The mailbag brings us a wonderful email from William Russo:
I’ve been reading your stuff I guess for a couple years now. Truly enjoy it. Takes me into a world I truly love. Though it was the world of my parent’s generation, I feel a nostalgia for it I cannot explain. Though I grew up on Flynn’s movies, I did not come to become immersed into his life and personality until late hippie years. One of my best friends then was a guy named Steve Gilbert. He was a dead ringer for Flynn. Amazingly he had gone to Hollywood High, knew and even dated, I think, Rory! I introduced him to “My Wicked, Wicked Ways”. We each had a copy and would quote from it regularly. We both thought of it as kind of a Bible. I started a club; called it “The Sons of Flynn”. I always kept a couple copies of the book and whenever I met someone who reminded me of Flynn in some significant way, I’d give them a copy. There were only about four additional that I deemed worthy. Most recently, a couple years ago, I met a twenty something attractive blonde from South Africa by way of Canada, at a Cannabis farm in Humboldt county. Not only was she into Flynn, but astonishingly, knew that Vivica Linford played the Queen of Spain, in Don Juan ! She wanted a copy of the book (I didn’t have one at the time), and demanded to become a member of the club! Unfortunately, we lost touch before she could be initiated. This was never a club in anything more than a name, and in my own imagination. One “member” lives in Honolulu, a good look-a- like, the most like Flynn athletically, an ex Army Ranger. Another lives in western Massachusetts. The other is the guy who owned the cannabis farm; eerily reminiscent of the Robin Hood persona. As for Steve, sadly he died about the same age as Erroll, from drug and alcohol abuse. I think Rory’s book, the Baron of Mulhollandis a treasure. It’s like being there, feeling it all. I am going to be traveling in Europe soon (doing some sword fighting!) and living my own version of The Sun Also Rises. Though most of my reading material will on kindle on my tablet, I will be taking only one book, my original paperback copy of My Wicked, Wicked Ways.
Cisco Bill
Thanks so much for the note! and what a read MWWW’s is … I envy anybody who is reading it for the first time, and understand why we keep going back it! Here is the first paperback I read of it:
And two others I read later on:
— David DeWitt
