Incredible lifetime works of Art from a true Master… visit our page for Robert at The Errol Flynn Blog at coffeewithdavid.com…… or his own site at Robert Florczak.com….
— David DeWitt
Search results for ‘name’
re: flynn and tennis
11
Sep
Actually, Flynn had few equals, if any, among the Hollywood crowd. Bill Tilden, the Federer of his day, made it clear that if Errol had wanted to, put his mind to playing tennis seriously he would have been world class.
He tried to teach me but, as I mention in my books, I had an older brother I disliked intensely who played at Wimbledon Lawn and Tennis Club — as a member — and any thought that reminded me of him was a turn-off. I did however go on to be a world class amateur archer who shot on US teams and in National tournaments. I was married then to a woman named Constance whom was actually better than I was and end up at one time breaking a lot of California records and ranking 4th in the world. Together, with her high scores, we won the National Husband and Wife trophy (1963) held at UCLA.
I loved archery and went hunting and plinking (shooting at tin cans, etc) with Rory Calhoun and Guy Madison frequently, and did exhibitions with the famed Howard Hill — Errol's buddy.
Hope this answers your question, pal
— ivan6gold
If you're lucky enough to visit Cuba…
06
Sep
You will see this in the bar of the Hotel Nacional Havana:
January 2008
A closer look!
And if you wander further…
Photos courtesy of David our Canadian Reader who visited Havana and was pleasantly surprised to find these items in the Hotel bar…
David writes:
Some of what I wrote about my trip to cuba and the visit to Hemingway's mansion…
Hemingway's mansion 15 Km south of Havana has beeen recently restored and its beautiful. Errol Flynn, and Ava Gardner were among the many visitors to Hemingways' home in the country which has been a museum since shortly after he died when everythng was left as it was when he walked out the door. We were told that he had wanted it to become a library and that it was Fidel's idea to make it into a Museum. Hem's widow, Mary Walsh, consented.
Visitors to the museum – amazing to see even if you have outgrown him or don't like him – are not allowed inside but the doors and windows are open except when it rains. Female attendents keep watch one or two to a room. If you stick even your chin over the sill or brocade barrier, you will be politley scolded. 'Chin' one said to me. They don't speak much English but know body parts!
The one-story colonial house sits on a small hill. There is a pool and they now have Hem's restored sports fishing boat, Pillar. Hemingway had left it to his captain when he died and who only died himself a few years ago.
One story has it that Ava Gardner went down to the pool and swam naked. Hemingway, up in the tower he built, spied her through his telescope. Hemingways wife, Mary Walsh, did not think much of that spectacle, poor woman, and when she got wind of it, went down and gathered up Ava's Robe, forcing her to walk back to the house naked.
Looking in through the guest room window you can see two twin beds, a phonograph, a tall book case. I tried to imange some of his guests, Gary Cooper, for example, sleeping in what for them would have been humble digs. (Most probably did not stay but chauffered back to the Hotel Nacional? The bar at the Hotel nacional, is like a hall of fame with photos and posters by decade of the illustrious visitors.
There is not much that is glamorous in the streets of Havana so this place is a nice retreat. The Hotel is on the architectural tour we took. It was popular with movie stars Gary Cooper, Errol Flynn, Johny Wiesmueller, and Buster Keaton to name a few. Seaside there is a lawn with an ocean view and breeze and comfortable dark wicker chairs.
I had some time to write in my diary on the bus trip from Havana to Trinidad, on the opposite side of the Island. I tried my hand at writing linked Haiku which you will recall is a three-line poem where the first and third lines have 5 syllables and the middle 7.
I added to the nude bathing story other details I had heard. For example, when guests arrived Hem rang a bell and fired a small cannon which sits just inside the front door now. I rang the bell but did not include it in the Haiku.
I also imagined that Errol visited Hemingway on his last visit to the Island in 1959 shortly after the revolutution and when Errol, and probably Hemingway too, would have been suffering from Scirrocis of the liver. Hemingway may also have been sufferreing from paranoia by then as well.
— David DeWitt
Tyrone Power, November 15, 1958 (see commentary below)
04
Feb
This photograph was taken on the set of “Solomon and <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = “urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags” />Sheba” on November 15, 1958 in Madrid, Spain. Power had been filming a fight scene with actor George Sanders when he became weak and collapsed. Nobody realized at the time that he was having a massive heart attack. Power retired to his small, Coachman trailer where he took a nap and died in his sleep less than four hours after this photo was taken. It was a tragic end to one of Hollywood’s greatest stars.
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Unfortunately, Tyrone Power shares with Errol Flynn the distinction of having been smeared after his death. Regarding Power’s alleged homosexuality, I defer to actor Jack Elam who knew Power as well as anyone. When I brought up these allegations in my interview with Elam on June 20, 1998, he became angry and said “Let me tell you something – you tell them they’re full of shit! I mean they’re just full of it! I remember he told Zanuck “Before we finish this picture, put this guy (Elam) under contract.” So I was put under contract at Fox. About three months later he did a picture called “An American Guerilla in the Philippines.” I had a bit part in it, if you remember, nothing important, but I was in the Philippines for a long time on that picture. And I had dinner with Ty many, many nights. And it wasn’t just me. I spent a lot of time with him and talked with him a lot about everything in the world. He loved to converse. He had a very great mind, and he loved to talk. I would have smelled it if there was anything at all. I would have known. There’s no way those people saying that stuff about Ty aren’t full of shit!
— Shamrock
TCM Video Box….
03
Feb
Sakeenah Johnson at Turner Entertainment Networks contacted our blog and asked if we'd like to put a TCM Video Box on the blog for folks to enjoy some clips from their 31 Days of Oscar – unfortunately, we cannot embed the code here BUT we can at the website side of the Errol Flynn Blog at coffeewithdavid.com…. Therefore, Chums go here to see the Video Box and enjoy a few classic clips!
You'll notice Captain Blood right in the middle of the player! Just click it anywhere to activate it – then sellect your clip and enjoy!
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— David DeWitt
Tyrone Power, November 15, 1958 (see commentary below)
02
Feb
This photograph was taken on the set of “Solomon and <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = “urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags” />Sheba” on November 15, 1958 in Madrid, Spain. Power had been filming a fight scene with actor George Sanders when he became weak and collapsed. Nobody realized at the time that he was having a massive heart attack. Power retired to his small, Coachman trailer where he took a nap and died in his sleep less than four hours after this photo was taken. It was a tragic end to one of Hollywood’s greatest stars.
<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = “urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office” />
Unfortunately, Tyrone Power shares with Errol Flynn the distinction of having been smeared after his death by unscrupulous biographers. Regarding Power’s alleged homosexuality, I defer to actor Jack Elam who knew Power as well as anyone. When I brought up these allegations in my interview with Elam on June 20, 1998, he became angry and said “Let me tell you something – you tell them they’re full of shit! I mean they’re just full of it! I remember he told Zanuck “Before we finish this picture, put this guy (Elam) under contract.” So I was put under contract at Fox. About three months later he did a picture called “An American Guerilla in the Philippines.” I had a bit part in it, if you remember, nothing important, but I was in the Philippines for a long time on that picture. And I had dinner with Ty many, many nights. And it wasn’t just me. I spent a lot of time with him and talked with him a lot about everything in the world. He loved to converse. He had a very great mind, and he loved to talk. I would have smelled it if there was anything at all. I would have known. There’s no way those people saying that stuff about Ty aren’t full of shit!”
— Shamrock
Arno O'Thames reviews Satan's Angel by David Bret…
23
Jan
PLEASE, MR. BRET, WRITE NO MORE BOOKS!!!, | By | Arno O'Thames (Dublin, Ireland) – See all my reviews |
I hated this book. Hated it, hated it, hated it. It's a textbook example of how not to write a biography. The author's modus operandi appears to be as follows: do no real independent research, write at home and travel nowhere, quote only from other people's books and fan magazines, interview nobody who ever knew Errol Flynn, and, above all, make up as many salacious sexual quotes, allegedly spoken by Flynn and his associates, out of thin air as you possibly can. And do it all in the name of making money!
I thought Charles Higham's notorious treatment of Errol Flynn was the worst book I had ever read; however, this may give it some serious competition. And let's face it, at least Higham knows how to write. Bret must have been playing hooky, or was ill, the day his teachers taught basic English grammar in his school. And what's with the obsession with homosexuality? I was amazed at the sheer number of men the so-called bisexual Flynn is said to have sampled: Ross Alexander, Helmut Dantine, Bill Meade, Bruce Cabot, William Lundigan, Edmund Goulding, Tyrone Power, Truman Capote, and many others. Even poor Basil Rathbone is thrown into the mix – he was supposedly one who relished intimate oral contact with the male organ. Oh, right, Sherlock!
As many other reviewers point out, Bret provides no documentation at all for his lurid claims. Where in God's name did all this dialogue come from? As for accuracy, I started to make a list of all the factual errors in the book, but they became so many I had to give up when I ran out of room on both sides of an 8 x 10 sheet of paper. Where were the editors? Does this publisher even HAVE editors? And there are so many spelling blunders it is almost hilarious. This looks like a very hasty first draft of somebody's idea of a bad joke that nobody bothered to read. But there is nothing funny about this.
I doubt if anyone who ever actually knew or met Errol Flynn will recognize the central figure of this mess. I see from the list of Bret's other works that he has performed similar hack jobs on such celebrities as Valentino, Joan Crawford, Morrissey, and Clark Gable. This is so sad. I mean sad for everyone.
I saw David Bret interviewed on TV once, and I felt very sorry for him. From his appearance I suspect he has had a very rough life. But that's no excuse to take his hurt and anger out on Mr. Flynn and others like him. I therefore would like to issue to Mr. Bret a most fervent appeal: Please sir, write no more books! What you are doing is immoral, unworthy, and ultimately life-destroying. It sells short the unfortunate people you write about, the public who might unsuspectingly buy your books, and even you yourself. If you wish to be a biographer, then I beg you, by all means, be a biographer. But don't be what you currently are – a third-rate writer of unsubstantiated tabloid trash who is merely satisfying the evidently insatiable public thirst for titillating filth, all for the sake of a sleazy buck (or quid).
And for God's sake, why not try to find a way to make a dignified living without preying on the defenseless dead?
— David DeWitt
CLARK GABLE bio Review by Arno O'Thames at Amazon.com…
23
Jan
“Is that you, David Bret?” The author of CLARK GABLE: TORMENTED STAR, caught recently in a private moment.”
The same author who wrote Errol Flynn: Satan's Angel is at it again trashing another iconic star who can't rise from the grave to defend himself…
The Review:
INSANITY, | By | Arno O'Thames (Dublin, Ireland) – See all my reviews |
A well-known definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and over, yet all the while expecting a different result. Well, David Bret, British chronicler of such celebrity lives as Valentino, Morrissey, Elvis, Errol Flynn, Joan Crawford, and Edith Piaf, has done it again. As in Camus' famous essay on the myth of Sisyphus, he's pushed the rock all the way to the summit of the mountain, only to have it stop, teeter, and then roll back down to the bottom, crushing him along the way. Once again, despite all his attempts to win some sort of respectability, he has provided the world with yet another model of how not to go about writing a biography. He seems to think that by continually assailing the book stalls with questionable attempts at recreating past lives, he may yet acquire, by sheer attrition, a favourable reputation.
He is sadly deluded. His whole enterprise banks on the fact that when dealing with the dead, there are no laws of criminal libel. The dead have no rights or recourse of redress to their reputations. However, there should, and must be, a law against criminal ineptitude. Libeling the dead aside, Bret's books characteristically exhibit the equally serious offences of terrible writing, frequent misprints, misspellings, misstatements of fact, bad taste, and – worst of all – an almost supernatural lack of acquaintance with correct research methods.
All of which means that if you are a serious-minded person who wants to discover something about a major film star of the past, buy CLARK GABLE: TORMENTED STAR at your own peril. You will learn almost nothing about William Clark Gable, figure of Hollywood history, but everything about David Bret, frustrated celebrity hanger-on and would-be literary mover and shaker.
In this case there will be some moving and shaking, but it will be the moving and shaking of the reader's head in disgust, followed by its removal to the nearest toilet for vomiting.
Despite the claims of his misguided publisher, this is not a biography. Like his other books, it is a diary of his own homoerotic imaginings projected onto a dead celebrity. The dust jacket of the book claims: “Bret draws on a wealth of unpublished material to examine every aspect of Clark Gable's career and personal life, telling story as it has never been told before . . . .”
Okay, at least the second part is true. Nobody has yet – for good reason – had the audacity to claim that Hollywood man's man Clark Gable, at the beginning of his film career, was a male prostitute, and that he had numerous prolonged affairs with men. The first part, however, is patently misleading. CLARK GABLE: TORMENTED STAR is a tired rehash of material from other books and fan magazines, mangled by Mr. Bret's personal proclivities, and peppered with his trademark salacious tidbits of sexual shock-talk. And if the book draws upon any material that's “unpublished,” it's only unpublished because Mr. Bret has just recently thought it up.
Why a publishing house that cared a fig about its reputation would touch anything with David Bret's name on it continues to be one of the unsolved mysteries of our day. With a little digging perhaps the mystery might be solved, but then the question becomes: Who cares? Why bother?
My sympathies go out to John Clark Gable and to any others who might be hurt by this vile, bungling, utterly contemptible piece of trash.
— David DeWitt
Korngold Gets His Due
27
Dec
This very nice article about the recent Korngold resurgence surfaced on Yahoo! News today. I thought you all might enjoy!
Happy New Year to all,
Becky
'Hollywood Sound' composer gets his due
By GEORGE JAHN, Associated Press WriterWed Dec 26, 4:31 PM ET
Beethoven, Brahms, Mozart … Korngold?
Countless millions have at least heard of the classical masters associated with Vienna. Not only the titanic trio of Ludwig van Beethoven, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Johannes Brahms viewed the city at some point as their musical home.
So did Anton Bruckner, Joseph Haydn, Gustav Mahler and Franz Schubert.
But a half century after his death, mention of Erich Wolfgang Korngold, another great musical son of Vienna, often draws blank stares here and elsewhere — despite his legacy as the founder of the “Hollywood Sound.”
But in a small way, this year has been Korngold's moment in a Vienna that is still recovering from the marathon musical and marketing excesses of the 250th anniversary of Mozart's birth in 2006.
The city's Jewish Museum is devoting a major exhibition to the man whose classical career fell victim to a triple whammy — a domineering music critic father, the advent of atonal music, and finally, the rise of Hitler that perpetuated his self-exile to the U.S.
A sampling of his famed film scores was performed for the first time last month in one of the Austrian capital's prestigious concert halls. And a film retrospective was dedicated to the Vienna's musical “Wunderkind” of the early 20th century who, neglected at home, morphed into the creator of the Hollywood soundtracks that continue to set the standard.
It's a tribute that may be 50 years late: Only a handful of his classical works remain popular.
But Korngold has established a huge musical niche — and won two Oscars — through nine works for film. They include genre-creating swashbucklers for Warner Brothers like “Captain Blood” (1935) and “The Adventures of Robin Hood” (1938), in the lush operatic style that initially made his name.
Korngold himself saw no difference between his classical and screen writing, declaring: “Even if I wanted to, I could not write music below my own standards.” He called his screen music “operas without singing,” and experts consider his film compositions on par with much the world of “serious music” has to offer.
“Like Mozart, he wrote,” says composer and arranger John Mauceri. “It didn't matter whether he wrote a concert, an opera, or light entertainment, he wrote the highest quality music.”
His symphonic creations for the screen — and those of successors following in his footsteps — have been enjoyed by millions more attuned to melodies from “Lord of the Rings' than Ludwig van's “Fifth.” And some of Hollywood's greatest screenwriters freely acknowledge the debt their industry owes the man who, while lionized by the movie moguls, suffered from the perception that his music was not taken seriously in Vienna.
“Anyone who works with music and film feels part of this historical line — the golden years of what became known as the 'Hollywood Sound,'” said Howard Shore, whose credits include scoring Tolkien's “Ring.” Even now, “the compositional ideas” of writing music for film derive from Korngold and his contemporaries, the Oscar and Grammy winner told The Associated Press.
Mauceri, founder of Los Angeles' Hollywood Bowl Orchestra and chancellor of the North Carolina School of the Arts, calls Korngold's musical legacy “so important they tend to dominate our conversation” about the history of music in cinema.
“Millions of people … heard his music through the medium of film,” said Mauceri, who conducted the Radio Symphony Orchestra Vienna in a Nov. 29 death-day retrospective of Korngold works and contemporary film music at the city's art deco Konzerthaus.
“When you hear 'Harry Potter,' and 'Star Wars' — that's something Vienna can be proud of,” he said.
And yet Korngold viewed his legacy as a tragic mistake — the result of a promising “classical” career gone awry.
Recognized by age 10 as a musical prodigy, Korngold logged his share of early operatic and symphonic successes.
As one of the last proponents of sweeping German romanticism, he was at one point the most performed German-speaking composer of his era. By the time he was in his 30s, his works were played by some of the greatest musicians of the 20th century, and his most popular opera, “Die Tote Stadt,” was staged by dozens of major houses, including the Met in New York.
But with the rise of Arnold Schoenberg and other masters of atonality, detractors increasingly found his lush and sweeping melodies out of date.
Adding to his woes were the victims of his father, Julius, one of Europe's most influential music critics of the day. Soloists and conductors savaged by Julius took their revenge on Erich, refusing to perform his works.
Sensitive and withdrawn, the younger Korngold retreated into the world of operetta, focusing on arrangements and adaptations that would soon be reflected in his Hollywood era. His first trip to Hollywood was in 1934, to work with Max Reinhardt on the film classic “A Midsummer Night's Dream.”
Hitler annexed Austria four years later while Korngold was visiting the U.S. As a Jew, Korngold was unable to return home. But the composer steeped in Old World traditions never stopped yearning for his musical and emotional roots — and for the city and continent that rejected him well past the Hitler era.
Still, Mauceri feels Vienna has made amends.
“There is a willingness (there) to accept that he is part of Vienna's culture,” he said. “What is significant is that 50 years after his death, Vienna is ready to reconsider his assessment of him.”
Copyright © 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. The information contained in the AP News report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the prior written authority of The Associated Press.
— Becky
Flynn's first Rhodesion Lion Hound!
10
Dec
Now on eBay!
Flynn seen at his ranch during the filming of The Sea Hawk with two new arrivals: the Kid was recently born and the pup is one of the first litter of Rhodesion Lion Hounds ever born in America!
— David DeWitt
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