The Errol Flynn Blog

The Mail Bag brings us a most unusual film Review by Ralph Schiller, Errol Flynn’s Ghost film, Hello God …

Film Review by Ralph Schiller

Hello God (1951) was produced by William Marshall Productions.  It was filmed in black & white with a running time of 64 minutes.  It was written, produced, and directed by William Marshall.

British statesman Winston Churchill once said of Russia “a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma”.  His eloquent words could describe Hello God, Errol Flynn’s “Ghost film”, unseen for seventy-five years.

From 1933 until his death in 1959, Flynn made fifty-five feature length motion pictures. Two are missing. Murder At Monte Carlo (1935), filmed at the British Warner Bros. Teddington Studios, was destroyed in World War II when Luftwaffe bombs hit the studio film vault. Murder At Monte Carlo is number one on The British Film Institute (BFI) wanted missing films list. Hello God, is an even more elusive mirage, never telecast on American television (including local channels). Normally reliable accurate film historians have provided conflicting information on this film for decades.

The strange story of Hello God begins in 1950.

After fifteen years in Hollywood, Errol Flynn was still under contract to Warner Brothers, starring in one swashbuckler and adventure film after another. Flynn’s renewed contract allowed him to make one film per-year, outside the Warner lot for a major studio.  Errol Flynn was twice loaned-out toMetro-Goldwyn-Mayer to co-star with Greer Garson in the costume drama That Forsyte Woman (1949) and another adventure film based on Rudyard Kipling’s literary classic,Kim (1950). In 1949, Errol Flynn met William Marshall, a former band singer and second-string leading man at Republic studios.  Marshall, married to beautiful French film star Micheline Presle (also billed Prelle), was divorced from first wife Michele Morgan, another glamorous French movie star.

As producer and director, Marshall signed Errol Flynn to a multi-picture contract on February 18, 1950, which is documented by Robert Florczak’s book Errol Flynn, The Illustrated Life Chronology  (2022, Lyons Press).   Flynn would receive $2700.00 per day with a ten-day guarantee and half ownership of their first film.  Marshall, a World War II combat veteran, handed Flynn his screenplay with the working title Before You Sleep.  Errol Flynn was intrigued.

According to all sources, the retitled Hello God, stars Errol Flynn as the ghost of a dead American soldier on Anzio Beach.  He pleads for peace while introducing the stories of four American G.I.’s killed during the World War II invasion at Anzio.  The soldiers approach heaven and ask to be admitted even though they died before their lives on Earth were completed.

In 1968, a washed-up William Marshall published a thinly-disguised novel, The Deal (Bartholomew House Ltd.) in which he exposed the underside of Hollywood, his ex-wives, and especially Errol Flynn!

In the book, Marshall’s film director character Jarnigan purchases the American rights to a foreign film for peanuts.  Jarn quickly shoots a few scenes with the Baron (Flynn’s actual nickname) and inserts them into the edited film.  Jarnigan intends to ballyhoo the release of a new motion picture starring the Baron, one of Hollywood’s top stars.

Some film sources incorrectly state that Errol Flynn shot his scenes for Hello God in Italy shortly after completing location shooting in India for Kim.  Florczak’s book timelines Marshall filming all of Flynn’s Hello God scenes on location on the beach at Santa Barbara (forAnzio)in February, 1950.

Close-ups were shot in a film studio. Flynn was simultaneously filming Kim at the MGM lot with location shooting at Lone Pine, California (for the Himalayas of India).  Flynn’s Hello God co-star Sherry Jackson verified in a 2006 interview with this author that her scenes were filmed entirely at Santa Barbara, not Italy. After asking the author if he saw the film, Sherry Jackson said “Errol Flynn was a sweetheart and so handsome … [laughs] he gave me a dime and asked me to call him in ten years for a date!”

Errol Flynn never made it to 1961 but he would have been delighted with Sherry Jackson’s beauty and successful Hollywood career.

All sources verify after Hello God was completed, Errol Flynn feared starring in an anti-war movie during the Korean War would damage his reputation with the public. Flynn had his friend Charles Gross retrieve from the film lab the print and negative of Hello God. Flynn was convinced Jack L. Warner would tear up his studio contract because Hello God was not a major studio production!

Although William Marshall was furious, he recreated the film using out-takes and leftover footage. Flynn sued Marshall to prevent the film’s release and Marshall countersued.  According to James Robert Parish’s and Don E. Stanke’s book, The Swashbucklers (1976, Arlington House Pub.), the lawsuits kept Hello God out of U.S. movie theaters until 1958 when it was released by Cavalcade Pictures (distributor of foreign, exploitation films).

There is no evidence whatsoever of an American release of Hello God, not even movie art (posters, lobby cards, and lobby stills, etc.). Michael Freeland’s book The Two Lives Of Errol Flynn (1978, William Morrow And Co.) states Helo God never played anywhere “apart from a few sporadic showings in Europe.” Wikipedia quotes William Marshall, “Flynn doesn’t look his best in some of the rejected shots but we’ll have to use them unless this man coughs up the good ones. I like Flynn as well as anybody, but in business he’s pretty difficult. Somebody must be giving him bad advice … Everybody who has seen it says it’s a wonderful picture and Flynn does things in it he has never done before. He prays to God and he cries on the beach at Anzio.”

Errol Flynn’s manager Al Blum responded, “He (Marshall) represented to Flynn that he had a feature picture which needed only Flynn’s appearance in the Italian scenes and a commentary by Flynn to complete it. But what he really has is a hodgepodge of junk – old newsreels, clips from other pictures, bad photography, no quality – it’s just terrible. And, also, I’m a little afraid of its political aspects … At all costs Flynn will block the release – by court action if necessary.” Flynn eventually lost the 1957 court judgement and had to pay William Marshall $31,750.00 plus $2500.00 in legal costs.

​In spite of the bitter acrimony between them, Errol Flynn and William Marshall worked together again to make in France, the big budget The Adventures Of Captain Fabian (1951).  Marshall produced and directed, starring his beautiful wife, Micheline Presle. Flynn had the title role in this adventure film with a superior supporting cast including Agnes Moorehead, Vincent Price, and Victor Francen.  Flynn took an original screenplay credit on the film even though it was based on Robert T. Shannon’s novel, The Fabulous Ann Madlock.  William Marshall and Micheline Presle divorced in 1955, and the French movie star left Hollywood for France.

Errol Flynn never returned the prints and negative of Hello God to William Marshall, and may have destroyed them altogether. Marshall stored the prints, out-takes and negative for his version of Hello God at a Los Angeles film storage company.  In 1966 with Marshall’s rental fees in arrears, the company sent a formal collection letter to Mrs. William Marshall (Hollywood movie star Ginger Rogers) asking for payment.  They warned if the fees were not paid, the company would discard the film elements. Ginger Rogers and William Marshall were then estranged, headed for divorce.  Rogers had no intention of paying his debts.  In her autobiography Ginger, My Story (1991, Harper Collins), she wrote of William Marshall with great disdain and contempt, more than any other of her many ex-husbands.

In 1963, Marshall somehow persuaded the government of Jamaica that the island nation was destined to become another Hollywood. Dreaming of foreign money flowing into their economy, the Jamaican government had built Marshall his own film studio. There, Marshall produced The Confession starring his wife Ginger Rogers, Ray Milland, and Barbara Eden. A lessor distributor released the movie in 1964 to 2nd-run and Drive-In theaters.  When almost no one saw The Confession, it was unsuccessfully re-released, with the title Quick, Let’s Get Married! Ginger Rogers swore it was her worst film ever.  Marshall’s Jamaican studio was abandoned to rack and ruin. The author tracked down the film storage company which changed owners and its name. Speaking with a company executive, the author was told they no long had the film which was discarded long ago due to unpaid rental fees.

For all practical purposes, this was the end if the trail for Hello God.  Errol Flynn’s wish came true; no one ever saw it.  Then in 2013, a copy of Hello God was discovered in poor condition and sent to the George Eastman House & Museum in Rochester, New York for possible restoration.  Wikipedia claimed the print was discovered buried in the basement evidence room of the New York Surrogate Court!

The Moving Image Dept. of the George Eastman House & Museum said their copy of Hello God was from the Errol Flynn Estates. Either way, the film was terribly deteriorated and Eastman House was only able to restore eighteen minutes of 35MM film or about one-quarter of the motion picture.  The movie soundtrack was lost with surviving footage completely silent.

The author viewed the footage of Hello God at the George Eastman House & Museum.

​The first of two reels begin with the trademark logo of William Marshall Productions, and opening credits.  After a poetic scroll about the futility of war, it fades to Anzio Beach at night, and dissolves to daytime with Errol Flynn (dressed head-to-toe in black, sporting his well-coiffed, Van Dyke beard from Kim) in longshot walking along the beach. Without a soundtrack, it cannot be determined if either William Marshall or Errol Flynn narrates.

He walks through a cemetery filled with crosses of World War II soldiers killed at Anzio.

He sits on a large rock near the beach where he is joined by two adolescent boys (Joe Mazzuca and Armando Formica, American actors despite their surnames) and a sheepdog. Flynn cheerfully greets them and plays with their lovable dog.

The boys leave with their canine pal and an adorable, little Italian girl (Sherry Jackson) approaches Flynn. To her great astonishment, Flynn’s character stands up, clicks his heels, and gallantly kisses her hand like Robin Hood!

The happy little girl leaves and the boys return without their dog.  Flynn asks about their dog and gets the boys to laugh.  The boys leave and Flynn, in close-up, speaks directly to the audience as he introduces the stories of the dead soldiers. Even without sound, Errol Flynn emotes great sincerity and empathy for the brave soldiers, often looking up towards heaven.  At one point, he takes out a dead soldier’s wallet and begins telling his story but after a montage of endless crosses in the military cemetery, the film abruptly runs out.

Most film historians incorrectly thought Hello God was an exploitation film like Errol Flynn’s last movie Cuban Rebel Girls (1959). Instead, the curious Hello God is a profound bookend to a great anti-war film, All Quiet On The Western Front (1930, banned during World War II).

Silent or not, Errol Flynn does excellent dramatic work here. His character is an omnipresent, haunting, grieving figure who mourns gallant, fallen soldiers sent to heaven at the beginning of their young lives.

William Marshall, a wounded veteran decorated with a Purple Heart, and Errol Flynn were aiming high.  Except for a few seconds, almost none of the original Italian war movie footage survives. With a running time of just sixty-four minutes for the complete film, this surviving footage very likely contains the lion’s share of Flynn’s scenes.  Film historians claim Hello God has four separate stories.  If true they would be no longer than one-reel each. Without the complete footage, soundtrack, or Marshall’s screenplay, we may never know.

William Marshall

If anything, Hello God was a noble failure ahead of its time.  William Marshall was right about Hello God, and that Errol Flynn, who endured many scandals in his career, had nothing to fear.  We can only hope, however unlikely, that the rest of the film is discovered someday.

Thanks to the kind, generous cooperation of Beth Rennie, at the Moving Image Department, the George Eastman House & Museum (a leader in film preservation) with research assistance from Robert Florczak and Inga Klein.

Note:

When William Marshall married Michele Morgan in 1942, she was living in a new house specially designed and built for her. Marshall talked her into selling. Morgan agreed because she sensed something unsettling, frightening, about her house at 10050 Cielo Drive. In 1969, film director Roman Polanski and his beautiful actress wife Sharon Tate rented the house.

On August 9, 1969, followers of Charles Manson broke into the house and murdered the pregnant Sharon Tate plus four other people.

The house was demolished in 1994.

-Ralph Schiller

Thanks for this wonderful review Ralph and astonishing images! Special shout out to Karl Holmberg, too.

— David DeWitt