Errol Flynn
Errol Leslie Thomson Flynn was an Australian and American actor who achieved worldwide fame during the Golden Age of Hollywood. He was known for his romantic swashbuckler roles, frequent partnerships with Olivia de Havilland and reputation for his womanising and hedonistic personal life.
Flynn's roles include Robin Hood in The Adventures of Robin Hood, which was later named by the American Film Institute as the 18th-greatest hero in American film history; the lead role in Captain Blood ; Major Geoffrey Vickers in The Charge of the Light Brigade ; and as the hero in a number of Westerns such as Dodge City, Santa Fe Trail, Virginia City and San Antonio.
Flynn was posthumously awarded two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for his contributions to the motion picture and television industries in 1960.
Early life
Errol Leslie Thomson Flynn was born on 20 June 1909 at Queen Alexandra Hospital in Battery Point, Tasmania. His father, Theodore Thomson Flynn, was a lecturer and later professor of marine biology and zoology at the University of Tasmania and Queen's University of Belfast, where he served as the Chair of Zoology. His father was the first biology professor in Tasmania. His mother was born Lily Mary Young, but shortly after marrying Theodore at St John's Church of England, Birchgrove, Sydney, on 23 January 1909, she changed her first name to Marelle. Flynn had a younger sister, Nora Rosemary Flynn. Flynn described his mother's family as "seafaring folk" and this appears to be where his lifelong interest in boats and the sea originated. Both of his parents were Australian-born of Irish, English and Scottish descent. Despite Flynn's claims, the evidence indicates that he was not descended from any of the Bounty mutineers.Flynn received his early schooling in Hobart. Future World Correspondence Chess Champion Cecil Purdy was one of his classmates. He attended The Hutchins School, Hobart College, The Friends School and Albuera Street Primary School and was expelled from each one. He made one of his first appearances as a performer in 1918, aged nine, when he served as a page boy to Enid Lyons in a queen carnival.
In her memoirs, Lyons recalled Flynn as "a dashing figure—a handsome boy of nine with a fearless, somewhat haughty expression, already showing that sang-froid for which he was later to become famous throughout the civilised world". She further noted: "Unfortunately, Errol, at the age of nine, did not yet possess that magic for extracting money from the public which so distinguished his career as an actor. Our cause gained no apparent advantage from his presence in my entourage; we gained only third place in a field of seven."
From 1923 to 1925, Flynn attended the South West London College, a private boarding school in Barnes, London. In 1926, he returned to Australia to attend Sydney Church of England Grammar School, where he was the classmate of a future Australian prime minister, John Gorton. His formal education ended with his expulsion from Shore for theft, although he later claimed it was for a sexual encounter with the school's laundress.
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 gold mining in the Morobe Goldfield. He spent the next five years oscillating between living in New Guinea and Sydney. In January 1931, Flynn became engaged to Naomi Campbell-Dibbs, the youngest daughter of Robert and Emily Hamlyn Campbell-Dibbs of Temora and Bowral, New South Wales. They did not marry.
Early career
''In the Wake of the Bounty'' (1933)
Australian filmmaker Charles Chauvel was making a film about the mutiny on the Bounty, In the Wake of the Bounty, a combination of dramatic re-enactments of the mutiny and a documentary on present-day Pitcairn Island. Chauvel was looking for someone to play the role of Fletcher Christian. There are different stories about the way Flynn was cast. According to one, Chauvel saw his picture in an article about a yacht wreck involving Flynn. The most popular account is that he was discovered by cast member John Warwick. The film was not a strong success at the box office, but Flynn was the lead role, leading him to travel to Britain in late 1933 to pursue a career in acting.Britain
Flynn got work as an extra in a film, I Adore You, produced by Irving Asher for Warner Bros. He soon secured a job with the Northampton Repertory Company at the town's Royal Theatre, where he worked and received his training as a professional actor for seven months. He performed at the 1934 Malvern Festival and in Glasgow, and briefly in London's West End.In 1934, Flynn was dismissed from Northampton Rep. after he threw a female stage manager down a stairwell. He returned to London. Asher cast him as the lead in Murder at Monte Carlo, a "quota quickie" made by Warner Brothers at their Teddington Studios in Middlesex. The movie was not widely seen, but Asher was enthusiastic about Flynn's performance and cabled Warner Bros in Hollywood, recommending him for a contract. Executives agreed, and Flynn was sent to Los Angeles.
Hollywood
On the ship from London, Flynn met Lili Damita, an actress five years his senior whose contacts proved invaluable when Flynn arrived in Los Angeles. Warner Bros. publicity described him as an "Irish leading man of the London stage".His first appearance was a small role in The Case of the Curious Bride. Flynn had two scenes, one as a corpse and one in flashback. His next part was slightly bigger, in Don't Bet on Blondes, a B-picture screwball comedy.
''Captain Blood'' and stardom
Warner Bros. was preparing a big-budget swashbuckler, Captain Blood, based on the 1922 novel by Rafael Sabatini and directed by Michael Curtiz.The studio originally intended to cast Robert Donat, but he turned down the part, afraid that his chronic asthma would make it impossible for him to perform the strenuous role. Warners considered a number of other actors, including Leslie Howard and James Cagney, and also conducted screen tests of those they had under contract, like Flynn. The tests were impressive, and Warners finally cast Flynn in the lead, opposite 19-year-old Olivia de Havilland. The resulting film was a magnificent success for the studio and gave birth to two new Hollywood stars and an on-screen partnership that would encompass eight films over six years. The budget for Captain Blood was $1.242 million, and it made $1.357 million in the U.S. and $1.733 million overseas, meaning a huge profit for Warner Bros.
Flynn had been selected to support Fredric March in Anthony Adverse, but public response to Captain Blood was so enthusiastic that Warners instead reunited him with de Havilland and Curtiz in another adventure tale, this time set during the Crimean War, The Charge of the Light Brigade. The film was given a slightly larger budget than Captain Blood, at $1.33 million, and it had a much higher box-office gross, earning $1.454 million in the U.S. and $1.928 million overseas, making it Warner Bros.' No. 1 hit of 1936.
Flynn asked for a different kind of role, so when ill health made Leslie Howard drop out of the screen adaptation of Lloyd C. Douglas' inspirational novel, Flynn got the lead role in Green Light, playing a doctor searching for a cure for Rocky Mountain spotted fever. The studio then put him back into another swashbuckler, replacing Patric Knowles as Miles Hendon in The Prince and the Pauper. He appeared opposite Kay Francis in Another Dawn, a melodrama set in a mythical British desert colony. Warners then gave Flynn his first starring role in a modern comedy, The Perfect Specimen, with Joan Blondell, under the direction of Curtiz. Meanwhile, Flynn published his first book, Beam Ends, an autobiographical account of his experiences sailing around Australia as a youth. He also travelled to Spain, in 1937, as a war correspondent during the Spanish Civil War, in which he sympathised with the Republicans.
''The Adventures of Robin Hood'' (1938)
Flynn followed this with his most famous movie, The Adventures of Robin Hood, playing the title role, opposite de Havilland's Marian. This movie was a global success. It was the sixth-highest movie grosser of 1938. It was also the studio's first large-budget colour film using the three-strip Technicolor process. The budget for Robin Hood was the highest ever for a Warner Bros. production up to that point—$2.47 million—but it more than made back its costs and turned a huge profit as it grossed $2.343 million in the U.S. and $2.495 million overseas.It received lavish praise from critics and became a world favourite; in 2019, Rotten Tomatoes summarised the critical consensus: "Errol Flynn thrills as the legendary title character, and the film embodies the type of imaginative family adventure tailor-made for the silver screen". In 1995, the film was deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" by the United States Library of Congress and selected for preservation by the National Film Registry.
In a 2005 interview, de Havilland described how, during the filming, she decided to tease Flynn, whose wife was on the set and watching closely. De Havilland said, "And so we had one kissing scene, which I looked forward to with great delight. I remember I blew every take, at least six in a row, maybe seven, maybe eight, and we had to kiss all over again. And Errol Flynn got really rather uncomfortable, and he had, if I may say so, a little trouble with his tights."
The final duel between Robin and Sir Guy of Gisbourne is a classic, echoing the battle on the beach in Captain Blood where Flynn also kills Rathbone's character after a long demonstration of fine swordplay, in that case choreographed by Ralph Faulkner. According to Faulkner's student, Tex Allen, "Faulkner had good material to work with. Veteran Basil Rathbone was a good fencer already, and Flynn, though new to the school of fence, was athletic and a quick learner".
The success of The Adventures of Robin Hood did little to convince the studio that their prize swashbuckler should be allowed to do other things, but Warners allowed Flynn to try a screwball comedy, Four's a Crowd. Despite the presence of de Havilland and the direction of Curtiz, it was not a success. The Sisters, a drama showing the lives of three sisters in the years from 1904 to 1908, including a dramatic rendering of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, was more popular. Flynn played alcoholic sports reporter Frank Medlin, who sweeps Louise Elliott off her feet on a visit to Silver Bow, Montana. Their married life in San Francisco is difficult, and Frank sails to Singapore just hours before the catastrophe. The original ending of the film was the same as the book: Louise married a character named William Benson, but preview audiences disliked the ending, and a new one was filmed in which Frank comes to Silver Bow to find her, and they reconcile. Apparently, audiences wanted Errol Flynn to "get the girl" or vice versa. Bette Davis preferred the original ending.
Flynn had a powerful dramatic role in The Dawn Patrol, a remake of a pre-code 1930 drama of the same title about Royal Flying Corps fighter pilots in World War I and the devastating burden carried by officers who must send men out to die every morning. Flynn and co-stars Basil Rathbone and David Niven led a cast that was all male and predominantly British. Director Edmund Goulding's biographer Matthew Kennedy wrote: "Everyone remembered a set filled with fraternal good cheer.... The filming of Dawn Patrol was an unusual experience for everyone connected with it, and dissipated for all time the legend that Britishers are lacking in a sense of humor.... The picture was made to the accompaniment of more ribbing than Hollywood has ever witnessed. The setting for all this horseplay was the beautiful English manners of the cutterups. The expressions of polite and pained shock on the faces of Niven, Flynn, Rathbone et al., when visitors were embarrassed was the best part of the nonsense."
In 1939, Flynn and de Havilland teamed up with Curtiz for Dodge City, the first Western for both of them, set after the U.S. Civil War. Flynn was worried that audiences would not accept him in Westerns, but the film was Warner's most popular film of 1939, and he went on to make a number of movies in that genre.