared".
Mentioned in the Jimmy Buffett song, "Pencil Thin Mustache".
In the last year of his life he turned down an offer to star in a major swashbuckling series for US television, in which Flynn would play the same kind of character he had played in Captain Blood (1935), with younger stand-ins performing his stunts. "I knew it would be crap," he explained.
In his book, "My Wicked Wicked Ways", Flynn recounted that as a young man in Papua, New Guinea, he had many adventurous jobs as a gold prospector, slave recruiter, a diamond smuggler, and a manager of coconut and tobacco plantations, just to name a few. He also spent a short time as a cadet patrol officer until it was discovered that he had misrepresented himself. Unfortunately, his time in New Guinea came with a price. While there, Flynn contracted malaria, which would plague him for the rest of his life. It has been a matter of dispute as to whether all his stories of adventure were true, but many have concluded that even if only 25% percent were true, he certainly had an amazing life.
On arriving in Britain in 1933, he found an acting job with the Northampton Repertory Company, where he worked for seven months. However, it is disputed whether he performed at the 1934 Malvern Festival and in Glasgow and London's West End.
Dream project was a biopic about the notorious Australian-Irish outlaw Ned Kelly, which nearly got produced by Warner Brothers in the mid 1940s.
According to his autobiography, Errol Flynn's mother, Marelle Young, was a descendant of Midshipman Edward ("Ned") Young, a Bounty mutineer who went to Pitcairn with Fletcher Christian. Young had four children with Toofaiti, Nancy, George, Robert and William, and three more with Christian's widow Mauatua, Edward, Polly and Dorothea. His descendants still live on Pitcairn, Norfolk and in New Zealand.
He was a friend of Hermann Erben - monkey expert, drug dealer, Hitler impersonator and German agent who spent voluntarily three years in a Japanese internment camp in Shanghai.
He is frequently mentioned in Marvel Comics' 'X-Men' series as the idol of the character Nightcrawler.
Since he was on the May 23, 1938 cover of Life magazine, a copy of which was placed in the Westinghouse Time Capsule at the 1939 World's Fair and not to be opened for 50 centuries, Errol Flynn will be remembered in thousands of years to come.
At his funeral on October 19, 1959 his bronze casket, covered with yellow roses, was carried from the Church of the Recessional at Forest Lawn, Glendale, CA by Raoul Walsh, Mickey Rooney, Quinn "Big Boy" Williams, Jack Oakie, Otto Reichow and Mike Romanoff.
Kevin Kline plays Flynn in a motion-picture version of his affair with 15-year-old Beverly Aadland in The Last of Robin Hood (2013).
Mulholland Farm, Errol's old house, was located at 3100 Torreyson Place off Mulholland Drive overlooking the San Fernando Valley. Originally situated on 11 1/2 acres, the original house was last occupied by Rick Nelson, who bought it for $750k in 1980. His twin sons, Gunnar and Matthew Nelson, grew up in the house and were the last people to live in it. Unfortunately, due to years of neglect, the house and other structures (a pool, barn and a casino!) were demolished in 1988 and sub-divided into several smaller parcels. Justin Timberlake currently owns the large compound at the top of the property at the end of Torreyson Drive. On the left is the original entrance to Errol's property, Flynn Ranch Road, but it is now gated-closed.
You can catch a glimpse of Mulholland Farm in it's heyday at the beginning of the short film "The Cruise Of The Zaca" from 1952. TCM shows it quite frequently as filler between movies.
While looking for native agricultural laborers in New Guinea in 1933, he was pursued and nearly captured by headhunters.
Portrayed by Guy Pearce in Flynn (1993) and by Jude Law in The Aviator (2004).
He had two roles in common with Douglas Fairbanks: (1) Fairbanks played Robin Hood in Robin Hood (1922) while Flynn played him in The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938) and (2) Fairbanks played Don Juan de Maraña in The Private Life of Don Juan (1934) while Flynn played him in Adventures of Don Juan (1948).
Shortly before his death he had a tumor removed from his mouth.
Although he played Anna Neagle's father in Let's Make Up (1954), he was almost five years her junior in real life.
Often drank two or three quarts of vodka a day.
May have had oral cancer at the time of his death.
Personal Quotes (17)
You once liked the blissful mobility, but then you wonder, who's the real you? And who's the chap on the screen? You know, I catch myself acting out my life like a goddamn script.
They've great respect for the dead in Hollywood, but none for the living.
I do what I like.
I like my whiskey old and my women young.
[last words] I've had a hell of a lot of fun and I've enjoyed every minute of it.
I can't reconcile my gross habits with my net income.
I intend to live the first half of my life. I don't care about the rest.
The public has always expected me to be a playboy, and a decent chap never lets his public down.
It isn't what they say about you, it's what they whisper.
If I have any genius it is a genius for living.
I felt like an impostor, taking all that money for reciting ten or twelve lines of nonsense a day.
Women won't let me stay single, and I won't let myself stay married.
I allow myself to be understood as a colorful fragment in a drab world.
I've made six or seven good films - the others, not so good.
My job is to defy the normal.
By instinct I'm an adventurer; by choice I'd like to be a writer; by pure, unadulterated luck, I'm an actor.
I had now made about forty-five pictures, but what had I become? I knew all too well: a phallic symbol. All over the world I was, as a name and personality, equated with sex.
Salary (9)
Murder at Monte Carlo (1935) $150 /week
The Case of the Curious Bride (1935) $150 /week
Captain Blood (1935) $500 /week
The Prince and the Pauper (1937) $2,500 /week
Edge of Darkness (1943) $7,000 /week
Uncertain Glory (1944) $200,000
Objective, Burma! (1945) $200,000
San Antonio (1945) $200,000
Istanbul (1957) $160,000
No comments:
Post a Comment