The book entitled “Death Valley Superstars” by author Duke Haney has an excellent chapter on the life and death of Sean Flynn. It is also one of the saddest to read in a great book filled with many sad chapters. Has anyone else here read it? Ralph Schiller
— Ralph Schiller
January 29, 1938
Jimmy Starr
LA Evening Herald Express
STARS FLEE BRIGHT LIGHTS FOR LONELY REST SPOTS
Hollywood is fast becoming fed up with the glitter and the glamour, the hustle and the bustle of the more prominent “between pictures” holiday spots. The trend is definitely toward smaller, more isolated hideaways. Like other people, the stars occasionally tire of the brights lights, the night clubs, the theaters, the traffic, crowded sidewalks, hotels with super-service and the necessity of properly creased trousers and correct coiffures.
Errol Flynn has found the perfect method of “losing himself” between films, on weekends or other days of leisure. The popular Warner star ducks down to Santa Monica, boards his yacht and sails away.
— Tim
January 27, 1938
Harrison Carroll
LA Evening Herald Express
Purchase of a 75′ ketch in Boston makes Errol Flynn the No. 1 boat owner in Hollywood.
The Warner star, who planed in yesterday from a shopping tour of eastern shipyards, reveals that he now has a collection of seven boats with still another under construction.
The prize exhibit is the ketch Avenir*, which Flynn just purchased in Boston and which he will later sail through the Panama Canal and up the Pacific Coast.
Besides the Avenir, Flynn still owns a 50-foot yacht, a yawl named the Cheerio, a 25-foot speedboat, an outboard fishing smack and two 20-foot yacht tenders.
Then, in a western shipyard, he is having a lifeboat made over into another tender for his latest acquisition.
When and if he gets a vacation, the star plans a long voyage to the South Seas.
…
* Errol subsequently named the yacht “Sirocco” after the yacht he owned and captained in Australia and New Guinea before he achieved world fame.
— Tim
I am back on the blog again and wish to thank our host David Dewitt and Rory Flynn for sharing these rare treasured photos of Errol Flynn. I’ll be back later with a book that has an entire chapter on Sean Flynn. Ralph Schiller
— Ralph Schiller
January 23, 1936
FLYNN OPERATED ON “FOR ART”
For the sake of art, Errol Flynn, Warner Brothers film star, yesterday underwent a surgeon’s knife.
Flynn was stricken at his home Tuesday with an attack of appendicitis and was taken to Cedars of Lebanon Hospital. An examination made by Dr. Harley Gunderson revealed an operation was not immediately necessary.
Flynn, however, declared he would like to undergo the operation at once rather than be bothered by the offending appendix.
“I want to play in a picture entitled The Charge of the Light Brigade in April,” Flynn declared, “So let’s have the operation and I’ll be fit by that time.”
So, yesterday the appendectomy was performed. Flynn was reported as “resting comfortably.”
…
Might this be Errol, too? (Doubtful, but intriguing)
— Tim
January 20, 1936
Harrison Carroll
LA Evening Herald Express
It’s Scotch that Errol Flynn is, instead of Irish, if you ask the fan magazines. Since Captain Blood, they’ve all been clamoring to run a life story of Flynn, but he turns them all down.
“I’m writing it myself in book form,” he cannily replies.”
— Tim
“Not too tight, and not too loose.”
In The Courage to Love, renowned psychologist and hypnotherapist Stephen Gilligan recounts Errol’s response to a question regarding how best to hold a sword when fencing. Dr. Gilligan observed that Errol’s answer can be adapted as a guiding philosophy to many facets of life. He coined it “The Errol Flynn Principle”.
Errol said that when holding a sword, one should imagine holding a bird. If you hold the bird too tightly, you will crush it and lose it forever. However, if you hold it too loosely, it will fly away. “Not too loose and not too tight” was Flynn’s advice. And sage advice it was. After all, who knew both swords and birds better than Errol?
— Tim
December 28, 1937
Hollywood Citizen News
Sidney Skolsky Presents
Watching Them Make Pictures
Errol Flynn, Olivia de Havilland, Claude Rains, and a crowd of extras are getting ready to play a scene for the picture, Robin Hood.
The setting is Nottingham Castle in England, and a feast is about to take place. Errol Flynn is Robin Hood, and Claude Rains is Prince John. The extras, dressed as knights, stand out in their shining armor. Director Mike Curtiz seems out of place, wearing trousers and a sweater.
Dirctor Curtiz gives the signal that he is ready. The cameras are turning. Robin Hood Flynn, lugging a deer, walks toward the banquet table. Here Prince John, with meats and wines before him, is entertaining. Robin Hood Flynn offers him the deer for the feast.
It is then that Prince John interrupts the scene and becomes Claude Rains.
He says to Curtiz, “Mike, I forgot to tell you something. I’ve been doing some research on the part. And according to history, Prince John was a vegetarian, and he never drank wine.”
Miss de Havilland and Mr. Rathbone, standing at the banquet table, are amazed, but say that history is history.
But this doesn’t stop director Curtiz. He says: “We need this big scene for the picture. In the movies we don’t make historical pictures, we make history.”
— Tim
Our dear friend, and fellow blog member, Jack Marino, sends us three photos of his remodeled livingroom today at his beautiful home somewhere below the Hollywood hills in Los Angeles and there is something familiar about what he has done for all Flynn aficionados … it is a “time machined experience” as my good friend Dennis Mullen would say … Jack’s wife Louise loves the idea and is pleased with the results including the authentic green paint Jack added as a reminder of one of the other rooms in Flynn’s famous Mulholland Farm home that Jack visited often when it was abandoned for several years before it was torn down. Jack, his friend author Tony Thomas and Deirdre Flynn were there the day the home was torn down and Jack contributed rare photos from the Jack Marino Collection to the book ERROL FLYNN SLEPT HERE by Robert Matzen and Michael Mazzone. The livingroom of Mulholland Farm always fascinated Jack and he wondered what it would have been like to see it filled with furniture during his many visits to the house as he wandered the empty rooms showing the house to his visitors who made the pilgrimage to the property with him. Today, he finished a homage to Flynn’s storied home by recreating the basic design elements that were in Flynn’s comfortable livingroom. Jack’s space is not as large as Flynn’s but he made the most of the space he has which by most standards isn’t small …
Jack tells me that his table was made to fit against the same kind of wide windows that Flynn had facing the back yard and pool area of his home. Jack’s windows face his front yard but the amount of sun is the same. Jack’s table was made two feet wide to fit in the space in proportion to the furniture and he believes Flynn’s table was at least three feet wide. While everything in the room is not identical, Jack says, the placement is the same and the feeling you have walking into this room is the same he remembers from being in Errol’s livingroom and closing his eyes to imagine the furniture being there all of those years ago … a table sized radio for the far corner of the room (looking toward the open front door in Jack’s photo above) would top off the whole recreation I think, Jack! I can’t wait to stop by and sit in that comfortable livingroom with you over a cup of Dennis Mullen’s Zaca Tea …
Well done, old boy …
Here is an UPDATE (December 2019): Jack added a bookshelf to the room with the same shelving that Errol had to the room and it has been in place for about a year and a half …
— David DeWitt
