LFI
On screen he played the aristocratic bandit, the nobleman whose strong principles and love of the underdog get him outlawed or sold into slavery. In real life too, Errol Flynn’s principles got him into scandal, into court and into an early grave. But they weren’t the principles of Robin Hood or Captain Blood. During his 50 fun-filled years on the planet Errol Flynn annoyed almost as many people as he delighted. Pervert, Nazi spy, killer, diamond thief, racist, rapist (statutory), slave trader, liar, shirker, animal abuser and, towards the end, drug addict, alcoholic, fatty and, oh dear, statutory rapist again, were just a few of the accusations thrown at him. Chief witness for the prosecution in the matter of Flynn v Common Decency is… Flynn himself. In his memoir My Wicked, Wicked Ways, dictated between his 50th birthday in June 1959 and his death from a heart attack four months later, Flynn recounts his seedier adventures with relish. He writes of his love for brothels – he was a connoisseur from his teens – his theft of jewels from a lover, his brawling, his vodka dependency, his drug use and his philandering. “Monogamy is to me nothing more than a travesty of human nature,” he writes. “It doesn’t work, never will.” He tells of his youthful career in Twenties’ Papua New Guinea as a colonial police officer, which included hanging head-hunters and shooting a spear-throwing native. Much later, as a Hollywood star he admits to having a two-way mirror in the ceiling of a guest bedroom, so that he could sit upstairs and watch what was happening below. Fortunately for Flynn’s reputation, few believe he actually did all this. The truth was obscured even before he got to Hollywood, by Warner Brothers’ public relations department that insisted he was Irish rather than Australian, and by his inflated CV that included invented film roles and Olympic boxing medals. The worst accusation against Flynn, however, came 21 years after his death in a book entitled Errol Flynn, The Untold Story. It claimed Flynn was a Nazi spy who had aerial shots taken of Pearl Harbor for his 1941 film Dive Bomber to help the Japanese a few months later. This incredible claim tends to undermine the more humdrum criticisms, such as his seduction of underage girls, his
REPUTATIONS: Errol Flynn
WAS HE REALLY SUCH A CAD? On the 100th anniversary of the notorious lothario’s birth, Christopher Nye looks at the turbulent life and times of the man who put the buckle into swash “cowardice” in failing to fight in the war, and his general lack of moral scruples. Flynn was born in Hobart, Tasmania, in June 1909. At 16 he was expelled from school and sought his fortune in New Guinea. For seven years he worked as sailor, police officer, gold prospector, planter, sheep castrator and reporter. As colonial officer, he writes of rescuing maidens from head-hunters: “I couldn’t think what to do with her. After all, those raiders might return… I took another sharp look at her breasts and made the decision. ‘She comes with us’.” Between cavorting with the locals he was stabbed, shot by arrows and regularly ripped off. By 24 he’d had enough and was determined to educate himself. Flynn came to England hoping to go to Cambridge but was sidetracked by the theatre and joined the Northampton Repertory Company. He later described these days in England as the happiest of his life. He could be asked to play any part, a different one each week, from butler to, he says, “the worst Othello in the history of the English stage”. He enjoyed his leisure too, writing to a friend in 1933 that the world’s best sex was to be found at the English seaside. Spotted by a talent agent, within 18 months he was in Hollywood starring in Captain Blood – all traces of a Tasmanian
‘The type of man who could charm the birds off the trees’ – A drinking pal’s description
accent vanished. He made 53 films, including The Adventures of Robin Hood, The Charge of the Light Brigade and as General Custer in They Died With Their Boots On. He also appeared in police cells across America – usually for brawling – but in 1942 he went on trial in California for statutory rape (consensual sex with a girl under 18). When Flynn was acquitted he declared he was sick of the Don Juan reputation – so sick that he sought comfort with the 18-year-old waitress at the courthouse café, who became the second of his three wives. The British had their own reasons for turning against Flynn. Objective, Burma! appeared to show the now-American citizen almost singlehandedly defeating the Japanese, though the British had in reality done most of the fighting. His friend David Niven – a genuine war hero – questioned why Flynn had apparently chickened out of the war. In fact Flynn had tried to enlist but failed the medical. They made up eventually, as people tended to with Flynn. “If you knew him well he was a hard man to dislike,” said a long-term drinking buddy, “the type of man who could charm the birds off the trees.” Occasionally an uncomfortable truth slips out, a racist joke or an anti-Semitic comment, but he was also intensely intellectually curious, wellread, a novelist, a supporter of left-wing causes and a friend of Fidel Castro. Flynn was careful to own up to those “faults” that cemented his reputation as a loveable, misunderstood rogue with a heart of gold. He stuck to his abiding principle in life, to do as he wanted and to have a good time. In 1954 he wrote: “It seems absurd, ridiculous and laughable that somebody should tell me how to behave during my brief ■ span here on this earth.”
www.saga.co.uk JUNE 2009 SAGA 23