How Much Do You Know About Errol Flynn?
Born in Tasmania in 1909, during the Golden Age of Hollywood, Errol Flynn became one of the most recognizable movie stars in the world. Best-known for his roles as a suave swashbuckler, his good looks and charisma made him one of Warner Brother’s most popular talents. Although Flynn may have been at the top of the Hollywood totem pole, not everything was as it seemed. There was a darker side to Flynn that involved countless women and a destructive hedonistic lifestyle. See the person Errol Flynn really was, and how his pedal-to-the-metal outlook on life led him to an early grave.
Trouble From An Early Age
Errol Flynn was born in Tasmania on June 20, 1909, and after spending some time in Papua New Guinea, he returned to Australia in 1926, to attend a fancy grammar school.
Nevertheless, that didn’t last all that long as he was expelled from the school. This was his first real encounter with public controversy, something he would become very familiar with in his professional life. While some stories claim that he was expelled for stealing, Flynn boasted that he was kicked out of the school for having intimate relations with a school laundress.
False Information
In 1980, one of Flynn’s biographers by the name of Charles Highman, falsely published in his book, Errol Flynn: The Untold Story, that Flynn had worked as a Nazi spy before and during World War II.
He claimed that Flynn had arranged for the movie Dive Bomber to be filmed on location at the San Diego Naval Base in order to provide the Japanese information about American warships and defense information. Highman also penned that Flynn was experimental and had numerous affairs with other men. It was only later that Highman admitted he had no evidence to back up his claims.
It Didn’t Take Him Much To Blow Up In Popularity
After having a few small parts in a limited number of films, Flynn found himself being considered for a big-time role in the big-budget 1935 swashbuckler film Captain Blood by Warner Bros. Although he was essentially unknown at the time, his initial screen test proved to be enough for the studio and the part was his.
The studio’s judgment turned out to be right and the movie was a smashing success, turning Flynn into a major star in the blink of an eye. By 1940, he was the fourteenth most popular actor in the US and the seventh in the UK.
He Was No Stranger To The Bottle
Throughout his life, Flynn was known for his alcohol abuse. At one point, he even managed to get thrown out of a party hosted by William Randolph Hearst at Hearst’s Castle. On top of that, he once got into a physical altercation with director John Huston on the set of The Roots of Heaven for his behavior, resulting in him getting knocked out in one punch.
As a result of his drinking, he was banned on most sets from touching alcohol, so he was known to inject his oranges with vodka to get his fix. After his death of a heart attack, it was concluded that his liver was in such bad shape he would have died within a year anyway.
He Wasn’t Loved By All Women
Although Flynn was a renowned ladies man for most of his life, there was one actress that saw right through him. She was Bette Davis, whom he worked on numerous films during the height of his career. Davis couldn’t stand Flynn, with him accusing her of slapping him overly hard in scenes just because she didn’t like him.
Davis attributed her hatred for him because she was forced to share a screen with someone she thought could only act in swashbuckler films. She once even told an interviewer, “He himself openly said, ‘I don’t know really anything about acting,’ and I admire his honesty because he’s absolutely right.”
He Was Denied From Serving In World War II
Even though he was a Hollywood star, that didn’t stop Flynn from answering the call of duty when the United States became involved in World War II. Although he tried to enlist in the military, he was rejected due to numerous health concerns.
Furthermore, Warner Bros. tried to cover up that he had been rejected, as it didn’t look good if their biggest action star was having health problems. This resulted in rumors spreading that Flynn had dodged the draft. Later in his life, he proclaimed that his only regret was not serving in the war.
His Son Was Lost And Never Found
Flynn only had one son, Sean, who also became an actor. However, he eventually put acting on hold to follow his true passion for journalism. During the Vietnam War, Sean traveled to southeast Asia as a war correspondent for Time Magazine. Tragically, Sean disappeared while in Cambodia in 1970.
In 1984, he was eventually declared as dead although his body was never recovered and his cause of death was never confirmed. Luckily for Flynn, he wasn’t alive to suffer through this kind of loss.
Playing Robin Hood Defined His Career
At the age of 28, Flynn starred in the 1938 film The Adventures of Robin Hood. The film turned out to be the 6th top-grossing movie of 1938 and was Warner Brothers’ first large budget color film using the three-strip Technicolor process, costing $2.47 million, it was the most expensive Warner Bros. film to date.
The film was hailed by critics and is still held in high regard today with Rotten Tomatoes writing in 2019 that “Errol Flynn thrills as the legendary title character and the film embodies the type of imaginative family adventure tailor-made for the silver screen.” It also won three Academy Awards.
A Relationship That Was Surprisingly Never Intimate
Over the course of his career, Flynn made a total of nine films with Olivia de Havilland, more often than not as a romantic couple. Of course, rumors began circulating that the two were romantically involved off-screen.
Although this wouldn’t be a first for Flynn, de Havilland was firm in her response that there was no such relationship going on. She even later admitted that she felt a romantic attraction to Flynn but never acted on it out of respect for his marriage.
Flynn Found Himself In Deep Legal Trouble
In 1942, Betty Hansen and Peggy Satterlee, two 17-year-old girls accused Flynn of inappropriate behavior at the Bel Air home of Frederick McEvoy and on Flynn’s yacht. The press had a field day with the scandal, although many members of the public sided with Flynn against the accusations.
The trial occurred in February 1943, with Flynn’s lawyer putting the girl’s character into question, citing that Hansen had an affair with a married man and Satterlee had an abortion, which was illegal at the time. He also accused the girls of working together in order to avoid prosecution themselves. Although Flynn was acquitted, the scandal permanently damaged his image.
He Had A Connection With Cuba
In 1958, Flynn went to Cuba to self-produce Cuban Rebel Girls. There, he met Fidel Castro, as he was a supporter of the Cuban Revolution. Flynn went on to write a number of newspaper and magazine articles for the New York Journal American and other publications, documenting his time with Castro.
He was also the only journalist who was with Castro the night he learned about his victory in the revolution. Although many of his writings were lost in 2009, they were eventually rediscovered in a collection at the University of Texas at Austin’s Center for American History.
When Drinking Wasn’t Enough
While it was well known that Flynn was a rampant alcoholic, that wasn’t the only substance that he was known to ingest. Over the years, Flynn began experimenting with a series of other substances.
According to his second wife, he was determined to experience as much as he could, which led him to try opium in the 1940s. Unfortunately, opium would become another addiction that he would struggle with for the rest of his life.
A Sick Joke
Flynn’s friend, director Raoul Walsh claims to have played a prank on Flynn the day after the death of John Barrymore. Supposedly, Walsh bribed the mortician to release the body to him. He then set the body up on a chair holding a drink inside of Flynn’s home.
In his autobiography, My Wicked, Wicked Ways, Flynn notes, “As I opened the door, I stared into the face of Barrymore. His eyes were closed. He looked puffed, white, bloodless. They hadn’t embalmed him yet. I let out a delirious scream. My heart pounded. I couldn’t sleep for the rest of the night.”
Always On The Prowl
While on trial for the allegations of Betty Hansen and Peggy Satterlee in 1942, Flynn’s attention was on something else rather than possibly being found guilty.
That something else was Nora Eddington, a 19-year-old woman who was working at the cigarette cart at the courthouse during the trial process. It wasn’t long before the two struck up a romantic relationship, and the two were married in 1943. The couple had two daughters although they divorced in 1949.
He Was A Peeping Tom
In 1941, Flynn bought an 11-acre property on Mulholland Drive where he built a two-story colonial-style ranch house that he dubbed as “Mulholland Farm,” and more privately, the “playhouse.”
Inside of the house, Flynn had secret passageways that he had fitted with peepholes and two-way mirrors so he could spy on girls as they changed or were in the bathroom. On top of that, he also installed microphones so that he and his friends could listen to the women discussing the men.
He Was Quite The Womanizer
Even before becoming one of the most famous actresses in the world, Flynn was known for his love of women, which only increased the more popular he became. According to his close friend David Niven, “Flynn’s attitude to women perhaps began with his strained relationship with his mother, Marielle. From age five, Flynn witnessed her affairs with other men, and she abused him regularly.”
Throughout his life, he was married three times and had countless affairs, with some of the notable women, including Joan Bennett, Ann Sheridan, Ida Lupino, and numerous others.
Issues With Director Michael Curtis
Despite working together on several films over the years, Flynn and director Michael Curtiz were not friendly. It’s assumed that one of the primary sources of their animosity was that Flynn’s first wife, Lili Damita, had initially been married to Curtiz. On numerous occasions, the two became involved in physical altercations.
The first was when Flynn was struck by a sword without a protective tip that Curtiz had instructed to be removed, causing Flynn to grab him by the throat. The second happened after 25 of 125 horses died after Curtiz set up a line of tripwires while filming a pack of charging horses for a more dramatic scene.
Another Encounter With An Underage Girl
In the last two years of his life, Flynn was involved with yet another scandal when he traveled with a 15-year-old secretary named Beverly Aadland. The underage girl was also Flynn’s mistress at the time, and the relationship had been unbelievably arranged by Aadland’s mother, who would later proudly write a book about her daughter’s affair with Flynn.
In an interview in 1996, Aadland claimed that although Flynn initially forced himself on her, she grew to love him and wished they had more time together.
A Change In Titles
Errol Flynn was no stranger to embellishing stories or boasting about his accomplishments and exploits. So, it’s no surprise that when he wrote his autobiography, he wanted to title it In Like Me, a play on the saying “in like Flynn,” which refers to Flynn’s ability to seduce just about any woman that he set his eyes on.
However, Flynn’s publicist suggested that he go with something a little less aggressive and the autobiography was titled My Wicked, Wicked Ways.
He Almost Worked With Kubrick And Impressed Ernest Hemingway
In the 1950s, Flynn met with director Stanley Kubrick to discuss the possibility of acting in his adaptation of Vladimir Nabokov’s controversial novel, Lolita, about a man obsessed with a 12-year-old girl. However, nothing ever happened, possibly because of Flynn’s muddy past regarding underage women.
In the last few years of his life, Flynn went from playing the leading man to alcoholic supporting roles. One of these most notorious roles was an adaptation of Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises, with Flynn’s performance being the only aspect of the film Hemingway enjoyed.
