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Mail Bag! A few Words from TJR McDowell!

26 Aug

Got this nice message from TJR McDowell:

Sean Flynn with Errol …

David: I spent some time today looking over your Flynn Blog. It really is extraordinary, the best blog on the internet. I’ve been fortunate enough to be allowed to post a few things about Flynn, and it’s been very gratifying. Flynn has popped up in my life at the oddest times.

I went to a school named Lawrenceville in NJ, and my math teacher, Mr. Parks, an old fossil but nice guy, occasionally would talk about Sean Flynn who he’d also taught at Lawrenceville. Errol visited once on parents day, and Mr. Parks met him and said he was friendly and proud of Sean. We were asked to pray for Sean at chapel (this was in 1972, my 8th grade year), as I think it was his birthday, and he was still missing in Cambodia.

I know a guy from Sean’s class who said Sean was a nice low key guy, who struggled (like everyone there) in class, but excelled on the swim team..I knew another fellow in London name Colin Crewe who told me he spent a day with Errol in the late 1950’s when he worked for Lloyds of London and was insuring Errol for a film and assigned to tag along with him for a day, and that Flynn wore this beautiful blue wool suit and Colin went out the next day and bought one.

Then there was Robin Moore whom I knew slightly, wrote French Connection, and he told me about hanging out with Flynn in Jamaica, teasing the native dogs and hitting on the native women, and how Flynn once fought with a young Chris Blackwell, the record magnate, whose family lived in Jamaica. Then there was an in depth article I wrote for Premiere Magazine all about the Garden of Allah, and there were sundry Flynn stories here; I interviewed everyone from Hal Roach to Cesar Romero to Billy Wilder to Glen Ford who had me over and we talked for hours and he thought Flynn was a man’s man but basically a sad guy.

Lastly, I once interviewed Charles Higham, who wrote the untold story, the weirdest most dysfunctional misanthropic con man I’ve ever spoken with, a sick guy who was into exploiting everyone to make a living; his book was sheer invention calculated to get on best seller lists everywhere, which it did.

That’s my two cents!

All best, Rider

Thanks, TJR …

— David DeWitt

 
3 Comments

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  1. Gentleman Tim

    August 27, 2019 at 9:20 am

    It’s great to have you here, Rider.

     
  2. rswilltell

    August 27, 2019 at 1:46 pm

    I agree happy to have you on board TJR! Tell us more!!! On Sean Flynn, there are people out there raising money to locate his remains. In the end they will find nothing. Sean Flynn is irretrievably lost in the vast Cambodian jungle and to the fog of war. God bless him. Ralph Schiller

     
  3. shangheinz

    August 30, 2019 at 12:14 pm

    Thats more like 100 cents of stories worth, TJR! Tx and keep them coming. After Austrian news correspondent to the UNO Rudolf Stoiber interviewed Charles Higham to pen his book on Flynns best buddy Hermann Erben “The man who wanted to be Hitler”, he also had second thoughts about the accuracy of Highams claims. Still he left most of the false accusations unquestioned and printed them. Stoiber was openly gay, while Higham, as I understand, was a closet homosexual and highly secretive in consequence. Still he had written many biographies of so many prominent people mimicking an author of authority.

    As far as the Lloyd guy goes, the buck didnt stop there. Errol wanted to milk the prestigious insurance company when in dire debts while filming “Will Tell” in Italy three years later and faked a spine injury while dancing at the Venice film festival.