— Tim
Archive for the ‘Behind the Scenes’ Category
The Whereabouts of Flynn
10
Mar
Long before the United States of Mexico Ports of Entry to the United states of America were making big news, as they are these days, Errol was crossing through many of them. Here is one of his notable ones, his attempt to travel incognito through the border gate at Brownsville to Mazatlan (with Senora Damita believe it or not!)
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March 9, 1939
Evening Herald Express
FLYNN IN TEXAS ON NEW FILM RUNOUT
Errol Flynn, dashing screen star who is supplying Warner Brothers publicists with a headache, was reported proceeding to Mazatlan, Mexico, today and running out on his film studio’s stunt for a picture.
Traveling incognito so far as it was possible – and it was pretty difficult after Warner’s offered a $500 reward for his capture. – Flynn and his wife Lili Damita, would only comment at the Brownsville airport today that they were “making a little trip.”
Then the couple took a plane to Mexico City. It waa understood Flynn’s plans included a hunting trip to Mazatlan. Warners wanted its playboy to go to Dodge City, KS, for the premiere of a picture by that name.
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March 10, 1939
Harrison Carroll
Evening Herald Express
Warners wished they hadn’t offered $500 reward for information on the whereabouts of Errol Flynn. Within a few hours after the story hit the wires, the studio had received 143 telegrams from all parts of the country. Some of them were gags, but a large number brought actual information…and now the studio is faced with the headache of trying to figure out who deserves the reward.
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Did tightwad J.W. pay up??? Doubtful!
— Tim
The (Grand) Son Also Rises
09
Mar
March 9, 2003
The New York Times Magazine
“A quiet spot by the Jamaica seashore, looking out at the activity in the ocean, hearing the wind sob with the beauty and the tragedy of everything.”
Errol’s Diary: April 4, 1954, Boston Estate, Jamaica
— Tim
aka F.X. Pettijohn — Errol Flynn, Like You’ve Never Seen Him Before
09
Mar
Footsteps in the Dark
Released March 8, 1941
“Ralph Bellamy said Flynn was “a darling. Couldn’t or wouldn’t take himself seriously. And he drank like there was no tomorrow. Had a bum ticker from the malaria he’d picked up in Australia. Also a spot of TB. Tried to enlist but flunked his medical, so he drank some more. Knew he wouldn’t live into old age. He really had a ball in Footsteps in the Dark. He was so glad to be out of swashbucklers.””
— Tim
Celebrated Personalities
07
Mar
March 6, 1938
Los Angeles Examiner
Filmdom’s Elite Will Attend Reception for Mrs. Payson
Each year the Santa Anita racing season augments the number of our celebrated personalities by bringing other celebrities of the cosmopolitan world to sojourn a while in our fair village. Salient among them is the engaging Mrs. Joan Whitney Payson. And when Kendall and Lewis Milestone entertain today at cocktail time at their Beverly Hills home , she will be the party’s honored guest.
Among the illustrious cocktail sippers they’ll be Jessica and Richard Barthelmess, Ronald Colman and Benita Hume, the Bert Allenbergs, Winifred and Warner Baxter, Carole Lombard and Clark Gable, te Phil Bergs, the John Hay Whitneys, Hope and Louis Lighton, te C.V. Whitneys, Miriam Hopkins and Anatol Litvak, Rouben Mamoulian, Joan Bennett, the Nigel Bruces, Pat Patterson and Charles Boyer, Dixie and Bing Crosby.
Jean Negulesco and Binnie Barnes, the William Goetzes, Kay and John Cromwell, Constance Bennett, Gilbert Roland, Eddie Sutherland, Tala Barell, Bruce Cabot, Whitney Bourne, Dorothy Parker and Alan Campbell, the Miriam Coopers, Mary Astor and Manuel Campo, Heather Thatcher, George Cukor, Ouid and Basil Rathbone, Tim Durant, Marlene Dietrich, Douglas Fairbanks Jr., Lili Damita and Errol Flynn, Kay Francis, Whitney de Rham, Eddie Duchin, the Samuel Goldwyns, Janet Gaynor and Tyrone Power.
Also the Georg Fitzmauriees, Alfred Vanderbilt, Anita Loos and John Emerson, Christopher Dumphy, Dr. Harry Martin and Louella O. Parsons, Delmar Daves, the Lawrence Foxes, Cesar Romero, Ethel Merman, Harry Evans, Sally and Norman Foster, Winston Frost, Fransces Marion, Cary Grant, the Howard Hawks, Edmund Golden, theCourtland Hills, Alma and Frank Morgn, Vivian and Ernst Lubitsch, Andy Lawlor, Due de Verdura, Elizabeth Meyer, Ann and Jack Warner.
The Mervyn LeRoys, the Ainsworth Morgans, Sue and Chester Morris, the Bob Montgomerys, the Walter O’Keefe’s, Julie and George Murphy, David Niven, Florence Rice, Jean Arthur and Frank Rice, the Wells Roots, Wesley Ruggles, Virginia Bruce and J. Walter Rubent.
The David Selznicks, Loretta Young, Robert Riskin, the Grantland Rices, the Myron Selznicks, Fay Wray, Gregory Ratoff, Virginia and Daryl Zanuck, etc.
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Ann Sheridan, Errol and Lewis Milestone on the Set of Edge of Darkness
The pioneering Joan Payson, the first woman to own a Major League baseball team (and win a Pennant and World Series.) Here with Tom Seaver, Bud Harrelson and Nancy Seaver.
— Tim
Robin de Los Bosques Arrives in London
06
Mar
March 5, 1937, Errol and Erben arrived in London:
“In 1935, Flynn married French-American actress Lili Damita (divorcing in 1942), with whom he had a very stormy relationship, with frequent physical fights. They were called the “Fighting Flynns,” and he called his wife “Tiger Lili.” When his friend Dr. Herman F. Erben (1897-1985) proposed that he and Errol travel to Spain in 1937, Flynn jumped at the opportunity. The friends had met three years earlier on April 14, 1933 in Salamaua, New Guinea. Born in Vienna, Erben was a physician and a world traveler, adventurer, and photographer, making a living primarily as a ship’s doctor. The two adventurers liked each other from the start and traveled together for a couple of months through the Far East. (Thomas McNulty, “Errol Flynn: The Life and Career.” Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2004. pp. 23-24) So, in early 1937, Flynn decided to go to Spain as a war correspondent with a commission from Hearst Press, to get away from it all (some say to, literally, escape from his wife) or perhaps just for the adventure. “Arriving in Spain, I felt I was right back in ‘The Charge of the Light Brigade’” (Errol Flynn, “What Really Happened to Me in Spain” Photoplay, July 1937: 12-15). Flynn and his enigmatic traveling companion, Dr. Erben, left on the Queen Mary on February 24, 1937, arriving in Southhampton, England on March 1.”
“On March 5, 1937, they arrived in London.”
Quoting “Robin de Los Bosques in the Spanish War
— Tim
Back in the Saddle Again
03
Mar
March 1, 1949
Sidney Skolsky
Hollywood Citizen News
Errol Flynn is far from being the happiest man in the world at this point. Not only is his domestic life in a state of chaos, but he has to make a western as his next movie. Errol is tired of shooting it up in the saddle. He doesn’t want to be the rich man’s Roy Rogers.
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May 29, 1949
Hedda Hoppa
Quoting Errol in
“Flynn and Dandy”
“Acting for me is sheer fun. There’s only one thing I really don’t want to do any more and that’s Westerns. I guess I’ve trod every back trail and canyon pass in the entire west. I’ve never literally had to read the line, ‘they went that a-way pard’, but there is one cliche I’ve said so many times it comes back to me in all my nightmares. Every time there’s a gap in the story, every time the writers don’t know what to do next, they have me pull up ahead of my gang, assume a decidedly grim look, and say ‘All right men, you know what to do now.’ The fact is I’ve made so many of these things, scripts seem so much the same, that what it adds up to in my mind is that the studio says, ‘Here’s a horse. Get on.'”
— Tim
Not for Nothing
01
Mar
February 29, 1940
Sidney Skolsky
Watching Them Make Pictures
If you wait long enough on a Michael Curtiz set, you’re bound to hear a Curtizism. The other afternoon on the set of The Sea Hawk I had a long wait. In fact for the first time I thought reliable Mike was going to fail me. Director Curtiz had Errol play a scene over and over. And everytime he gave an order I expected him to pull a gem. But he didn’t.
Finally, Errol did the scene the way Curtiz wanted and reliable Mike came through. He said: “Errol, you worked hard. But it’s alright. You can’t get anything for nothing unless you pay for it.”
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— Tim
“A Follow-up to Robin Hood”
28
Feb
February 27, 1939
Louella O. Parsons
Los Angeles Examiner
How would you like to see the dashing Errol Flynn as the equally dashing Don Juan? Academy award winning producer Hal Wallis is plotting such a story as a follow-up to Robin Hood.
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Nearly a decade later…
— Tim
