Here is the link.
www.propertyobserver.com… Love Genene.
— tassie devil
Based on prior research and previous visits, I endeavored this past Thanksgiving weekend to visit as many sites as I could that I connected to (and reportedly connected to) to Errol’s time in Hollywood. Naturally – being the Olympian that he was – there was now way I could visit, find, or even know all of Errol’s homes, houses, haunts, hangouts and hideaways, but I gave it the old college try. This Grand Tour of Flynnland included stops in Laguna, Newport Beach, Balboa, Hollywood, Bel Air, Beverly Hills, Los Angeles, Burbank & Glendale.
Below are some of the specific addresses/locations I visited, with very brief descriptions for each. I plan to add brief stories related to some of these in near future. And, please, if anyone has any additions, information, stories, insight, corrections, clarifications, or comments, please do add them. That would be great! Many of these need further investigation and analysis! Thanks.
Specific Addresses Associated with Errol
8946 Appian Way – Tiger Lil’s Lair, On the Crest of Lookout Mountain
4320 Cedarhurst Circle – The Cedars
9250 Cordell Drive – Home Errol Bought for Eddington Family
5930 Franklin Avenue – Chateau Elysee
2000 No. Fuller Avenue – The Pines (Guesthouse)
7245 Hillside Avenue – Reported Residence
6654 Hollywood Boulevard – Walk of Fame Star (Motion Pictures)
7008 Hollywood Boulevard – Walk of Fame Star (Television)
1714 Ivar Avenue – Knickerbocker Hotel
2450 Laurel Canyon Boulevard – Reputed Location for Parties
2451 Laurel Canyon Boulevard – Reputed Location for Parties
7740 Mulholland Drive – Mulholland Farm
1652 North Cherokee Avenue – Boardner’s Bar
601 North Linden Drive – Roz Russel Home, rented by Errol & Niv
801 North Linden Drive – Private Home, Association Unknown to Me
3400 Riverside Drive – Warner Brothers Studios, Burbank
1357 Schuyler Road – Allegedly Built By Errol, But Unconfirmed
1712 South Glendale Avenue – Forest Lawn Memorial Park, Glendale
345 St. Pierre Road – Colleen Moore’s Mansion in Bel Air
1709 Tropical Avenue – Resided with Lili
6525 West Sunset Boulevard – Hollywood Athletic Club
8152 West Sunset Boulevard – The Garden of Allah
8221 West Sunset Boulevard – Chateau Marmont
8245 West Sunset Boulevard – Private Home, Association Unknown to Me
8358 West Sunset Boulevard – Sunset Towers
Locations without Specific Addresses
Balboa Yacht Basin (Newport Beach)
Three Arches Beach (Laguna Beach)
Here’s a set of hidden-from-public-view famous member photos security showed me and let me take a photo of inside the Hollywood Athletic Club:
And here’s a current view of Errol’s resting place at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale:
— Gentleman Tim
August 17, 2019 – Posted by Paula for TCM’s Summer Under the Stars
…
First there was the book, based on Evelyn Waugh’s tour of Forest Lawn, where Errol was buried against his will! Here’s a plot summary:
“When Evelyn Waugh came to Hollywood in 1947 to discuss the film rights for Brideshead Revisited, he visited a graveyard: Forest Lawn Memorial Park. He had heard it praised as a place unsurpassed in beauty, taste, and sensitivity; a place where “faith and consolation, religion and art had been brought to their highest possible association.” But Mr. Waugh found the cemetery dripping with saccharine sentimentality, edged with macabre memorials, and repellent with cuteness. (Walt Disney’s remains, along with those of myriad other celebrities, are enshrined there.) Mr. Waugh found in that “theme-park necropolis” a grotesque denial of the reality of death, the opposite extreme of Donne’s holy sonnet. He found vulgar euphemisms marketed and crafted by entrepreneurial racketeers. He found, in the end, wonderful material for a story to satirize the bizarre American funeral-home industry.”
“… The Loved One, is a pitiless satire on the shallowness and pretensions of British expatriates and Americans in post-World War II Los Angeles. The action is set principally in two funeral parlors, one for humans and the other for pets. Most of the characters either work in one of the funeral homes or are employed by a Hollywood film studio. Waugh portrays the Los Angeles denizens as part of a culture that fosters and encourages the selfish pursuit of petty goals. In the book, almost everyone is striving to gain or maintain a place in society that they seem to believe is important because other people might envy them for it. The principal character, a young Englishman named Dennis Barlow, is a poet-cum-screenwriter who leaves his job at the studio, which he hates for its bureaucracy and lack of imagination. He takes a job at a pet cemetery, scandalizing his fellow Englishmen in Hollywood, particularly an actor named Sir Ambrose Abercrombie, who believes the expatriate British have a reputation and an image to uphold. When an old screenwriter and fellow Brit named Sir Francis Hinsley is fired from the film studio and commits suicide, Sir Ambrose enlists Dennis to take care of funeral arrangements. At a well-known funeral home called Whispering Glades (Forest Lawn) Dennis meets a young woman named Aimée Thanatogenos, who is a cosmetician in the embalming rooms. Aimée, a thoroughgoing product of Los Angeles, is empty-headed yet yearns for higher things, although she cannot really say what this means to her. Dennis becomes enamored of her. A rival for Aimée’s affections is Mr. Joyboy, the chief embalmer at Whispering Glades, who is widely considered to be a stylish and cultivated man, although he actually is a rather perverse momma’s boy.”
Then there was the movie in ’65, even more out there than the book I’d say:
…
The book also inspired Tom Paxton to sing the satirical Sixties song “Forest Lawn”:
…
— Gentleman Tim
May 15, 1939
Harrison Carroll
Evening Herald Express
Racking his brain over what to do with eight loose acres up on Mulholland Drive, overlooking San Fernando Valley, Errol Flynn hit on an interesting idea. He will turn his property into a fancy rest camp, with eight guest cabins, three tennis courts and a dozen riding nags available for the nearby Hollywood folk in search of quick relaxation.
Flynn plans to spend a lot of money on the project. Chances are that Bud Ernst, one of his close pals, will manage the place, which will be open to the public.
…
How Mulholland Scenic Road aka Mulholland Skyline Drive aka Mulholland Boulevard aka Mulholland Highway aka (finally) Mulholland Drive ultimately paved the way for Mulholland Farm.
Mulholland Drive was an Engineering Masterwork by Dewitt Raeburn
— Gentleman Tim
…
—————————–> ERROL, THE (SUPER)HUMAN CYCLONE
— Gentleman Tim
August 25, 1936
Harrison Carroll
Evening Herald Express
… Who comes closest to being the movie hero in real life? probably Errol Flynn. He was a good enough boxer to represent Ireland in the Olympics, his tennis is brilliant, and he is a fine swimmer. When Green Light was on location at Sherwood the other day, the troupe shot morning scenes on one side of the lake and afternoon scenes on the other. The rest of the troupe drove around in cars, but to Flynn, a straight line was the shortest distance between two points, so he swam the lake.
HISTORY OF THE LAKE
(Quoting Multiple Sources)
For many centuries, Lake Sherwood and the vast majority of Conejo Valley as a whole was inhabited by communities of Chumash Indians. This remained the case until the arrival of Spanish expeditions to much of California in the late years of the 18th century. At this point, Lake Sherwood and a substantial portion of the surrounding area was named Potrero Valley until California became the 31st state in 1850. Once this occurred, the land of Potrero Valley was sold and would eventually switch hands several times over the next 75 years, mainly to ranch owners and agricultural businesses. It wasn’t until the early 1920’s that the area now known as Lake Sherwood began to rise in popularity among residents of California, due mostly to the land being transformed into Sherwood Forest for the creation of the popular “Robin Hood” film that was helmed by legendary director Douglas Fairbanks. The 1938 film, The Adventures of Robin Hood, starring Errol Flynn, also had a scene shot on location at “Sherwood Forest. (The attack on the treasure caravan scene.)
“These days everyone knows that Lake Sherwood homes are some of the most gorgeous in the Ventura County region. This small, upscale neighborhood is home to just over 1,000 of some of the wealthiest individuals in the country including David Murdock, owner of the Dole company. His estate spawns over 2,000 acres of land on a hill top. Prime Lake Sherwood real estate isn’t just for the typical rising stars in business either. This wealthy town has been home to countless celebrities and to this date attracts Hollywood stars like actor Jamie Foxx who follows fellow actors Sylvester Stallone, Sophia Loren, Tom Selleck and a caravan of other tinsel town elite in owning Lake Sherwood real estate. With such a rich history in wealth it might be hard to picture a Lake Sherwood without pomp and circumstance. But according to former locals of the area, there actually was a time when Lake Sherwood was just a really nice lake.
The story is that Lake Sherwood’s history goes back further than the 1922 Robin Hood movie accredited for giving it fame. It seems the neighborhood had rather tough beginnings in trying to solidify itself as a place where the rich call home. According to historian Miriam Sprinkling, the lake was formed when a rancher known as S.W. Matthiesson, who owned much of what is now Lake Sherwood and Hidden Valley, built a dam across four streams. Matthiesson had hoped the land would become a summer getaway for the wealthy to hunt and fish. However, this idea never caught on. It was Matthiesson’s son who eventually gave the okay for filming the Robin Hood movie years later in Lake Sherwood. The cabin in which Douglas Fairbanks was housed during filming is now a registered Ventura County historical landmark and the crest of The Sherwood Country Club proudly depicts Robin Hood.
Unfortunately, after the film was produced Matthieson’s son lost ownership of the lake to his wife during a divorce settlement (that doesn’t sound too gentry at all) and Mrs. Matthieson and her new husband Mr. Canterbury, decided to change the lake’s name to “Lake Canterbury”. Luckily, the name just never stuck. The two decided to begin a housing development project in the area and the real estate firm hired again changed the name to “Los Touras” by combining Los Angeles + Ventura. At this time, Potrero Valley was renamed Hidden Valley. So, what is exactly in a name, you ask? Millions. Until there’s a stock market crash. And in 1929 that’s exactly what ruined the Canterbury’s plans as they were forced to sell their property to none other than tycoon William Randolph Hearst. After the filming of Robin Hood by Fairbanks it was renamed Lake Sherwood.
— Gentleman Tim
Hollywood Home Movies: Treasures from the Academy Film Archive
A program of rarely seen home movie segments from some of the 20th century’s biggest stars such as Jimmy Stewart, Betty Grable, Errol Flynn and Olivia de Havilland.
Old Town Music Hall, 140 Richmond St., El Segundo, (310) 322-2592. Aug. 26, 2:30 p.m. $10. No credit cards.
www-latimes-com.cdn.ampproject.org…
— Gentleman Tim
A primer on Flynn’s time and adventures in Papua New Guinea, quoting “Malum Nalu”.
Photo of girl believed to be Tuperselai provided by EFB Author, Tina. Thank you, Tina.
…….
Papua New Guinea’s rich and colorful history is littered with the names of likewise gaudy characters that have carved a niche for themselves.
Few, however, have made more of an impact than the flamboyant and swashbuckling Errol Flynn.
With the discovery of very good paying gold in 1926 at Edie Creek above Wau – six days walk from Salamaua – a gold rush of massive proportions started, not only from Australia but from beyond.
With the major discovery of gold came the last two categories of what the White population of New Guinea was divided into: Missionaries, Moneymakers, and Misfits or Fools, Freaks, and Failures.
Not least among the Misfits was the one who became a Hollywood star – Errol Flynn. And none, probably, has done more to promote PNG than this lovable rogue who went on to become the world’s top sex symbol.
The superb scenery, glorious hills and harbours, white beaches, and shady copra plantations are still today as Flynn describes them in his famous autobiography, My Wicked, Wicked Ways.
Places like Salamaua, Wau, Bulolo, Lae, Finschhafen, Port Moresby, Laloki, Rabaul, Kavieng, Madang, and the Sepik River have become famous because of My Wicked, Wicked Ways.
His book remains a bestseller to this day and, in places like Salamaua or Wau – just to name two – people still talk about him.”Flynn used to drink here,”they’ll tell you in Salamaua, or, “this is where he went mining for gold”, they’ll reminisce in Wau.
Legendary Australian patrol officer, JK McCarthy, recalls in his book, Patrol Into Yesterday, how Flynn stepped in once to protect a small man from a bully: “It was done in the most dramatic style and all of us should have foreseen that he had a movie career ahead of him. There was the noisy bar, the crowd of onlookers, the challenge and the hero knocking the loud-mouthed one cold, right on cue.”
The true-life story of movie superstar Errol Flynn was more dramatic and incredible than even the wildest of his many Hollywood-starring roles.
Panoramic portrayals of his amazing past have brought the true legend of Flynn explosively to life, blowing the lid off his rabble-rousing time in the gutters of Sydney, and his death-defying escapades searching for gold in the jungles of New Guinea.
Flynn was simply the sexiest, most charismatic star of the Golden Era of Hollywood.
The epitome of a lusty, virile hero, Flynn turned the World into his stage as millions fell for his wicked, wicked ways.
Superstar and legend, Errol Flynn was Hollywood’s symbol of male virility during the Golden Era of moviemaking.
He was adored by fans worldwide, admired by millions, despised by many.
Flynn was the quintessence of the swashbuckling hero, but his on-screen exploits were pale echoes of his real life adventures.
Flynn’s prowess with women was so infamous that the expression “In like Flynn” became a common phrase used to describe the ease with which a man might conquer a woman.
As an actor, Flynn built the foundation for characters later elaborated by Mel Gibson, Arnold Schwarznegger, Harrison Ford, and Kevin Costner.
He died at age 50 of a heart attack, having had a good run in Hollywood with 53 films – some for Jack Warner, others contracted out to MGM – across from great female players such as Olivia De Haviland, Maureen O’Hara, Bette Davis, Greer Garson and others.
Errol Flynn was born Errol Leslie Thompson Flynn on June 20, 1909 in Hobart, Tasmania, Australia.His parents were Professor Theodore Thompson Flynn and Lily Mary Young.
Professor Flynn was a well-known marine biologist and zoologist who later went on to receive an MBE for his work at Queens University, Belfast. Errol also was a direct descendant – on his mothers’ side – of Midshipman Young from the infamous HMS Bounty Mutiny of 1789.
The 18-year-old Errol Flynn arrived in New Guinea in October 1927 to make his fortune on the newly discovered goldfields at Edie Creek, Wau.
From his arrival he tried unsuccessfully to bluff himself into money as a cadet patrol officer, gold prospector, slave recruiter, dynamiter of fish, trapper of birds, manager of coconut and tobacco plantations, air cargo clerk, copra trader, charter boat captain, pearl diver and diamond smuggler.
He was also a prolific writer and contributed regularly to Australian newspapers and magazines with absorbing tales about the untamed jungles of New Guinea.
Flynn soon discovered that the Australian government had a severe shortage of patrol officers, and he hoped to bluff his way through in Rabaul, but this colonial career was short-lived when his background was discovered.
He moved restlessly from one job to another, acquiring many different skills but no great competence.
Hoping to get rich fast, he lived by his wits and ran up many debts.
In Rabaul, although considered a likeable and capable young man, his reputation for roguery quickly spread and he ceased to be with the Administration.
His best memory of Rabaul was of “a wonderful saloon where you encountered everything the world could yield up – miners, recruiters, con men, thieves, beachcombers, prospectors – cubicles both downstairs and upstairs, several phonographs playing, cards.”
Long after Flynn had left he was remembered around Rabaul, mostly for the unpaid bills he left behind.
Even after he became famous as a film star, he never paid any of those bills. If people wrote asking him to pay, he would send them autographed photographs of himself, saying these were worth much more than what he owed them.
The story is told of the famous occasion when a film of Flynn’s was showing in Rabaul, and at the end of the credits, a dentist to whom Flynn owned a large account jumped up and shouted: “And teeth by Eric Wein.”
In 1928, with money from his work on a coconut plantation and a loan from a shipping company in Sydney, Flynn bought a schooner and took an American film company to make a documentary about headhunters on the Sepik River.
He recalls: “The last place in the world I wanted to go was the Sepik River, a human graveyard. I cruised to the north-east coast, where the red, muddy Sepik River flowed into the sea.
“We moved into the broad stream, running against a strong current.
“The Sepik is a monster waterway 600 miles long.
“No white man has been up the river more than 200 or 300 miles and the nature of the river or the land beyond that was practically unknown and remains little known to this very day.
“The waterway was heavily populated with mosquitoes, kanakas, and pukpuks (crocodiles).
“As we traveled the garamuts, tomtoms made of crocodile skins, kept up a steady communication: ‘Outsiders, big magic on the water, beware’.
“When we came in close to shore and tried to get film of the natives, we got arrows instead, real ones, and poisoned.
“In 1929, Flynn sailed from the offshore islands to Salamaua, to fulfill his original ambition.
He hired eight men, bought marching gear and gold-digging equipment, and set out for the goldfields at Edie Creek.
The tough march from Salamaua to Wau – through a region filled with blackwater fever and poisoned arrows – tested men’s limitations.
The rigorous walk between Salamaua and Wau took up to a week, Flynn writing of how the gold fields had to be approached from Salamaua by 10 days’smarch through leech-infested jungle, in constant fear of ambush, and at night wondering ‘whether that crawly sound you heard a few feet away might be a snake, a cassowary or maybe only a wild boar razorback…I have seen Central Africa, but it was never anything like the jungle of New Guinea’.
At Edie Creek, temperatures were high during the day and fell steeply at night.
There was an epidemic of dysentery and malaria, with no trained doctors to attend to the sick.
His men left, and Flynn quickly realised that, “I had neither the provisions, nor the money, nor the necessary men to work a claim properly. The competition with other prospectors who were better set up was too much”.
He lost everything he owned and was forced to take a job as manager of a tobacco plantation in Laloki, near Port Moresby.
Six months later, Jack Hides, a flamboyant patrol officer and old Papua hand, turned up at Flynn’s place and noted in his diary that Flynn was doing a creditable job.
Flynn had criticised the Australian administration in a letter to his father in Tasmania.
Writing to The Bulletin soon after his arrival, he protested against a government policy that affected his own plantation, the high import taxes imposed on tobacco: “Papua is one of the natural homes of the tobacco plant, and, as Papua is part of the Commonwealth and is in receipt of a yearly subsidy of £40,000 from the federal government, the obvious market for its tobacco is Australia. But the market is closed by a prohibitive tariff.”
At Laloki, the man who was to become the world’s top sex symbol, wrote about his affair with Tuperselai, a beautiful Papuan girl: “We let ourselves be carried down by the current of the stream and, on the shores, in a secluded nook of shade, at last we made love.
“I can only say that I don’t know when again my heart pounded so.
“I was less alone and soft-aired Laloki River is one of my most precious, poetic memories.”
Flynn later observed that, “If you spend more than five years in New Guinea you were done for, you’d never be able to get out, your energy would be gone, and you’d rot there like an aged palm”.
In April 1933, he sold his property and suddenly left the island with some smuggled diamonds and a case of malaria that would plague him for the rest of his life.
During his years in New Guinea, from the age of 18 to 24, Flynn came to maturity and formed his adult personality. New Guinea brought out the worst and the best in him.
He was willing to try anything, but wouldn’t work at anything for very long.
He said, “There is no thrill like making a dishonest buck” and always expected others to support him when he had no money of his own.
He lived by his wits, bluffed his way through crises, and used his fists when he had to.
One of Errol Flynn’s greatest loves was writing. Apart from his autobiography My Wicked, Wicked Ways, he wrote two semi-autobiographical novels Beam Ends and Showdown and in addition wrote articles for the Sydney Bulletin whilst in PNG under the pen-name “Laloki.”
Errol Flynn loved many women, but he is said to have once confided to a close friend that two of his greatest loves were New Guinea, and writing.
— Gentleman Tim