About Errol Flynn
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Errol Flynn c.1940
Birth name Errol Leslie Thomson Flynn
Born June 20, 1909(1909-06-20)
Hobart, Tasmania, Australia
Died October 14, 1959 (aged 50)
Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
Spouse(s) Patrice Wymore (1950 - 1959) (his death) 1 child
Nora Eddington 1943 - 1948) (divorced) 2 children
Lili Damita (1931 - 1942) (divorced) 1 child


Errol Leslie Thomson Flynn (June 20, 1909 – October 14, 1959) was an Australian film actor, most famous for his romantic swashbuckler roles in Hollywood films and his flamboyant lifestyle.

Youth

Errol Flynn was born in Hobart, Tasmania, Australia, where his father, Theodore Thomson Flynn was a lecturer (1909), and eventually a professor (1911) of biology at the University of Tasmania (UTAS). Errol was taken to Sydney, New South Wales, as a child. There he attended Sydney Church of England Grammar School (Shore School), from which he was expelled for fighting and, allegedly, having sex with a school laundress[citation needed]. He was also expelled from the next school he attended. Shortly afterwards, he moved to New Guinea, where he bought a tobacco plantation, a business which failed. A copper mining venture in the hills near the Laloki Valley behind the present national capital, Port Moresby, also failed.

In the early 1930s, Flynn left for Britain and, in 1933, got an acting job with Northampton Repertory Company, where he worked for seven months. According to Gerry Connelly's book Errol Flynn in Northampton, he also performed at the 1934 Malvern Festival as well as in Glasgow and London's West End.

In 1933, he starred in the Australian film In the Wake of the Bounty directed by Charles Chauvel, and in 1934 appeared Murder at Monte Carlo, produced at the Warner Bros. Teddington Studios, U.K.. This latter film is now considered a lost film. During the filming of Murder at Monte Carlo, Flynn was discovered by a Warner Brothers executive, signed to a contract, and shipped to America as a contract actor. In 1942, Flynn became a naturalized citizen of the United States.

Acting career

Flynn became an overnight sensation with his first starring role in Captain Blood (1935). He became typecast as a swashbuckler and made a host of such films, including The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938), The Dawn Patrol (1938) with his close friend David Niven, Dodge City (1939), The Sea Hawk (1940), and Adventures of Don Juan (1948).

Flynn played opposite Olivia de Havilland in eight films, including Captain Blood, The Charge of the Light Brigade (1936), The Adventures of Robin Hood, Dodge City, Santa Fe Trail (1940), and They Died with their Boots On (1941). Film historian Rudy Behlmer asserted that during the filming of Robin Hood, de Havilland and Flynn were romantically involved (see the Special Edition of Robin Hood on DVD, 2003), but de Havilland herself has disputed this. Their relationship was, she said in an interview for Turner Classic Movies, platonic, mostly because Flynn was already married to Lili Damita. The Adventures of Robin Hood was Flynn's first in Technicolor.

During the shooting of The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex (1939), Flynn and co-star Bette Davis had some legendary off-screen fights, with Davis striking him harder than necessary while filming a scene. Their relationship was always strained, but Warner Brothers teamed them up twice. Their off-screen relationship was later reconciled. A contract was even presented to lend them out as Rhett Butler and Scarlett O'Hara in Gone with the Wind but the teaming failed to materialize. Davis claimed she turned down the role, refusing to work with Flynn, but researchers later revealed that Davis was never seriously considered for the part.[citation needed]

Flynn was a member of Hollywood's cricket club along with David Niven. His suave, debonair, and devil-may-care attitude towards both ladies and life has been immortalized in the English language by author Benjamin S. Johnson as "Errolesque" in his treatise on the subject, An Errolesque Philosophy on Life.

After America entered World War II Flynn was often criticised for his failure to enlist while continuing to play war heroes in films. Flynn in fact had actually attempted to join every arm of the services but been rejected. The studios' failure to counter the criticism was due to a desire to hide the state of Flynn's health. Not only did Flynn have an enlarged heart, which had already resulted in several previous heart attacks, but he also had tuberculosis and suffered from recurrent bouts of the malaria he had contracted in New Guinea.

By the 1950s, Flynn had become a parody of himself. Heavy alcohol and drug abuse left him prematurely aged and bloated, but he still won acclaim as a drunken ne'er-do-well in The Sun Also Rises (1957), and as his idol John Barrymore in Too Much Too Soon (1958). His colourful but somewhat exaggerated[citation needed] autobiography, My Wicked, Wicked Ways, was published just months after his death and contains humourous anecdotes about Hollywood. Flynn wanted to call the book In Like Me, but the publisher refused. In 1984, CBS produced a television mini-series based on Flynn's autobiography, starring Duncan Regehr as Flynn.

Also in the 1950s, Flynn tried his hand as a novelist, penning the adventure novel Showdown, which was published in 1952.

Lifestyle

Flynn was famous for his drinking, womanizing, and brawling. His freewheeling, hedonistic lifestyle caught up with him in November 1942 when teenagers Betty Hansen and Peggy Satterlee accused him of statutory rape.[2] A group was organised to support Flynn, named the American Boys' Club for the Defence of Errol Flynn (ABCDEF); its members included William F. Buckley, Jr.. The trial took place in January and February, 1943, and Flynn was cleared of the charges. The incident served to increase his reputation as a ladies' man, which led to the popular belief that the term "in like Flynn" was based on Flynn's romantic exploits, but that may not be the case.

Although kept well hidden from the public so as not to tarnish his clean-cut on-screen persona, it was an open secret in Hollywood that Flynn had a voracious sexual appetite. He had countless affairs, flings, and trysts with many women and a few men. In his 2007 biography of Bette Davis, writer Ed Sikov claims that on the set of "Captain Blood," Flynn loudly protested that the make-up department not be allowed to "shave Ross Alexander's hairy armpits for Alexander's spread-eagled flogging scene because he, Flynn, took too much sexual pleasure in them offscreen."

Marriages

Flynn was married three times, to actress Lili Damita from 1935 until 1942 (one son, Sean Flynn); to Nora Eddington from 1943 until 1948 (two daughters, Deirdre and Rory); and to actress Patrice Wymore from 1950 until his death (one daughter, Arnella Roma). In Hollywood he tended to refer to himself as Irish rather than Australian. His father Theodore Thomson Flynn was a biologist and a professor at the Queen's University of Belfast in Northern Ireland for the latter part of his career. Flynn lived with Wymore in Port Antonio, Jamaica in the 1950s. He was largely responsible for developing tourism to this area, and for a while owned the Titchfield Hotel which was decorated by the artist Olga Lehmann. He also popularised trips down rivers on bamboo rafts.


In the late 1950s, Flynn met the 15-year-old Beverly Aadland at the Hollywood Professional School, whom he courted during his last few years, and cast in his final film, Cuban Rebel Girls (1959). According to Aadland, he planned to marry her and move to their new house in Jamaica, but during a trip together to Vancouver, British Columbia, he died of a heart attack. His only son, Sean, became an actor and later a war correspondent, but he disappeared in Cambodia in 1970 during the Vietnam War. The younger Flynn's life was recounted in Inherited Risk by Jeffrey Meyers (Simon & Schuster).

Death

Numerous legends surround Flynn's death. According to Vancouverhistory.ca, Flynn flew with Aadland to Vancouver on October 9, 1959, to sell his yacht Zaca to millionaire George Caldough. On October 14, Caldough was driving Flynn to the airport when Flynn felt ill. He was taken to the apartment of Caldough's friend, Dr. Grant Gould, uncle of noted pianist Glenn Gould. A party ensued, with Flynn regaling guests with stories and impressions. Feeling ill again, he announced "I shall return" and retired to a bedroom to rest. A half hour later, Aadland checked in on him and discovered him unconscious, due to suffering a massive heart attack. According to the Vancouver Sun on December 16, 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."

He is interred in Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery, in Glendale, California. He shares coffin space with six bottles of whiskey, a parting gift from his drinking buddies. Both his parents survived him.

Post-death controversy

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 the Disney film The Rocketeer (1991), the major villain, Neville Sinclair, was a 1930s Hollywood actor who spied for the Nazis in an obvious reference to Higham's allegations about Flynn[citation needed]. 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 (Citadel, 1990) and Buster Wiles' My Days With Errol Flynn: The Autobiography of a Stuntman (Roundtable, 1988) — have denounced Higham's claims as fabrications. Flynn's political leanings appear to be 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[6] shortly before his death.