Proposin`like Flynn

Dear fellow Flynn fans,

we all know Errol had a very romantic side to him. This eventually led to three marriages and at least as many engagements.

When filming Robin Hood he metaphorically went to one knee in front of Lady Livvie, while officially still married to Mrs. D(yn)amita. Later he promised Jamaican paradise on earth to Romanian princess Irene Ghica.

But his engaging behaviour went way back to his theater days in England. Here is a daughter`s account -not an alien to acting herself- about her mother`s flynntanglement .

“Her stage name was Elizabeth Inglis. She had walk on movie parts in Alfred Hitchcock’s “The Letter” & “The Thirty-Nine Steps.” She was born and mostly raised in boarding schools in England. She went to the Royal Academy of Arts in London at Picadilly Circas after high school where she was “discovered” by a Hollywood talent scout. In high school she had a steady date by the name of Errol Flynn, who went with her to the USA, by ship for a summer in Hollywood, and later became a big star. The Hollywood set was into party after party after party. Errol Flynn was a real womanizer, but he couldn’t get to first base with my mother because she could see right through him. He proposed, but she indicated that Errol had to get permission from her father. So he wrote this three page letter expounding all of her many virtues and how he would do right by her. Her father wrote back and said that he didn’t care what she did, now that she was out of the house! She still would not marry him. So later at one of these “Hollywood Parties,” Errol Flynn introduced my mother to my father. He was very shy. Her dates with him were different. She would get a couple of tickets to a “Talkie” or silent show and then call him up and see if he wanted to go. . . After a bit of this they got together.”

Obviously she was not just another Flynn prospect, but a hopeful, who found happiness elsewhere.

Now was Errol rather supposing than proposing? Who knows how many more brides-not-to-be there were?

Enjoy,

— shangheinz