Errol Flynn
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This article is about the Australian-born Hollywood actor. For the Dogs D'Amour album, see Errol Flynn (album). For the Detroit street gang, see Errol Flynns.
| Errol Flynn | |
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Errol Flynn c.1940
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| Born | Errol Leslie Thomson Flynn[1] 20 June 1909[1] Hobart, Tasmania, Australia[1] |
| Died | 14 October 1959 (aged 50) Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada |
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Cause of death
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Heart attack |
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Resting place
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Forest Lawn Memorial Park, Glendale, California, U.S. |
| Education | The Hutchins School |
| Occupation | Actor |
| Years active | 1932–1959 |
| Children | Sean (born May 31, 1941; disappeared April 6, 1970) Deirdre (born 1945) Rory (born 1947) Arnella Roma (1953–1998) |
Contents
Early life
Actor
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 headed back to England intent upon pursuing a career in acting, and shortly after arriving 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's art-house cinema, the Errol Flynn Filmhouse, is named after him).[17] He also performed at the 1934 Malvern Festival and in Glasgow and London's West End fleetingly.[18]In 1934, Flynn was dismissed from Northampton Rep. after a violent fracas with a female stage manager, which involved her being tumbled down a stairwell, and he headed to Warner Brothers' Teddington Studios in Middlesex where he had worked briefly as an extra (actor) in the movie I Adore You before going to Northampton.[19] With his new-found acting skills he was cast as the lead in Murder at Monte Carlo (currently a lost film),[20] during the filming of which he was signed by Warner Bros. and emigrated to America as a contract actor.
Hollywood career
Working throughout his career with a cross-section of Hollywood's best fight arrangers, Flynn became noted for his fast-paced sword fights as seen in The Adventures of Robin Hood, The Sea Hawk and Captain Blood.[22] He also showed an acting range beyond purely action-adventure roles, both at light contemporary social comedy via performances in The Perfect Specimen (1937) and Four's a Crowd (1938), and melodrama in The Sisters (1938).
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 '40s 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 privately romantically involved during the filming of Robin Hood [23] have been refuted by de Havilland. In an interview for Turner Classic Movies she said that their relationship was platonic, primarily because Flynn was already married to Lili Damita.
During the shooting of The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex (1939) Flynn was co-starred for a second time with Bette Davis, but their personal relationship was quarrelsome offscreen, causing Davis allegedly to slap him across the face far harder than necessary while filming a scene. Flynn thought that the cause of Davis' wrath was her being romantically interested in him, a feeling that was not reciprocated on his part.[24] Other reports said Davis was upset to be sharing equal billing with a man she thought was not a real actor but just playing the same dashing adventurer time after time. Olivia Hamilton recounted a story where she visited Davis and they watched a private copy of Elizabeth and Essex; halfway through Davis brought her hand crashing down on her chair arm rest and declared, "Damn it! The man Could act!"
In 1940, he was voted the 4th most popular star in the US according to Variety and the 7th most popular in Britain, and was at the zenith of his career.[25][26]
Flynn was a member of the Hollywood Cricket Club with David Niven, and a talented tennis player on the California Club circuit. His suave, debonair, and devil-may-care attitude toward both women and life has been immortalised in the English language by author Benjamin S. Johnson as, "Errolesque," in his treatise on the subject, An Errolesque Philosophy on Life.[27]
When Flynn became a naturalized American citizen on 15 August 1942 he also became eligible for the military draft, as the United States had entered World War II eight months earlier. Grateful to the country that had given him fame and wealth,[28] he attempted to join the armed services but he had several health problems, his heart was enlarged, with a murmur, and he had already suffered at least one heart attack; he had recurrent malaria (contracted in New Guinea), chronic back pain (for which he self-medicated with morphine and later, with heroin), lingering chronic tuberculosis, and numerous venereal diseases. Flynn, famous for his athletic roles and promoted as a paragon of male physical perfection, was classified 4-F – unqualified for military service because of not meeting the minimum physical fitness standards.[28][29] This created a public image problem for both Flynn and Warner Brothers as he was often criticized for his failure to enlist in the Armed Forces for war service as many other Hollywood actors of service age had, and yet while not apparently enlisting he continued to play war heroes in flag-waver productions such as Dive Bomber (1941), Desperate Journey (1942) and Objective Burma (1945). The Studio's failure to counter the criticism was due to a decision professionally to conceal the state of Flynn's health as he was an expensive asset – in the late 1940s his fee was $200,000 a film.[30]
After WWII the taste of the American moviegoing audience changed from its pre-war cosmopolitan interest in European-themed material and the English history-based escapist epics that Flynn had excelled at, to more gritty urban realism and film noir reflecting modern American life, and more domestically sourced subject-matter generally. Flynn, having tried unsuccessfully to make the transition with productions like Uncertain Glory (1944) and Cry Wolf (1947), and backed into an artistic corner of relying on increasingly passe Westerns such as Silver River (1948) (in which he showed his frustration with increasingly disruptive behavior on set) and Montana (1950), found himself released from his primary Warner Bros Studio contract in 1950 by Jack Warner in a stable-clearing of 1930s glamor generation stars.[24] This essentially marked the end of Flynn's Hollywood career and the money that went with it, and his descent financially and physically after it was rapid.
After Hollywood
In the 1950s, after losing his savings from the Hollywood years in a series of financial disasters, one of which was The Story of William Tell (1954),[24] he spent his time sailing aimlessly around the Western Mediterranean and its ports aboard his yacht Zaca, becoming a parody of himself with heavy alcohol use leaving him prematurely aged and overweight, and staving off financial ruin by performing in forgettable productions such as King's Rhapsody (1955) in the UK's failing movie industry (which he had attempted to return to after Hollywood's door had closed), abortive attempts or commercially unsuccessful self-production in Europe, Hello God (1951), Crossed Swords (1954), occasional roles in also-ran Hollywood movies such as Mara Maru (1952), Istanbul (1957) and television appearances.[31] As early as 1952 he had been seriously ill with hepatitis.[32] In 1956 he presented and sometimes performed in the television anthology series The Errol Flynn Theatre that was filmed in England. His acting career received a brief flare of interest once more in response to his appearance in The Sun Also Rises (1957), and in Too Much, Too Soon (1958), which was more to do with an audience curious to see evidence of the sensationalist stories that they had read in the press intermittently through the decade about Flynn's physical deterioration than the quality of these productions themselves. On the back of the publicity about his performance in The Sun Also Rises he made a fleeting return to Hollywood mainstream film making in The Roots of Heaven (1958). Flynn and Beverly Aadland met with Stanley Kubrick to discuss appearing together in Lolita, but nothing came of it.[33] Flynn went to Cuba in late 1958 to film the self-produced b-movie Cuban Rebel Girls and met Fidel Castro, and was initially an enthusiastic supporter of the Cuban Revolution. He narrated a short film titled Cuban Story: The Truth About Fidel Castro Revolution (1959), his last known work as an actor.[34]Writing
Beam Ends (1937), Flynn's first published book, was an autobiographical account of his sailing experiences as a youth around Australia.Flynn went to Spain in 1937 as a war correspondent to report for the United States during the Spanish Civil War.[35]
In 1946, he published the adventure novel Showdown.
Sundry newspaper and magazine articles, including some written for the New York Journal American by Flynn documenting his time in Cuba with Fidel Castro and his rebels went unpublished, and were to remain missing until 2009, when they were discovered in the University of Texas at Austin's Center for American History.[36]
His final book My Wicked, Wicked Ways was written between August and October 1958 with the aid of ghostwriter Earl Conrad, as Flynn was suffering from depression and alcoholism at that time, and had lost the discipline to write. Published shortly after his death, the book contains scant details of his Hollywood movie career, concentrating instead mainly on the story of his life apart from it, with odd scandalous paragraphs thrown in for shock value, which caused the inevitable media uproar upon publication, but doing no harm at all to its sales figures. In the view of one literary critic the book "remains one of the most compelling and appalling autobiographies written by a Hollywood star, or anyone else for that matter".[37] As a nod to the expression "in like Flynn" (popularly believed to reference his ease with women), Flynn wanted to call the book In Like Me, but the publisher refused.[38] In 1985 CBS produced a television film based on the book.
Personal life
Lifestyle
Flynn had a reputation, amongst those who knew him personally beyond his intimate family circle, for womanizing, hard drinking, and for a while in the 1940s, narcotic abuse. His lifestyle caught up with him in public in 1942 when two underage girls, Betty Hansen and Peggy Satterlee, accused him of statutory rape,[39] alleging that the event occurred at the Bel Air, Los Angeles home of Flynn's friend Frederick McEvoy.[40] The scandal received immense press attention with many of Flynn's movie fans refusing to accept that the charges were true (one such group that publicly organized to this end was "The American Boys' Club for the Defense of Errol Flynn (ABCDEF)" who counted in its number William F. Buckley, Jr.),[41] taking the image that they had of Flynn's screen persona as a reflection of his actual character in real life. The trial took place over January and February 1943, and Flynn was acquitted after a successfully aggressive defense by his lawyer castigated the accusing girls' morals and characters. Although Flynn was found innocent of the charges legally, the trial's sexually lurid nature played out day by day by the media, created a notorious public reputation of Flynn as a ladies' man, and permanently damaged his screen image as an idealized romantic lead player, which Warner Bros had expended much time and resources establishing in the eyes of female moviegoing audiences.Marriages and family
Flynn was a longtime friend of the painter Boris Smirnoff, who painted his portrait several times, as well as those of Lili Damita, Patrice Wymore and celebrity friends such as Edward G. Robinson, Jean Harlow, Norma Shearer and Barbara Stanwyck.[43]
The gossips took note of his close friendships with Marlene Dietrich, Dolores del Río and Carole Lombard. Lombard is said to have resisted his advances. She had already met and fallen in love with Clark Gable, but she liked Flynn and invited him to her extravagant soirees.[44]
In the late 1950s, Flynn met and courted the 15-year-old Beverly Aadland at the Hollywood Professional School, casting her in his final film, Cuban Rebel Girls (1959). According to Aadland, he planned to marry her and move to a new house in Jamaica but he died of a heart attack before this came to pass.
His only son, Sean, an actor and later a noted war correspondent, disappeared in Cambodia in 1970 during the Vietnam War while working as a freelance photojournalist for Time magazine.[45] Sean was presumed dead in 1971, probably murdered by the Khmer Rouge. In 1984, he was officially declared dead in a granted petition of declaration sought by his mother, Lili Damita. Sean's life was recounted in Inherited Risk by Jeffrey Meyers (Simon & Schuster), and he is also mentioned on page 194 in the Colleagues section of Dispatches by Michael Herr.
Flynn's daughter Rory has one son, Sean Rio Flynn, named after her half-brother. He is an actor.[46] Rory Flynn has written a book about her father entitled The Baron of Mulholland: A Daughter Remembers Errol Flynn.
Death
According to the Vancouver Sun (16 December 2006), "When Errol Flynn came to town in 1959 for a week-long binge that ended with him dying in a West End apartment, his local friends propped him up at the Hotel Georgia lounge so that everyone would see him." The story is a myth, immediately following the death the body was turned over to the Vancouver Coroner's Office which performed an autopsy, and then legally released to the next of kin for dispatch by railway transit to California. The results of the autopsy revealed a number of ailments including heart disease and degeneration and cirrhosis of the liver.[48] Years of alcoholism had apparently taken a toll on Flynn's body and an unnamed official from the Coroner's Office said it was that "of a tired old man - old before his time, and sick."[48]
Flynn's body was buried in Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery, in Glendale, California. Both of his parents survived him.
Film portrayals
- Duncan Regehr portrayed Flynn in a 1985 American TV movie 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 movie about his final days, The Last of Robin Hood, made in 2013.[49]
- The character of Alan Swann, portrayed by Peter O'Toole in the 1982 film My Favorite Year, was based on Flynn.[50]
- The character of Neville Sinclaire (portrayed by Timothy Dalton in the 1991 film "The Rocketeer" (based on the graphic novel by Dave Stevens) is based on Flynn.
Posthumous allegations
In 1961, Florence Aadland co-authored with Tedd Thomey The Big Love, a book alleging Flynn was involved in a sexual relationship with her 15-year-old daughter, actress Beverly.[51][52] It was later made into a play starring Tracey Ullman.[53][54]Charles Higham Allegations
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 World War II, and also that he was bisexual.[55][56] Higham did confess to the New York Times, however, that he had no documents proving Flynn was a Nazi agent.[57] Flynn's ex-wife Nora Eddington Black denounced the allegations and members of Flynn’s family subsequently attempted to sue Higham and his publisher Doubleday for libel, but since the actor had died in 1959 the suit was dismissed.[58][59]Other biographers accused Higham of altering FBI documents to sustain his charges against Flynn.[60] That Flynn was bisexual was also claimed by David Bret in Errol Flynn: Satan's Angel (2000), although Bret denounced the Nazi claims.
Flynn's former housemate David Niven criticised Charles Higham for his claims in 1980; Higham responded that Niven was ignorant of his friend's activities.[61]
In a 1982 interview with Penthouse Magazine, Ronald DeWolf, previously known as L. Ron Hubbard Jr, claimed that his father had a strong friendship with Flynn, who was considered a family friend to the point of being looked upon as an adoptive father to DeWolf. He claimed Flynn and his father were alike, and engaged in various illegal activities together, including indulging in sexual acts with young underage girls and also drug smuggling. Flynn, however never became a practitioner of Hubbard's religious group, Scientology.[62]
In 2000, Higham wrote an article that also claimed that Flynn was previously accused of sympathising with Adolf Hitler based on his association with Dr. Hermann Erben, an Austrian who served in the German military intelligence. Unreleased MI5 files held by the British Home Office were claimed in 2000 to demonstrate Flynn worked for the Allies during the war.[63] Flynn offered to spy on Ireland for America during the war but was turned down because of FDR's fear that he sympathised with the Nazis.[64]
Subsequent biographies – notably Tony Thomas' Errol Flynn: The Spy Who Never Was (Citadel, 1990) and Buster Wiles' My Days With Errol Flynn: The Autobiography of a Stuntman (Roundtable, 1988) – have rejected Higham's claims as pure fabrication. Flynn's political leanings, say these biographies, appear to have been leftist: he was a supporter of the Spanish Republic in the Spanish Civil War and of the Cuban Revolution, even narrating a documentary titled Cuban Story shortly before his death. Flynn also wrote, financed and starred in the film Cuban Rebel Girls in which his character helps Castro's revolution. Flynn defended his visit to Cuba in an appearance on a Canadian Broadcasting Corp. (CBC) television show Front Page Challenge early in 1959. According to his autobiography, he considered Fidel Castro a close personal friend and drinking partner.[citation needed]
In June 2013, it was discovered that Errol Flynn had an unpaid debt to the Northampton menswear shop, Montague Jeffery.[65]
Posthumous cultural references
- The 1965 Marvel Comics character Fandral, a companion of the Norse God Thor and a member of the Warriors Three, was based on the likeness of Flynn by co-creator Stan Lee.[66] Actor Joshua Dallas, who played the character in Thor, based his portrayal on Flynn.[67]
- According to artist Howard Chaykin, his character Ironwolf was based on Errol Flynn.
- In 1976, British rock quartet 10cc recorded a song, "Don't Hang Up," written by band members Kevin Godley and Lol Creme, for their How Dare You album. The song references Flynn in the lyric line, "I know I never had the style or the dash of Errol Flynn/but I love you."
- Errol Flynn's life was the subject of the opera Flynn (1977–78) by British composer Judith Bingham. The score is titled: Music-theatre on the life and times of Errol Flynn, in three scenes, three solos, four duets, a mad song and an interlude.[68]
- "Errol" was the title of a 1981 hit pop song by the band Australian Crawl. It appeared on their album Sirocco, which was itself named after Flynn's yacht.[citation needed]
- Roman Polanski's 1986 film, Pirates was intended to pay homage to the beloved Errol Flynn swashbucklers of his childhood.[69]
- In 1989 UK rock band "The Dogs D'amour" release an album titled "Errol Flynn" that charted at #26 on the UK charts.
- In 2005, a small waterfront reserve in Sandy Bay, a suburb of Flynn's hometown of Hobart, was renamed from Short Beach to the "Errol Flynn Reserve".[70]
- The Pirate's Daughter, a 2008 novel by Margaret Cezair-Thompson, is a fictionalised account of Flynn's later life.[71]
- In June 2009 the Errol Flynn Society of Tasmania Inc. organised the Errol Flynn Centenary Celebration, a 10-day series of events designed to celebrate the 100th anniversary of his birth[72] On the actual centenary, 20 June 2009, his daughter Rory Flynn unveiled a star with his name on the footpath outside Hobart's heritage State Cinema.[73]
- In 2009, the Port Antonio mega-yacht marina in the northeastern coast of Jamaica underwent a name change to the Errol Flynn Marina.[74][75]
- The 2010 novel Errol, Fidel and the Cuban Rebel Girls by Boyd Anderson is a fictionalised account of the last year of Flynn's life in Cuba.[76]
- Jay Electronica song "2-Step" Lyrics: "Chillin' in the circle, Errol Flynnin' it up" [77]
- In the 1991 film The Rocketeer, the characterization of Neville Sinclair was inspired by Flynn, or rather by the image of Flynn that had been popularized by Charles Higham's unauthorized and fabricated biography of the actor,[78] in which he asserted that Flynn was, among other things, a Nazi spy. The film's Neville Sinclair is, like Higham's Flynn, a movie star known for his work in swashbuckler roles, and who is secretly a Nazi spy. Because Higham's biography of Flynn was not refuted until the late 1980s, the image of Flynn as a closet Nazi remained current all through the arduous process of writing and re-writing the script.[79]
- "The trouble was started by a young Errol Flynn" is a line in the song Blood on the Rooftops from the 1976 Genesis album, Wind and Wuthering.
- "Errol Flynn" is the name of a song by Australian indie band Jinja Safari.
- The Character of bow in in the cartoon She Ra was rumored to be based on Flynn's looks.
- In Disney's 2010 film Tangled, one of the main characters uses the pseudonym Flynn Rider, an obvious allusion to the actor's swashbuckling, ladies-man roles.
Bibliography
- Beam Ends (1937)
- Showdown (1946)
- Flynn, Errol. My Wicked, Wicked Ways: the Autobiography of Errol Flynn. Intro. by Jeffrey Meyers. New York: Cooper Square Press, 2003. Rpt. of My Wicked, Wicked Ways. New York: G.P. Putnam's sons, 1959. ISBN 0-8154-1250-9.
- Flynn, Errol "The Quest for an Oscar." by James Turiello, BearManor Media, Duncan, OK. 2012. ISBN 978-1-59393-695-2.
Filmography
Main article: Errol Flynn filmography
Select radio performances
Flynn appeared in numerous radio performances:[80]| Year | Title | Venue | Dates performed |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1937 | Captain Blood | Lux Radio Theatre | 22 February[81] |
| 1937 | British Agent | Lux Radio Theatre | 7 June[82] |
| 1937 | These Three | Lux Radio Theatre | 6 December[83] |
| 1938 | Green Light | Lux Radio Theatre | 31 January |
| 1939 | The Perfect Specimen | Lux Radio Theatre | 2 January[84] |
| 1939 | Lives of a Bengal Lancer | Lux Radio Theatre | 10 April[85] |
| 1940 | Trade Winds | Lux Radio Theatre | 4 March[86] |
| 1941 | Virginia City | Lux Radio Theatre | 26 May[87] |
| 1941 | They Died With Their Boots On | Cavalcade of America | 17 November[88] |
| 1944 | Barbara Stanwyck | Command Performance | 30 July[89] |
| 1946 | Gentleman Jim | Theatre of Romance | 5 February |
| 1952 | The Modern Adventures of Casanova | 22 May |
Theatre performances
Flynn appeared on stage in a number of performances, particularly early in his career:[90]- The Thirteenth Chair – Dec 1933 – Northampton Rep
- Jack and the Beanstalk – Dec 1933 – Northampton Rep
- Sweet Lavendar – January 1934 – Northampton Rep
- Bulldog Drummond – January 1934 –Northampton Rep
- A Doll's House – January 1934 - Northampton Rep
- On the Spot – January 1934 – Northampton Rep
- Pygmalion – January–February 1934 – Northampton Rep
- Crime at Blossoms – February 1934 – Northampton Rep
- Yellow Sands – February 1934 – Northampton Rep
- The Grain of Mustard Seed – February 1934 – Northampton Rep
- Seven Keys to Baldpate – March 1934 – Northampton Rep
- Othello – March 1934 – Northampton Rep
- The Green Bay Tree – March 1934 – Northampton Rep
- The Fake – March 1934 – Northampton Rep
- The Farmer's Wife – March–April 1934 – Northampton Rep
- The Wind and the Rain – April 1934 – Northampton Rep
- Sheppey – April 1934 – Northampton Rep
- The Soul of Nicholas Snyders – April 1934 – Northampton Rep
- The Devil's Disciple – May 1934 – Northampton Rep
- Conflict – May 1934 – Northampton Rep
- Paddy the Next Best Thing – May 1934 – Northampton Rep
- 9:45 – May–June 1934 – Northampton Rep
- Malvern festival – July–August 1934 – appeared in A Man's House, History of Dr Faustus, Marvelous History of Saint Bernard, The Moon in Yellow River, Mutiny
- A Man's House – August – September1934 – Glasgow, St Martin's Lane
- Master of Thornfield – February 1958 – adaptation of Jane Eyre
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