Erik Visits an American Grave, Part 1,503

This is the grave of Errol Flynn.

Born in 1909 in Tasmania, Flynn grew up pretty wealthy. His father was a prominent biology professor. Later, after he became famous for being the king of the swashbuckling stars, Flynn liked to claim he was descended from survivors of the Bounty but this was total Hollywood bullshit. He was a terrible student, routinely kicked out of schools in Australia and then England. He was a bit of a rounder generally and liked to steal. He was expelled from one school for theft, though later, as part of his self-mythologizing as a man’s man, he said it was for having sex with the school’s laundress. Again, almost certainly untrue. He then was working for a shipping company in Sydney when he was fired for theft again. He then decided to go to New Guinea and be part of that Australian frontier experience, working in tobacco and the gold mines, hoping to become rich. He did this for the next several years, although he lacked the discipline to really do anything at all and he kept popping up in Sydney for awhile when he got bored and then was back to New Guinea.

This young troublemaker got a very lucky break in 1933. He was cast in a cheapie local film based on the Bounty’s mutiny. He was cast as the lead. It wasn’t much and didn’t make any money, but Flynn realized he liked acting. So he sailed to London to try it out there. He got some small roles but was also fired from the theater company he worked for because he threw a woman down a stairwell, who also happened to be the stage manager for the company. Flynn was a real piece of work from the very beginning, as you can see. Terrible behavior would not change. It just got more protected as he got wealthier and more famous.

See, Flynn was a charismatic manly man and Hollywood was ready to forgive any bad behavior from such a figure if he could make money. And Warner Brothers quickly realized Flynn could make them money. Even after he threw the woman down the stairwell, Flynn got a role in a quickie in the Warner London studios. They were interested and invited him to Hollywood. On the boat over, Flynn got to know Lili Damita, a fairly well known French actress in her own right. They married, primarily from Flynn’s perspective it seems to use her Hollywood connections to his advantage. They were married until 1942, but there was no real stability there. Flynn later slandered her and said she was totally unstable through their whole relationship. That’s entirely possible I suppose, but I’d like to see more evidence than from Errol Flynn. Incidentally, they had a son named Sean who later become a photojournalist before the Khmer Rouge killed him while he was working in Cambodia in 1970.

Anyway, it didn’t take Flynn long to become a bit star. Captain Blood, which became a classic Flynn swashbuckler, was his big break. Directed by Michael Curtiz, Flynn was cast across from Olivia de Havilland and both hit it huge here. That was followed with all three getting back together for Charge of the Light Brigade in 1936. He didn’t want to be typecast and fought for other roles and sometimes got them, but he was the king of the swashbucklers, no doubt. That peaked with The Adventures of Robin Hood, in 1938 and again working with de Havilland and Curtiz. I have actually never seen this. In fact, I am not sure I have ever seen any films with Flynn, which seems completely impossible given that I watch more than my share of old films, but nonetheless, seems to be true. They all got together again the next year for Dodge City and it was another hit, even though Flynn worried that audiences wouldn’t like him in a western. They all worked again in The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex in 1939, but this time with Bette Davis, which was somewhat of a disaster since Davis had dripping contempt for Flynn’s acting and showed it in the way that she could very much pull off. It didn’t help that in a scene where Davis slaps Flynn, Flynn’s dog that was onset went crazy and bit Davis. But the relationship between Curtiz and Flynn was fraying and after 1941s’s Dive Bomber, they stopped working together.

Flynn was a lefty in politics, though a quite romantic one who connected politics with him proving his masculinity again and again. In this, he reminds me of Ernest Hemingway. He was an active supporter of the Republican cause in Spain, though from the somewhat less dangerous confines of Hollywood. He wanted to fight in World War II, but he had all sorts of health problems from his time in the tropics and the many, many times he had contracted various venereal diseases. He even had a touch of tuberculosis. What’s interesting about this is not that he didn’t serve because of health problems. That was common enough. It’s that the studios forced him to bear the burden of it because the press called him a draft dodger and the studio didn’t want to reveal either that their super manly star was actually quite sickly in real life or the precise reasons why he could not serve. However, unlike the cowards Ronald Reagan and John Wayne, Flynn did want to fight fascists.

So Flynn kept acting through the war. These were mostly unaccomplished films but he could carry films on his own and he made the Warner Brothers a lot of money. That pretty much continued after the war too. We could talk about the movies themselves, but they aren’t that interesting or remembered today, by and large. He published his own adventure novel in 1946. Showdown sold pretty well given the name. The 50s weren’t so great until he got a major supporting role in The Sun Also Rises in 1957, which did quite well.

More interesting really is the personal behavior, both because of how central it was to his persona but also because it shines a light on society and politics of the time. Flynn slept with every woman he could, including many of the leading actresses of the day. He also was an uncontrollable drunk and had a little time on heroin in the 40s. He partied hard. He smoked like a chimney. He also was Hollywood royalty and all of this was excused and facilitated. The expression “In Like Flynn” is said to be a reference to his sexual conquests, but Flynn himself disputed that. He installed hidden cameras and speaker systems in his mansion so he could spy on his guests having sex. In the 70s, Ron Wood of the Stones toured the mansion as a potential buyer and it was the kind of bacchanalia palace that fit the Stones, let’s just say that. Wood was amazed at all the gadgets and peepholes to help Flynn spy on women.

By the late 50s, Flynn’s life had caught up to him. His health was terrible. His liver was the size of North Dakota and his lungs were as black as the heart of any Hollywood studio exec. He blew through his money like crazy. He went to Cuba in 1958 to shoot a cheap film. While there, he met Fidel Castro. He thought Castro was great. They shared the love of cigars, the aggressive masculinity, and the politics. Flynn became an early publicizer of the Castro cause in the U.S. In fact, Flynn was hanging with Fidel the night Batista fled Cuba. Flynn’s last film was a publicity short for Castro titled Cuban Story: The Truth About Fidel Castro, in 1959.

By 1959, Flynn’s body just collapsed. His heart, liver, and lungs were all a disaster. He died that year, after a trip with his 17 year old girlfriend Beverly Aadland, his body just gave out and he died. He was 50 years old.

Errol Flynn is buried in Forest Lawn Memorial Park, Glendale, California, a place which he was known to disparage during is life.

If you would like this series to visit other actors who worked with Flynn, you can donate to cover the required expenses here. Usually with famous actors, I might do this as people nominated with them for awards, but this was Flynn, so c’mon. If we, just to choose at random, look at his costars on The Sun Also Rises, Tyrone Power is in Hollywood and Ava Gardner is in Smithfield, North Carolina. Previous posts in this series are archived here and here.