from THE PROVINCE – Friday, October 9, 1959By JOHN ARNETT, Province Staff Reporter

“My future is dedicated to two things—women and litigation,” movie star Errol Flynn said at Vancouver airport Thursday evening.
“Women—well that speaks for itself, but I have been sued so often that I think I should start suing somebody else, and perhaps I should make a start with some of those scandal magazines.”
                                                        
WITH STARLET
Flynn, a paunchy, greying edition of the debonair hero of Hollywood movies, was accompanied by 17-year-old Hollywood starlet Beverley Addland.
He is in Vancouver to complete the sale of his schooner “Zaca” to George Caldough, 1026 Eyremont, West Vancouver.
The actor put on spontaneous show for newsmen and some pop-eyed employees at the airport terminal. He clowned with a bowler hat for photographers and graciously kissed the hand of a woman reporter.
<?xml:namespace prefix = v ns = “urn:schemas-microsoft-com:vml” />FEEL FAINT
Asked if he ever watched for old movies of his now enjoying a strong rebirth on late shows on television, Flynn replied:
“It just makes me feel faint to see how energetic I used to be in those days. No, I don’t often look at them.”
Chimed in his travelling companion: “Oh yes you do, and I’ve often heard you say ‘my, I used to be good looking.'”
BUSINESS DEAL
George Caldough, with whom Flynn will be staying until early next week, will pay more than $100,000 for Flynn’s 116-foot schooner.
“It’s strictly a business deal,” explained Mr. Caldough, who has sailed nothing larger than a dinghy. “I think it is a good investment.”
The schooner, reported to be the second largest privately-owned sailing boat afloat—there’s one owned by a member of the Spalding sporting goods family which is 22 feet longer, is currently moored at Majorca, a Spanish island in the Mediterranean.
 

— David DeWitt

Errol went home often—got away from it all

from THE PROVINCE Newspaper – Friday, October 16, 1959

LONDON (Reuters) – Zoologist Theodore Flynn, 74, father of movie star Errol Flynn, said in an interview Thursday his son's biography “My Wicked, Wicked, Wicked Ways,” will be published despite Errol's death.

The 28,000-word manuscript purports to tell the true story of Flynn's love life.

Prof. Flynn said: “Publication will go on. The truth will be told. There is no reason now to hold anything back.”

Flynn's father said, “the world seems to have got a fantastic picture of my son. But the real truth is in this house—where he was coming inside a fortnight.

“He came here more often than people ever knew to get away from that life outside.

He would telephone, talk to his mother, and say he was coming. And he would be quiet with us—chatting to his mother and resting from the rush of his public life.

“We would try to give him the orderly regular life of a small household. He loved it so that he hardly ever went out.

“Now it's over—and I can not even go to the funeral. It's so far and I am only a professor, I cannot afford it.”

— David DeWitt

from LIFE Magazine – October 26, 1959

There was just one word for Errol Flynn—outrageous. In his real life as on film he was constantly sprinting out from behind the arras pursued by an angry husband or a flummoxed female. He was married three times, fathered four children and won a law suit charging him with fathering another. He loved the company of young girls and he was accused three times, but never convicted, of statutory rape. In 25 years of movie-making he earned and grandly spent more than $7 million. He drank two quarts of vodka daily, three when he got up early enough, and he was a scamp, bounder and barroom brawler in the great and mannered tradition of Cellini, Casanova and Don Juan. The truth was not in him when a lie made a better story. Large numbers of people loved him dearly.

Last week, at 50, Errol Flynn lounged about a Vancouver doctor's apartment while the classic pains of a coronary spread through his body and down his arms and legs (he knew them, for he had suffered them twice before) and talked of other things, of long-gone friends, of John Barrymore, W. C. Fields. He said, “Hell, dying is not so much,” and asked for a room to lie down in. Soon he died.

THE WILD OLD DAYS in Hollywood were the subject of Flynn's favorite stories about prodigious drunks and questionable escapades. Here he tells how John Barrymore's body was spirited from the funeral parlor a few hours after his death by some of Flynn's drunken friends, including a famous movie director. Flynn pantomimed the body (far left), the drunken friends and their difficulties as they carried it to Flynn's house and put it in a chair. Flynn arrived, saw the body and fled screaming (far right). Flynn wound up the story by adding that he did not think it was the correct way to say goodby to John.

— David DeWitt

But he grabbed a million dollars worth of free publicity when he rode to glory by holding on to Fidel Castro's Beard.

from HUSH-HUSH Magazine – July 1959
By JEFF O'BRIAN

When swashbuckling Errol Flynn swaggered onto Click to EnlargeJack Paar's TV show recently he fizzled with all the effectiveness of a damp firecracker. He tried to present himself as a hero but a worse performance he has never given. As one columnist remarked, he “looked pretty silly.”

Flynn, the “reckless rebel” who cashed in on Fidel Castro's Cuban conquest, strode before the TV cameras with a cane in his hand a flag of Cuba draped around his neck. He followed this piece of horseplay with a confused account of his dashing exploits with the Cuban rebels. But all he managed to convey to his awestruck (he hoped) audience was the impression that his daring deeds in Cuba were so much ballyhoo.

Even before his touted appearance on the Paar show, rumours were rife that eloquent Errol's version of his valor should be taken with a grain of salt. And the TV fiasco confirmed these rumours.

Flynn arily passed around “exclusive” Batista cigars-but even Errol ought to know that, for a year before the wrappers were removed,Click to Enlarge those cigars were selling on New York's Eighth Avenue at two-for-a-quarter.

Now, without the wrappers, they're the only 5¢ cigars.

Perhaps audacious Errol is himself beginning to believe the fantastic stories he tells about his dare-devil exploits in Cuba. But there is one particularly amusing contradiction in the saga of Flynn, as related by Errol.

FAIR WEATHER FRIEND

In the first instalment of his widely syndicated, first-person memoirs entitled “I Fought with Castro,” Flynn refers to the “five day period” he spent with the rebel leader.

But HUSH-HUSH has another story by Lee Besler, staffwriter of the Los Angeles Mirror-News, headlined: Errol Flynn Views Cuban Rebel Battle”

This article begins: “Swashbuckling Errol Flynn told the Mirror News by telephone today from Havana that he has been with Fidel Castro and his rebel troops for two months.”

This statement was made in December 1958—but the Flynn memoirs were published in January 1959.

How come Mr. Errol Flynn suddenly changed his story? Or was it just a slip of the memory that reduced his stay with Castro from a boastful two months to a timid five days?

Since he's been palsy with Castro, the errant Errol doesn't want to be reminded that once he was also very palsy with the deposed Cuban dictator Fulencio Batista.

The other day Broadway columnist Lee Mortimer asked this significant question:

“Isn't Errol Flynn's East 57th Street apartment (in New York) full of autographed photos of Batista, whom he overthrew single-handed? (It is.)”

Surely Errol, the Robin Hood of the movie screen, doesn't belong to that unsavory group of people who jump on a bandwagon for their own advantage?

Seemingly he does, for while he now hysterically eulogizes Castro, he has only mocking remarks for his former pal, Batista. For instance, in his memoirs Flynn mocks:

“I remember the strictly ridiculous instance of having seen the former dictator at his home very bare-skinned in an unruly bath towel. I got a shock. Because you expect to see a be-medaled dictator in all his uniforms, and there he was, with his towel a little too short, and it kept getting loose, and he didn't look like a dictator then at all—and he doesn't now.”

Come, come, Errol, that wasn't a nice thing to say about the guy whose autographed photos, dedicated to you, are still hanging on your walls!

But nobody takes Errol's antics seriously—it just happens that the Cuban episode coincides with a time when his movie career has reached an all-time low. Conveniently, his brief encounter with revolution has brought the name of fightin' Flynn to the fore again.

The truth, however, is that even Fidel Castro is fed up with Flynn.

GIN FRIEND IN HOCK

Errol may deny it, but HUSH-HUSH can reveal that Castro was furious when a story spread that Flynn had been wounded. It was a phony rumour—spread by Errol himself! But since Castro had taken every precaution to see that the movie star didn't get hurt, that irresponsible story put a chill on Castro's friendship with Flynn. The only shot Errol had at the rebels' headquarters was out of a bottle.

Those who know the truth about Errol's Cuban capers suggest that if he ever does make that much-boosted movie it should be the untold story of his amorous antics in Havana. It should, of course, be a light comedy and one of the highlights should be the episodeClick to Enlarge which two American businessmen, Bob and John Keljakan, reported when they returned from Havana.

When Flynn left the Hotel Nacional on December 26 to join Castro he owed the hotel a $2,000 tab—which he couldn't pay! So the ever resourceful star left his curvy blonde girl friend, Beverly Wood, as security!

This was not much fun for Beverly, who was hard pressed for cash herself—and ham sandwiches in Havana during that troubled period cost $2 apiece.

Flynn, of course, has not boasted about that seamier side of his Cuban epic.

Not long ago, Flynn, in a jocular mood, said: “My attitude toward money is simple. I care nothing for it provided I have plenty of it.”

That is the real Flynn philosophy—it also obviously applies to his attitude toward publicity. He cares nothing about it so long as he gets plenty of it.

But flippant Flynn should try in the future to tell his tall tales more consistently—be consistent—even if they're consistently phony.

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— David DeWitt