The only fan letter I wrote to an author in my life was to
George MacDonald Fraser, who kindly wrote back to me answering some of
my questions. One of them was who was the ideal actor to play
Flashman,
and he said "the late Errol Flynn by a mile". Errol never played
Flashman type characters on screen, really, except for arguably in
The Adventures of Don Juan and
Crossed Swords, but he certainly was one in real life if
his memoirs are to be believed. Handsome, sex-crazed, funny, charming and a real prick - yep, that's
Flashman. Errol never seemed to suffer
from Flashman's cowardice or ability to avoid bad headlines, but he was
a similar bully and bigot. (He even had a woman hit his backside with a hairbrush during love making, just like happened to
Flashman in
Royal Flash).
Like
Flashman, he is more enjoyable a
character the more he suffers in his adventures. For instance, I didn't
particular admit to enjoying reading about Flynn's time in New Guinea - he
goes black birding, cons natives, shoots people, is lazy at his job,
always tries to take short cuts. He's not particularly engaging here. But
his other adventures are more fun - fixing cockfights in
Manila,
joining the police in
Hong Kong, running around on the stage in Northampton,suffering various encounters with women.
My favourite story is where he and John Barrymore talk about their
fears of winding up on skid row - then decide to see what it's like so
they put on make up and pretend to be bums! I also enjoyed his account of love making with Lupe Valez, who could rotate one breast and interrupted action to pray to saints. (Errol was supposed to be a
self centered selfish person but he writes with warmth and affection on
his friends such as
Koets, Fred McEvoy, Barrymore and Raoul Walsh - it's a shame
there weren't more sketches such as these throughout the book).
He certainly seems to hate women - but there is an underlying(admittedly very deeply buried
underneath a lot of hate) affection
for the vivacity of Lily
Damitina, who seems to have been a handful and
a half, but then so was Errol. (And she helped him be cast in
Captain Blood through her friendship with Ann Warner so in a way she did
deserve all that
alimony).
It's a funny thing that in many ways Errol's erratic life
before discovering acting was the perfect training for it - it developed
a devil may care adventurer "air" which came across so vividly on screen. So all those years in New Guinea running low on money, discovering
joy in native women, were in a way a trial run. Admittedly the time he
went from professional actor to stay was very short - but he'd had
eight years or so of adventures learning to be a star. It reminded me of
Burt Lancaster's career - who was spotted merely walking along a corridor,then cast on that basis in a Broadway play, then given a star role in
a film - but he had years of plugging away in a circus before that.
Errol copped a lot unfairly in his life - the rape allegations
were unfounded, ditto the Objective Burma fiasco, and the treatment from
his first wife. But you know I think it was karma - he could be cruel
and mean, had sex whenever he could, didn't like women very much. To
a degree, you get out of life what you put into it - and I like
Errol Flynn movies, what a great star, but he put a lot of bad vibes out
into the cosmos. He got everything he wanted - fame, money, fortune, women - even acting challenges, even book deals, even a paradise (Jamaica, boats)... he just never could hang on to it, or enjoy it.
And for all his complaints about "I wanted to act and they wouldn't
let me",
Warners did give him the chance at a variety of genres -
for instance after
San Antonio they tried him in a comedy (
Never Say Goodbye),
weepie (
Escape Me Never) and film
noir (
Cry Wolf).
So they did try and they would have more if
Warners hadn't gone into
a decline after WW2 - like many of the studios, admittedly, but
they seemed to struggle with their star vehicles more than most.
In hindsight, it's a shame Errol never made a more permanent
transition over at MGM - I think he would have fitted in there in the early 50s,
he certainly would have been able to take the swashbuckler roles
Robert Taylor played (I would have loved to see dissipated Errol as Lancelot in
Knights of the Round Table)
Interestingly enough Flynn never seems to have been too involved with
his co-stars - he squabbled with Bette Davis, had a crush on Olivia
de Havilland, learned how to inject vodka into oranges from Ann Sheridan, married Patrice
Wymore... but the rest you don't hear a lot, which
is odd from a womaniser (i.e. nothing on Brenda Marshall, Alexis Smith, Miriam Hopkins, Ros Russell). He admits his leading ladies tended to
be overawed by him which I think I can believe.
From a nationalistic point, Errol often doesn't appear very"Australian". Although he lived here for most of the first
seventeen years of his life (there was a brief stint in England), he refers
of himself more as a Tasmanian, Irishman or Englishman - never seems
to have felt a nationalistic pang, not even during WW2. New Guinea seems
to have really been the formative experience of his life, as I guess
it would be - he keeps referring to it.
Particularly beautiful are the diary entries from Errol around 1952-53 towards the end of the book where he sets out some of his thoughts about life, the universe and everything. I can't see Errol's life as a tragedy, unless you count getting everything you want as a tragedy (which you may do).
What gives this book extra resonance is the fact Flynn died shortly after it was finished - it goes right up to just before he died. I'm sure a lot of the stories are made up or exaggerated, but reading it you do get a sense of what Flynn was like - tormented, insecure, neurotic, a spoilt baby capable of good, a permanent juvenile, a man for whom the movies he made were only a chapter in a very exotic life.
