Fifteen years ago I hired Deirdre Flynn to appear at a Q&A before a showing of Warner Bros’ 1938 version of Robin Hood at Carmel’s Outdoor Forest Theater. I owned a national consumer products business and was forever looking for fun ways to promote the products. When someone approached us to sponsor a film at the Forest Theater, I agreed, providing, I cautioned, it was Robin Hood and providing they let Flynn’s daughter Deidre introduce the film after a Q&A on stage. They readily agreed, and after some doing, I managed to contact Deirdre through a Flynn website in Los Angeles. Nice guy ran it, forgotten his name.
About a month later she arrived in Carmel and it was a delight to meet her. She was soft spoken and friendly with no ego. It was apparent she’d had a hard life. We’d advertised the movie and the Q&A locally, and out of the woodwork appeared Deirdre’s former step sister, the daughter of Joanne Dru, whose father was Dick Haymes. I think we all got together for drinks first in town, and after a shy minute or two the women began to laugh and reminisce.
That night we got to the theater early and I spent some time with Deirdre talking about her dad. I asked whether he’d been a good dad, in her opinion. She said that he had, and that although she had nothing to compare it to, he seemed solicitous and concerned about her. According to Deirdre, from location Errol used to send her letters asking about her homework load, what she was reading, boyfriends. She said he’d sometimes add vocabulary words to the letters he sent, for her to look up and commit to memory. Well that’s something, I thought.
The whole affair of meeting Deirdre was bittersweet, because clearly Errol hand’t been the best father and it seemed sad that his beautiful daughter was drifting thru life as a consequence. The Q & A and movie were a huge hit, however. I remember two things. One, when the audience was told over the loudspeaker that before the film, there would be a Q&A with Errol Flynn’s daughter Deirdre Flynn, the audience actually gasped; they were that enthralled. Second, I was seated beside Deirdre and at the iconic moment in the film when Errol makes his appearance, leaping over the felled tree on his white stallion to the rousing Wolfgang Korngold score, the audience screamed and cheered, and I saw tears of pride and joy appear in Deidre’s eyes as she watched her father up there. I’ll never forget it.
One footnote. There was a raffle before the Q&A, and one lucky audience member received an autographed copy of Errol’s My Wicked Wicked Ways. For a lot of reasons not the least of which was that Flynn died when his book was still in galleys, they didn’t get an actual autographed first edition, but a 1984 paperback edition with an ersatz autograph. In my writing.
— TJR McDowell
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