Here is a photo of an 18 year old Basil Rathbone and below is a link to the Basil Rathbone website where I found the comment for my post a couple of days ago. It is an interview with Robert Matzen whom I’m sure you are all familiar with, have a read it is very interesting and very informative. Not a bad looking Chap in his day was Basil.
— daringthorpe
As Long as We’re On an Errol Flynn/Basil Rathbone Roll, Here’s a New Article from the LA Times Featuring a(n apparently) rare and/or exceptional poster from Dawn Patrol:
— Tim
Here’s Your Chance Holmes! Let’s See, I Mean Hear, What You Got!!
— Tim
I have 2 photos that show Errol arriving at the Scripps Institute and meeting with Carl Hubbs. I had not seen these before and I thought you may enjoy. These photos are posted with permission from “SIO Photo Lab Collection, Special Collections & Archives, UC San Diego”. The gentlemen with him are the Director of the Scripps Institute Harald Ulrik Sverdrup (in the business suit) and Carl Hubbs (in the white coat).
— Maria
This is a quote by Basil Rathbone describing Errol Flynn I thought it quite perceptive and I think describes Flynn to a tee. What do you all think?
“God gave him the most beautiful body. He’s intelligent. He can act. He arrived very fast. He arrived almost overnight. And he simply wasn’t ready, he wasn’t sufficiently well disciplined in life to know that he had to conform. Now he has made non-conformity a sort-of idiosyncrasy. It’s now almost a big bluff, because he’s thrown a very wonderful career out of the window.”
— daringthorpe
What famous actor of stage & screen played a character largely based on Errol in a fictional Hollywood film?
Clues:
1) Not Peter O’Toole
2) Not Kevin Kline
3) He was in movies with Errol
4) His performance as the “Errol Flynn” character was very highly regarded.
5) He has at least one Grammy Award and is one of two key voices on one of the most notable songs of all time.
— Tim
Who was it Errol showed to the door in the photo below?
— Tim
I had the wonderful fortune this week to spend time with a prominent member of Miami’s Cuban American community. In his late seventies now, he grew up in Havana and was very familiar with Errol’s legendary times in pre-Castro Cuba. In fact, he saw him on one very memorable occasion at the Havana Hilton, in a scene somewhat reminiscent of Dodge City.
After we first met and he mentioned his time in old Cuba, I eventually asked him if he ever remembered hearing “anything about Errol Flynn?” Instantly,he broke a big smile and said “Errol Flynn? Errol Flynn was the man in Havana. Everyone knew when Errol Flynn was in Havana. Everyone. And the women, they all loved him. He couldn’t go anywhere without women chasing him. And he was the man for all of the men. Nobody was bigger than Errol Flynn in Havana. It was the perfect town for him.”
I asked if he had ever seen Errol, and he had, the first time being quite amazing. He believed it was in either ’57 or ’58, shortly after when the Havana Hilton opened. His uncle took him to see the hotel and when they entered the nightclub area they witnessed wild commotion and a huge brawl. For reasons still unknown to him, Errol was fighting with someone near the bar, by the the dance floor. The show was stopped and there were “chairs flying”. He knew nothing more, no details of why this happened, nor who Errol was fighting. He believed however that it likely was over a women, because “all the women were always after Errol. He was older than, but still very handsome.”
He recalled too that Errol often drank at La Bodaquitos del Medio.
The other big thing he remembers, which he said was big news around town when it happened, was that Errol’s hotel room at the Hilton caught on fire and it was a ver big deal. That’s all he ever knew, again not how nor why.
He said that the Hilton was in not too long taken over by Castro’s guerillas, but his parents got him out of Cuba to the U. S. (via Jamaica) before that happened. He said he loved Cuba so much and didn’t want to leave, that Havana was so great for a young man, but soon it was all ruined, especially after Castro sided the Soviets.
He added saw Nat King Cole quite a bit, at The Flamingo, not ever the Hilton. He emphasized though that “no one was as big as Flynn, not Hemingway, not anyone, Errol Flynn was the man.”
— Tim
