So said Sidney Skolsky on this date in 1944
Here she is, Miss Atlantic City, circa the mid-Forties, the days Errol and her were said to (very briefly) be “a thing”
— Tim
Archive for the ‘Newspaper & Headlines’ Category
Autograph Army on Patrol in Chico
23
Apr
AUTOGRAPH ARMY ALWAYS ON TRAIL OF CINEMA STARS
Restaurant Employee Pays For Olivia De Havilland’s Meals For Signature
REDEEMS HER CHECKS
Player Is Now With Errol Flynn in “Adventures of Robin. Hood”
By FRANK HEACOCK Hollywood,Cal., March 3, 1938
The prophet may be without honor in his own country but the movie star certainly isn’t. One of the demonstrations of the honor in which the screen darlings are held is their pursuit by autograph hunters. And nowhere does the autograph hunter flourish more lustily than in California, country of the movies. And California signature-seekers have several times achieved new highs of ingenuity in devising methods of obtaining the coveted name scrawls of their film favorites. Most unusual of them came to light recently during the filming of “The Adventures of Robin Hood,” when the company was on location near Chico, Calif.
Signs the Checks
When a film troupe is on location, be it explained, the studio takes care of meals and accommodations for its members. And to simplify the business of paying for meals the studio arranges for members of the company to sign their checks; a company auditor paying them later. Members of the “Adventures of Robin Hood” company, in which Errol Flynn and Olivia de Havilland are co-starred, ran up a healthy accumulation of meal checks to be paid off. But a week after her arrival at Chico it was found no meal check signed by Miss de Havilland had turned up at the hotel where she was staying.
Auditor Stumped
Now Miss de Havilland, by her own admission, is a girl who likes her victuals. She wasn’t on a diet and she certainly wasn’t paying for for own meals. The auditor couldn’t figure it out.
Sold Autographs
Investigation disclosed that a kitchen employee had been removing her “autographed” meal checKs from the daily collection and dropping into the cash register an amount equivalent to the price of her meals. The hotel employee then proceeded to sell the “autographs” to a Hollywood autograph broker of whom there are dozens. The broker, according in the avid autograph collector, was paying him fifty cents more for each signature than the check bearing it cost him. Considering that there was nothing intrinsically dishonest in his actions, the hotel contented itself with a reprimand and a proposal that he denote his profits to a local charity. But by that time eighteen Olivia de Havilland autographs had found their ‘way to market’.
Tribute to California’s ingenious autograph hunters. Tribute, too, to the healthy appetite Miss de Havilland worked up during the making of “The Adventures of Robin Hood” in Chico’s bracing atmosphere.
…
— Tim
A Mom and Pop Story — Starring Olivia de Havilland
22
Apr
April 22, 1938
Harrison Carroll
In Belfast, Olivia de Havilland spent a day with Errol Flynn’s parents. His father, a professor of biology at Queen’s University, still isn’t sold on Flynn’s acting career. He told Olivia he wishes that Errol would give up the cinema, return to Ireland, and take up a more serious profession.
Warners would be satisfied if he would even get off his yacht and return to Hollywood.
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Making movies with Olivia was a very gracious thing.
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And a very passionate thing.
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Errol was right, and right on time, not to miss that train!
— Tim
The Knights and The Baron — A Million Dollar Story
21
Apr
DENIES ACCUSATIONS
NEW YORK, April 21, 1937
Errol Flynn, film player, denied today in a telegram to the Knights of Columbus that he had engaged In activities in behalf of loyalist Spain. The telegram, addressed to John L. Rossborough, state deputy in Oakland, California, and Thomas B. Flanagan, secretary of the Los Angeles council, was made public here by Warner Brothers.
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Catholic Opposition to Communism in Spain
“Catholics believed that communism was the antithesis to Christianity and thus the only way to save the soul of the country was to side with those opposing it. The archbishop of Toledo wrote to the American bishops in 1937 asking for support, stating that “the National army is defending the essential foundation of society.” The final straw that pushed Catholics to side with the Nationalists was the persecution of the Church religious. In total 12 bishops, 4184 priests, 2365 male religious, and 283 female religious were killed by the Republicans during the war.”
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ACTOR DENIES SAYING STARS RAISED FUNDS
Report That $1,500,000 Given By Certain Film Players to Loyalists Claimed False
By United Press
HOLLYWOOD, April 21, 1937
An Interview with Errol Flynn In Barcelona Spain, in which the film actor and soldier of fortune purportedly told of helping raise a $1,500,000 fund in the Hollywood film colony to aid the loyalist forces, came under the scrutiny of the Knight of Columbus today. Thomas B. Flanagan, secretary of the Los Angeles council of the Knights of Columbus, said he was sending a report on Flynn to John J. Rossborough, state deputy of the order at Oakland, California, and to the national headquarters of the organization’s newly launched “antiradical” campaign at New Haven, Conn.
The purported interview was published in the Hollywood Reporter, a film trade paper. The Reporter stated the interview was filed to them by “our regular Barcelona correspondent.” The part to which the Knights of Columbus reportedly found most objection to follows:
SAYS FUND RAISED
“Is it true that money has been collected in Hollywood to help the Spanish government?’ asked the Reporter. “‘Yes,’ said the actor, ‘Fredrick March, James Cagney and I were the initiators and $1,500,000 has been raised so far”.” Flynn, husky film leading man and husband of Lili Damita, French actress, has been in Spain as a roving correspondent He was reported wounded by a machine gun bullet in dispatches from Madrid which later developed to be erroneous.
The Hollywood Reporter’s dispatch upon his arrival at Barcelona, strong loyalist headquarters, further stated: “When Errol Flynn arrived in Barcelona he was greeted by the “commissioner of public spectacles, J. Carner Rlbalta, who introduced him to the “commissioner of propaganda” of the Catalonian government, Jaime Miravitles, and the heart of the cinema section the same department, Juan Castanyer.
While in Barcelona, Flynn was considered a guest of honor of the Catalonian government and all facilities were accorded him. “In an interview with the press, Flynn said his visit to Spain was prompted by a desire to ascertain the truth regarding conditions here. “Asked by the press boys what was the general impression in the United States about the war, he replied: “That’s it, the confusing news and the fact that all the American press is in the hands of powerful trusts made me decide to take this trip to see with my own eves what is really happening and write a series of articles for publication.”
The dispatch ended:
“Flynn was accompanied by his old friend, Dr. Hermann F. Erben, a well known member of the American Communist party.”
Per the San Bernadino Daily Sun, April 22, 1937
— Tim
A Kiwi in Hollywood Hog Heaven
20
Apr
April 20, 1936
Harrison Carroll
Evening Herald Express
Errol Flynn and Lili Damita don’t intend to live all the time on the ranch where he expects to raise hogs. They are building a house -n the Laurel Canyon district. One of the most unusual houses in Hollywood, too, for it will be modeled after Flynn’s ancestral home in Belfast. Incidentally, did you know that Errol was not born in Ireland? It was New Zealand while his father and mother were on a scientific expedition.
— Tim
Going Places
17
Apr
April 17, 1935
Harrison Carroll
Lily Damita and Errol Flynn are still going places together.
_______
Here they are two months later, on June 16, at the Venice Amusement Pier, with Marlene Dietrich and Madonna (or perhaps that’s Carole Lombard?) Errol became “the talk of the town” for his immense popularity with the many women at the Tunnel of Love that night. Talk about going places, four days later he and Lili flew to Yuma. Then he flew into immortality.
— Tim
Errrol Interrrresting …
16
Apr
Young Errol Flynn at a Suez Canal Land Rush? Sounds like some sort of a flim-flam pyramid scheme!
April 15, 1936
Harrison Carroll
Errol tells me that his life story has had a favorable first reading by a publisher and that his agent has asked for a second copy to be submitted to the magazines. What excites the young Irish actor more, however, is the fact that Warner Brothers have bought one of his stories and will probably star him in it. The background is the land rush after the opening of the Suez Canal.
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Is this a between-takes candid of Errol in his Suez Canal biographical epic for Warner Brothers?
_______
— Tim
Diary of the Santa Fe
14
Apr
There were railroads and then there was the Santa Fe …
April 14, 1939
Hollywood Citizen News
The Warner Bros. are not going to wait a year before setting to work on another epochal western picture. Success of Dodge City (it’s breaking records at the Strand in New York) hs encouraged the studio to start preparing at once Diary of the Santa Fe, film story of the railroad.
In addition to Errol Flynn, Olivia de Havilland, and Bruce Cabot, who were seen in Dodge City, the new picture will feature Buck Jones and Hoot Gibson, foremost western stars from away back. The saddle heroes almost overshadowed the other stars in attention from the public during the recent trek to Dodge City.
History and Importance of the Santa Fe Railroad …
— Tim
In Memoriam: Bud Ernst — Flynn’s First Buddy in Hollywood
14
Apr
He Died 70 Years Ago This Week
From My Wicked, Wicked Ways:
“It was the beginning of 1935. I bought a little car. Often I went for a spin with a big fellow named Bud Ernst.
He was six foot five, weighed about two hundred and fifty pounds. He was a flier, a fun guy.”
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“He was my first and long-time friend in Hollywood. … We certainly had memorable times together in my early days behind the fog, smog, and grog curtain of Hollywood. How many words would you like on the shock a man gets when his dear friend, a roistering, Falstaffian ruffian, suddenly goes out, buys himself a 16-gauge double-barrel shotgun, some cartridges, and blows the top of his head off.”
Report in the New York Times, April 11, 1950
On June 20, 1935 – a date that will live in Flynnfamy – Bud flew Errol and Lili to Yuma to tie the knot. Five days following, he flew himself and Lyda Roberti to do the same.
One of Errol and Ernst’s “memorable times together in the early days”:Adventure at Asuncion Bay
Bud’s father, Hugh C. Ernst, was the brilliant business manager for the phenomenally successful bandleader Paul Whiteman, who had a major role in the 1924 first performance (by George Gershwin and the Paul Whiteman Orchestra at Aeolian Hall in New York) and subsequent popularizing of what many believe to be America’s most important musical composition, Rhapsody in Blue. After managing Paul Whiteman, he became a major executive with NBC. Through his father, Bud grew up “knowing everybody” in the world of music and radio.
Bud was director of the pioneering and hugely popular radio show “Queen for a Day”. Here’s one of the the show’s broadcasts, from February 1950, less than two months before Bud’s death:
— Tim
Adventure at Asuncion Bay
13
Apr
April 13, 1939
ERROL FLYNN IN REAL LIFE ADVENTURE
Los Angeles Evening Herald Express, April 13, 1939
Errol Flynn, the Robin Hood of the movies, shared the glory of a real-life adventure today. He made a mercy flight in an airplane through foggy skies 100 miles don the Mexican coast to bring back a sick sailor from the actor’s yacht.
Ray Hayes, 23, the sailor, was stricken with appendicitis aboard Flynn’s yacht, the Sirocco, disable in Asuncion Bay with a broken propeller. The yacht is headquarters for a tropical seas film Flynn is making on his own hook.
With pilot Hugh Ernst*, Flynn landed in a small cabin plane on a bean field 16 miles from the beach. A launch brought the sick man ashore and he was then carried back to the plane. An ambulance met them at the airport here and Hayes was taken to Santa Monica hospital.
Hayes was still in serious condition today. His appendix was feared ruptured.
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* Errol’s First and Long Time Hollywood Buddy, Bud Ernst, with his famous newlywed wife, actress Lyda Roberti:
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Errol, Howard Hill and Big Boy Williams off the coast of Mexico on the Sirocco following filming of Dodge City, 1939:
Sirocco South of the Border, circa 1940:
— Tim
