Actors - Errol Flynn

Home > Listing Index > Actors > Errol Flynn

	Actors - Errol Flynn

Errol Leslie Thomson Flynn (June 20, 1909 – October 14, 1959) was an Australian - American film actor, most famous for his romantic swashbuckler roles.

Youth

Born in Hobart, Tasmania, he was taken to Sydney, Australia as a child, where he attended two schools and was expelled from both. Shortly afterwards he moved to New Guinea, where he bought a tobacco plantation, a business which failed. In 1933 he starred in the Australian made film In The Wake Of The Bounty directed by Charles Chauvel. In the early 1930s he left for Britain and in 1933 got an acting job with Northampton Repertory Company, where he worked for six months. According to Gerry Connelly's Book Errol Flynn in Northampton, he also acted at the 1934 Malvern Festival, and also in Glasgow and in London's West End. He was discovered by a Warner Brothers executive, signed to a contract and shipped to America as a contract player.

Acting career

Flynn became an overnight sensation with his third film, Captain Blood
, in 1935. He became typecast as a swashbuckler and made a host of such films, including The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938) (widely regarded as his best film in this genre and an acknowledged Hollywood classic), Dodge City (1939), The Sea Hawk (1940), and The 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, Santa Fe Trail (1940), and They Died with their Boots On (1941). The two were never romantically involved.

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 on two separate occasions. A contract was even presented to loan them out as Rhett and Scarlett in Gone with the Wind
; however, the teaming failed to materialize when Davis declined to work with Flynn.

Flynn was well known for drinking, womanizing and throwing wild parties. However, his lifestyle caught up with him when teenagers Betty Hansen and Peggy Satterlee accused him of statutory rape in November 1942. A group organized to support Flynn, named the American Boys Club for the Defense of Errol Flynn (ABCDEF); its members included, surprisingly, William F. Buckley, Jr.. The trial took place in January and February of 1943, and Flynn was cleared of the crime. The incident served to increase his reputation as a lady's man, and the term "In Like Flynn" came to be synonymous with succeeding in romantic endeavors.

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

By the 1950s, Flynn became 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). His colorful but somewhat creative autobiography, My Wicked, Wicked Ways, was published just months after his death and contains humorous anecdotes about Hollywood. Flynn wanted to call the book In Like Me, but the publisher refused.

Private life, family and death

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).

Although rumors are abound that Flynn was bisexual, this has never been confirmed. In the late 1950s, he met the 15-year-old Beverly Aadland at the Hollywood Professional School, whom he courted during his last few years. He planned to marry her and move to their new house in Jamaica, but during their trip to Vancouver he died of a heart attack. His only son, Sean Flynn, became an actor and later a war correspondent who disappeared in Cambodia in 1970 during the Vietnam War. The younger Flynn's life was recounted in Inherited Risk by Jeffrey Meyers (Simon & Schuster).

[ Visit the complete Wikipedia entry for Errol Flynn ]

This page is based on the copyrighted Wikipedia article Errol Flynn; it is used under the GNU Free Documentation License. You may redistribute it, verbatim or modified, providing that you comply with the terms of the GFDL.

Actors - Errol Flynn

Youth

Acting career

Private life, family and death

Searches on eBay

Related searches on eBay