While researching Errol like I do every day, I found a small snippet from a newspaper of September 1940 in which Errol is linked to Beatrice Ammidown, pocket venus. I started to further research her. She was a society model born in 1915 from New York. She married Henry P Ammidown in 1934. They had a daughter in 1938. In 1939 she started a relationship with Errol. She finalized the divorce in 1940. They were “out” in January 1940 and the press thought she was going to be soon his wife. By September 1940 still together after a break. Nothing after that. She married a rich Greek shipping mogul in 1942.
Howard Hill was an expert bowman, long regarded “The World’s Greatest Archer”. He established the record for winning the most bow-and-arrow field tournaments in succession, a total of 196 competitions. He also wrote several leading books on the topic. Additionally, he was a tremendous athlete, most notably in football and baseball.
Among his many achievements in archery, Howard Hill in 1928 set a new world record for the farthest recorded flight shot with a bow and arrow, at 391 yards. That same year, he won his 196th field archery competition in a row. Hill, though, was not only one of the most decorated archers in the modern era of target shooting, hunting, and flight archery competitions, he was also a celebrated writer and producer. During his career, he produced 23 films about archery for Warner Bros. He also produced 10 different films of his own and was a technical adviser in many more motion pictures, providing his expertise in the field.
Forward to Howard’s book, WILD ADVENTURE
Written by Errol
When you meet Howard Hill you know darn well you have met him before, but you can not remember where or when.
Let me solve your problem. If, like myself, you sometimes find yourself hanging on a bar rail and staring over the head of the bar-tender, behind those character-destroying bottles of Four Posies or Old Step Mother, you will spot Hill. There you will see a reproduction of a painting, the cultural contribution of some beer cartel like Somebody and Rusch, depicting Custer’s Last Stand. That American aborigine, that Indian on the piebald pony is Hill. Yes, the guy giving out with the bloodcurdling war whoop, drawing a bead on the heroic general (if a bead can be drawn with a bow and arrow Hill is the one who can do it) is our boy. This is no quaint flight of fancy; It has to be Hill. God knows, I have stared at both Hill and his weapon often enough, chilled to the marrow.
When Hill goes after any living creature with his bow for whatever reason, whether for food, motion pictures or sport, he has the same intensity, the same piercing black eyes, the same unmistakable snarl, leering with the triumph of the Indian about to wade up to his navel in the gore of the Paleface, He may be stalking only a rabbit, but it is still Hill.
He calls himself a Cre, I think, and is inordinately proud of it, But he is a real Indian, make no mistake, as this Paleface knows. Confronted by Hill bearing down upon me over the bar on that pinto pony charging over countless hordes of Four Posies, I have always felt a keen sympathy for the unlucky Custer.
It is only our long and enduring friendship (based upon a mutual love for hunting and the Great Outdoors) that has induced me to write this foreword to his book, a thing I would do for no one else. As yet, being on a different continent from him at the moment, I have not had a gander at Howard’s book, but I am sure it is a work calculated to bring out the best kind of savagery in American youth. The book is a cinch to stir many a nervous pulse as Hill has stirred mine in the past. It has to be filled with wild adventure. In it naturally, he will not tell you of the time we were out hunting mountain lions, and having just lassoed one, he had the frenzied brute screeching and turning somersaults at the end of a rope snubbed around a tree. Suddenly Howard yelled, “Here, hold this, and I did, only to find out that I had hold of the tail of the enraged cat instead of the rope. Nor, I suppose, will this savage recount another incident that occurred while we were hunting wild boar on Sana Cruz Island when he left me hanging on the side of a cliff several hundred feet above the rocky sea-shore. While he sat in safety fifty yards away, eating boiled eggs and going into sporadic gales of laughter, he watched me suffer the terrors of chronic vertigo, too petrified to move an inch. Yes, Hill is an Indian.
Although no Indian myself, and having no claim to being perhaps even an exceptional hunter, yet I do have much in common with Hill. The wailing note of the loon floating across a placid lake, the distant high pitched cry of the timber wolf, the roar of the jaguar and the blood-curling cough of the charging wild boar, call to some deep inner response within us both that is not acquainted with modern civilization.
“Cupid” Hill, as I have called Howard ever since we first met while making the picture Robin Hood, has done things with a bow and arrow that few have essayed with the rifle and I for one am going to read his book with great nostalgia, for some of the truly wonderful moments of my life have been spent tagging at Howard’s heels on our hunting trips in many strange corners of the world.
Errol Flynn
Rome, italy
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Errol-Related Filmography
The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938)
– Technical adviser and archery instructor
The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938)
– Captain of Archers (credited)
– Elwyn the Welshman (uncredited)
Sword Fishing (October 21, 1939)
– Short Documentary – Himself
Shark Hunting (November 9, 1940)
– Short Documentary – Himself
They Died with Their Boots On (1941)
– Stunts (uncredited)
San Antonio (1945)
– Henchman (uncredited)
Deep Sea Fishing (1952)
– Short documentary – Himself
Cruise of the Zaca
(Released December 6, 1952)
– Short Documentary
– Filmed 1946-47
Misadventures pf Captain Fabian, The Man Who Cried, and Hello God
The film was originally known as The Bargain and was based on a script by Errol Flynn himself. Flynn entered into a multi-picture deal with William Marshall to produce the film, among others, in July 1949. It was to be produced independently with a distributor sought later. Micheline Presle was borrowed from 20th Century Fox to play the female lead. Gérard Philipe was to be in the cast but did not appear in the end. (Presle and Marshall later married.)
At one stage the film was also known as Bloodline and New Orleans Adventure. Filming started on July 15, 1950 in Paris under the title of The Bargain. Exteriors representing New Orleans were recreated in the city of Villefranche with studio scenes shot at the Victorine Studios in Nice and the Billancourt Studios in Paris.
Under Errol Flynn’s contract with Warner Bros, he was allowed to make one “outside” film a year until 1962, provided it had a major distributor. Flynn later claimed that during filming, William Marshall “secretly” committed the film to being released by Republic Pictures, one of the smaller studios. Both Warner Bros and MGM, who had films starring Flynn awaiting release, were unhappy with this. Flynn worried that Warner Bros would use this as an excuse to cancel their contract with him on the basis that Republic was not a major. On 18 December 1950 he filed suit in the Los Angeles Superior Court asking them to stop Republic from releasing the film and to stop Warner Bros from cancelling the contract until the court could determine that Republic was a “major” distributor.
The movie was meant to be the first of two films from Flynn and Marshall, the second which was to be The Man Who Cried, a psychological thriller about the perfect crime set over a four-hour period, but this wasn’t made due to a dispute between Marshall and Flynn over Hello God.
In January 1952, Flynn asked a court to formally end the partnership with Marshall.
“Errol Flynn’s wives, fiances, wives, and assorted girlfriends – in screen adventures, as well as his well-heeled real life – have tended toward the dark, sultry, exotice type. But Flynn has just changed.”
Happy Errolween. October 31, 2020. Don’t be afraid of no ghosts.
The Ghost of Mulholland
Many if not most residents of and visitors to Mulholland Farm after Errol’s death claim that the home and estate was haunted. Some, like Ricky Nelson, believed it was Errol himself. Ricky’s daughter, Tracy, believed it was haunted by an angry woman. Others reported to have experienced a ghost of an identity unknown to them. Perhaps there were multiple ghosts? Or, perhaps there were none at all.
What do you believe?
The excellent video below provides a brief history of Mulholland Farm, asserting unequivocally, beginning at 6:57, that there was a ghost.
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The Specter of Errol?
Below the video is a link to a former EFB post, titled After Party Ghost List, addressing the possibilities of ghosts at Mulholland, on the Zaca, and elsewhere.
~ “In 1940, Freddie MacEvoy married Beatrice Cartwright, an heiress to the Standard Oil fortune. He and Beatrice (twice his age) had lived together at the Badrutt Palace in St. Moritz for several winters, prior to their marriage. One year, McEvoy brought a much younger model to “care for him,” explaining to Cartwright that he must have a younger lover than her. The marriage lasted two years, and in the same year they were divorced, he married Irene Wrightsman, the 18-year-old daughter of the president of Standard Oil of Kansas.”
~ “During the Forties, Freddie often stayed in Mexico City with Countess Dorothy di Frasso, one of Freddie’s most generous patrons. Di Frasso spread his fame among her friends for his bedroom performances, which she said was worth all the money she gave him.
In 1945, McEvoy began a long-running affair with the wealthy heiress, Barbara Hutton. Hutton agreed with di Frasso concerning Freddie’s skills, considering him a superb lover, and felt that he understood women better than any man she had ever met. They later lived together at a fashionable ski chalet in Franconia, New Hampshire, which Hutton bought for McEvoy. They never married but remained friends throughout his life.
McEvoy eventually married French fashion model Claude Stephanie Filatre. On November 7, 1951 they were sailing on his 104-ton schooner, Kangaroo, near Cap Cantin off the coast of Morocco when a storm hit. The ship went down, but Freddie lashed his wife and maid to the mast, and then swam to shore seeking help. But he was unable to find any assistance and swam back out to the mast. He and Claude Stephanie then began swimming to shore, but she was unable to make it. He attempted to tow her to shore, but the waves pulled them to sea, they crashed against the rocks, and were not seen alive again. Their bodies were recovered the next day.
