Book review - 'The Creative Producer" by David Lewis (1993)

 Lewis is best known as the boyfriend of James Whale. He also produced a number of films. Has some excellent credits at Warner Bros and MGM in particular. He struggled later in the 1950s - films like Raintree County and what not.

His memoirs are fascinating - a different insight from the Golden Age. Like everyone his memoirs are self serving - takes credit for things like coming up with the insanity angle for Kings Row rather than incest with Casey Robinson. But we hear different takes on films like Kings Row but also Each Dawn I Die, Four's a Crowd, Camille.

Interesting views of people like Irving Thalberg, Hal Wallis, Jack Warner, Dore Schary, Sam Wood, etc.

Book review - "Flim Flam" by Larry McMurtry

 Collection of essays on movies by McMurtry mostly from the 70s which McMurtry finds a lot to gripe about. Some interesting takes on film critics and theorists - I wasn't that wild about his thoughts on movies - he doesn't like Keith Carradine. Not really great analyst. I did like his enthusiasms and his pieces on his own films especially Picture Show and Loving Molly (he gets stuck into Sidney Lumet).  Last chapter from the 80s is about his friendship with Diane Keaton. He chats briefly about some odd films like Velvet Vampire (in a piece on Times Square) and Istanbul with Errol Flynn. Criticises his own plot for Hud.

Movie review - "My Forgotten Man" (1993) **1/2

 Frank Howson's biggest film to date. Originally entitled Flynn it was shot under the direction of Brian Kavanagh before being substantially reshot with Howson as director and Steve Berkoff, John Savage and Claudia Karvan added. The resulting film was not cinematically released in Australia but had a life on video.

It's a rare Howson film that is not shot in Melbourne and is period . But it does feature recognisably Howsian moments: photography is great, it's about showbusiness (someone who will make it in LA), and a man with a dream, the production values are high, there's a big ballad (the title track sung by Wendy Matthews), it has strong actors including newbies who went on to do well (Guy Pearce, Claudia Karvan) and some of his stock company (Pearce again, John Savage, Andrew Shepherd from What the Moon Saw as young Errol watching a topless Nicki Paull from Boulevard of Broken Dreams as Flynn's mum root a random).

There's location filming in Fiji standing in for New Guinea. Berkoff is good as the Hans Erben figure. 

Karvan is lovely and ideally cast alongside Pearce but has nothing to play, no character. Like many Howson scripts there's plenty of potential story but he can't extract all juice out of it. The potential is there... he could've done more stuff about Flynn and his dad, and mum, and Claudia Karvan... but its skimmed over.

It's raunchier than typical Howson films, with Pearce in bed with various topless women, a sort of Wake in Fright "seduction" scene where Steve Berkoff goes after a wasted Pearce, and Pearce rooting guys for cash in Sydney. 

Pearce does well enough in a thankless part - he's got the looks, and a pleasant screen presence. He doesn't quite convey the "bounder" aspect.

It's not dissimilar to the episode of Michael Willessee's Australians on Flynn - romance with an uptown gal, shenanigans in New Guinea, swapping himself for John Simon when auditioning for Charles Chauvel. Some actors play Charles and Elsa Chauvels and they ask if Ken Hall called which is fun.

I didn't mind this. It looks good, has pretty pictures. It doesn't nail is but is better than many other versions of this story.

Dean Stockwell Top Ten

 1) The Boy with Green Hair (1948) - RKO classic

2) Kim (1950) - Errol Flynn swashbuckler, with Errol ideal as a naughty big brother

3) Compulsion (1959) - icy teen

4) Sons and Lovers (1960) - some DH Lawrence

5) Long Days' Journey into Night (1962) - some Eugene O'Neil

6) Psych Out (1968) - quite fun AIP movie

7) Dune (1984) - one of the movies that brough him back - this counts for Blue Velvet (1986) too

8) Married to the Mob (1988) - funny, charming and scary

9) The Player (1992) - one of many fun names

10) Paris, Texas (1984) - lovely

TV review - "Michael Willesee's Australians: Ep 12 Errol Flynn" (1988) **

 Flynn's life has never been successfully dramatised. This is the attempt of writer John Lonie and director Michael Carson.

Who is the blonde young thing in 1950 Jamaica when we meet Errol (played by Terry Donovan) about to flash back? Is it meant to be Beverly Aadland? But she didn't come along until 1958.

It seems to be full of historical errors. Like he went to New Guinea several times, some on his own boat; there's no mention of his writing; the New Guinea adventures are compressed. Was this how he got cast in Bounty - by pretending to be someone else.

 Interesting cast - Chris Stollery plays young Errol, Nell Schofield from Puberty Blues is his fiancee Scott, Timothy Conigrave whose life was immortalised in Holding the Man is Flynn's friend Cooper-Smith, Janette Cronin is a friend of Scott, Rhys McConnochie is Scotty's dad.

The plot concerns Flynn's engagement to Scotty, him taking off to New Guinea and having adventures, then coming home and being cast in In the Wake of the Bounty.

You never get the sense that Flynn likes Scotty so it's hard to care about their relationship. What's the point of Flynn and his mate Cooper-Smith? He's just there for exposition, really. 

They avoid a lot of drama. We don't meet Flynn's parents (surely that would be more interesting). Or Hans Erben.  They do have Flynn arrested in New Guinea. That's something.

I enjoyed the New Guinea sequences, and liked seeing depictions of Charles and Elsa Chauvel (unbilled) and the recreation of In the Wake of the Bounty. Production values are very high.

Book review - "Captain Blood" by Rafael Sabatini

 A cracker of a book. Once I got used to Sabatini's slightly old time-y prose (his dialogue was first rate) it was a great yarn - establishing Blood, getting him falsely convicted quickly, shoving him out to the West Indies and turning pirate etc etc.

I thought the 1935 Warner Bros adaptation was first rate - keeping the early structure and lots of dialogue, but wrapping it up early. In this one Blood finds a guy who has come out to offer him a commission... but this new bloke likes Arabella and there's all this extra section where Blood goes to serve the King of France and fights with a dodgy Frenchman (it repeats the section with the pirate) and serves the kind of Spain.

A very good pirate book.

Book review - "Raoul Walsh" by Marilyn Ann Moss (2011)

 Surprising in a way it took so long for someone to do a decent bio on Walsh, but then he's been overshadowed by figures such as Ford and Hawks. This is a good book - it's hefty but then Walsh had a hefty career (I mean, he learned from DW Griffith and was in Birth of a Nation).

On a personal level he wasn't that fascinating - lost the eye, an actor, a tall tale teller, some dud marriages, a tendency to sue for the love of causing mischief, was into horses, politically conservative, earned a lot of money but never seemed to have enough.

His great period was at Warner Bros of course - all those great movies with Errol Flynn and Bogart. A shame he never worked with Flynn again after Silver City. Last movie was with Troy Donahue - actually Walsh worked a lot with teen idols.

Entertaining read.

 

Movie review - "September" (1987) **1/2

 The one that Woody Allen kept re filming.  It's like a filmed play but devised for film so it works. No one talks like a real human, it's expressionistic dialogue but once I got used to it, it was fine.

Funny to hear Elaine Strich make a crack about Errol Flynn not being interested in her because she was too old at 16.

Well acted. Sam Waterston's hitting on Diane Wiest was creepy - his articulation was too pronounced or something. It was just uncomfortable.

The big reveal - Mia shot the dude not mum - feels sort of thrown away. It's as if the film is building up to a big climax - her suiciding, cracking up, something - but doesn't go there. I guess Chekhov doesn't go there either and this is based on that.

Also I get that Woody wanted to make a self contained film but it's frustrating that this is set in the country and we never have a look outside.

Book review - "Preston Sturges: The Last Years of Hollywood's First Writer Director" by Nick Smedley and Tom Sturges

 Sturges' career is very well covered via some solid biographies but this adds a fresh take in focusing on his last decade - the one after his Fox stint, when he made just the one film but was constantly trying to get up projects and failing, before dying relatively young.

Smedley tries to put a positive spin on this era, emphasizing how Sturges found true love with his last wife, never gave up, was always coming up with new ideas. And I'm sure Sturges when on form was marvellous company.

But he does not come across well in this superbly researched, illuminating book. He couldn't stop drinking, he loved his wife but cheated on her and ignored her, he was a lousy father (he didn't see his wife or kids for the last few years of his life), he kept spending money (once the third highest paid person in the country he managed to blow it all via idiotic decisions when all he had to do was buy real estate), he was hard to collaborate with, he whinged, he was fired from some projects and my sympathy was with the producers.

We did miss out artistically from a lack of Sturges projects - Smedley makes a case for the greatness of The Millionairess and I liked his gangster comedy idea - but some sound like terrible ideas.

Famous faces and names pop in and out -Sturges was mates with Orson Welles, he was always trying to work with Alec Guinness and Robert Donat, Errol Flynn almost starred in The French They Are a Funny Race (not sure how Errol would've gone but it would've been better than Flynn's Herbert Wilcox movies).

I think Sturges' problem was that he went from rags to riches so many times in his career, was such a successful gambler, that kept thinking his luck would turn around. And maybe it would have if he's managed to save some money and stay off the booze.

Movie review - "In Like Flynn" (2018) **

 Why did this get financed? Who was the market? It doesn't have enough action to be an action film. The budget, while decent enough for an Aussie film, wasn't enough for Indiana Jones type adventures. There's no humour. No romance. No sense of adventure.

No differentiated characters - I had trouble telling the leads apart. No stars. I forgot which one was Errol Flynn at times.

He kind of has an ex, played by Isabel Lucas in an astonishingly bland way. There's boxing matches.

David Wenham perks things up as a dodgy mayor. Callan Mulvey hangs around too. Both would have been better as the leads.

A brief moment all these hookers are on the boat and you go "now that's an Errol Flynn film". But this bit lasts two minutes then it's over.

It's so dull. And annoying.

Looks good.

Movie review - "My Wicked Wicked Ways" (1985) **

No one has much good to say about this TV movie but I have an affection for it in part because it's a genre that isn't made any more - the dopey network TV biopic. Duncan Regehr is up against it to play Errol Flynn but he does okay - no one has really nailed that role, except maybe Peter O'Toole in My Favourite Year and Jude Law's cameo in The Aviator.

A lot of it is made up, sometimes outrageously - Koets is turned into an Irish adventurer - and plenty of scenes stink. It seems to have been envisioned as a mini series then shoved together. It assumes Flynn was innocent of the rape charges and seems to lack focus - there's plots about Flynn wanting more money, and wanting to Act Seriously.

But you know I did enjoy the character spotting - "oh that's Raoul Walsh.. that's John Barrymore... that's Olivia de Havilland." I liked how the piece focused on Flynn's relationship with a few people giving it some weight - Lily Damita (Barbara Hershey doing the best she can), stuntman Bill Mead, Olivia de Havilland, Jack Warner, Koets, John Barrymore.

And once you get it's heavily fictionalised I appreciate the bits they did try to get right - he did clash with Michael Curtiz, Warner did secretly like him, he did go to Spain in the Civil War, he and Damita did fight, he did sleep around, Walsh did dig up Barrymore's corpse for a joke (ok that was more an urban legend I feel but everyone says it).

I think once Flynn fans get over the fact this isn't very good they will enjoy it. I mean, at least they tried and it is about Flynn.

Movie review - "The Adventures of Don Juan" (1948) ****1/2 (re-viewing)

This film makes me smile. It's bright and colourful and very witty. The women have agency - they chase after Errol Flynn more than the other way around, it's less rapey.

The sets are spectacular as is the color. Don Juan's journey to responsibility is well done. Decent action. Strong support cast- Alan Hale, Ann Rutherford being heaps of fun. Robert Douglas is a terrific villain.

Viveca Lindfors is poor as the female lead. I miss Olivia de Havilland. If they couldn't get her then it's a shame they couldn't have, I don't know, borrowed Maureen O'Hara or someone. Eleanor Parker would've been amazing.

Jaunty music. Great fun. This movie isn't as well known as The Sea Hawk but it's as good.

Movie review - "Silver River" (1948) ** (re-viewing)

Hugely expensive, a film of great potential. Starts well with a scene of Errol Flynn fighitng in the Civil War. It doesn't have much to do with the final film - I reckon it was added after previews.

Because the film doesn't go well. There's no life to it. Errol Flynn should have been a great anti hero - and he and Ann Sheridan should have made a fabulous couple. But there's no chemistry - no sexual tension.

David and Bathsheba out west should work. But you never get the sense these two are hot for each other. Sheridan doesn't seem to care about her husband either. Thomas Mitchell's drunk is annoying. He should have played Flynn's best friend all along.

There's too much talk about mines and scenes where men walk through rooms and not enough sex and excitement. Why was Barton MacLane bad again?

Movie review - "That Forsyte Woman" (1949) ** (re-viewing)

Overproduced - the settings are stuffed with props and everyone's wearing too many clothes. I haven't read the novel but you cans see as here there is a basic love triangle that could work - but it doesn't. Errol Flynn is very  good as Soames, Greer Garson is alright as Irene, Robert Young is awful as  Philip and Walter Pidgeon not very good as Jolyon. Janet Leigh is too American. Bad support players.

The film needed better handling. Compton Bennett the director doesn't rise to the occasion. There's no feel, no atmosphere. No sense of family.

Movie review - "Mara Maru" (1952) **1/2 (re-viewing)

Aspects of this film help it age well simply because they don't make these sort of crusty action melodramas any more. And if Errol Flynn was disintegrating, he was still Errol Flynn and his role suits him - a washed up sea captain. He's occasionally vague but mostly fine in his role.

He has no chemistry with Ruth Roman who is weak - mind you she has no character to play. I wish she'd just been a femme fetale. The cast of this is mostly B league but they do try. Raymond Burr is an A grade villain though.

It's an undercooked movie that occasionally jumps to life. Who cares if the Church get their cross back? Everyone needed to be greedier.

Movie review - "Escape Me Never" (1947) ** (re-viewing)

An odd movie. The story is actually solid I think the treatment was badly handled and miscast. Everyone wears too much lederhosen.

Ida Lupino feels all wrong - too modern. Errol Flynn needed a moustache. I buy him as a selfish bohemian but not a composer. It needed more music. Eleanor Parker is stunning. Maybe if she and Lupino had swapped roles it could have been more effective. Gig Young's part needed to be bigger.

The basic love triangle of this is fine - Lupino loves Flynn who loves Parker who backs off when he realises she's loved by his brother Gig Young. But it goes all over the shop. Gets more silly as it goes on.

Warner Bros lost the ability to make this sort of melodrama. Maybe Edmund Goulding could have made it work.

Movie review - "Crossed Swords" (1954) ** (re-viewing)

Should have been good. Late period Errol as a Don Juan type. Cesare Danova has his best friend and Gina Lollobrigida as the love interest. Italian locations, Jack Cardiff cinematography.  Some clever script ideas like the men being forced to marry, and the women being involved in seducing the men.

It's not good. They don't use the ideas - why not have Don Juan be forced to be married? Errol is more rape-y here than in The Adventures of Don Juan. Undercast villains. Poor direction. Poor dubbing.

Movie review - "Istanbul" (1957) **

Bad. Starts promisingly with location footage of Istanbul but most of this is shot on the backlot. Errol Flynn looks too old - if the role suited that it was good but it doesn't here. The role is clearly meant for someone like Jeff Chandler who would be channelling someone like Humphrey Bogart.

There are echoes of Casablanca - black pianist friend, girl from his past, mysterious police chief, exotic types hanging around - but this is no way near as good. I haven't seen Singapore but that would have had the extra element of the war... Istanbul was neutral during the war.

The guy who plays the police chief is pretty good, but having Colonel Klink as a villain is distracting (not the poor actor's fault, it's just the way it is). Cournell Bourchers or whatever she is is a dull female lead and they do nothing with the character of her husband. It lacks suspense, excitement, mystery, atmosphere. It does have Nat King Cole singing 'When I Fall in Love'.

Movie review - "Kim" (1951) *** (re-viewing) (warning: spoilers)

I enjoyed this on re-viewing. It is bright and colourful and has locations in India. There's a lot of brown face - a lot - but the filmmakers get the basic escapist conceit of the novel: it's a young boys fantasy, to be a carefree orphan who will do important work for his bosses, go to a boarding school but not a mean one, have adults look out for you, and spend your holidays spying.

Errol Flynn has a "big brother" role similar to The Prince and the Pauper - the real star is Dean Stockwell. They probably should have given those spy training sequences to Flynn - but the guy who does them is good.

Cecil Kellaway is in brownface as a fellow spy - his death is a genuine shock. It is nice to see two expat Aussies working together. 

I enjoyed Robert Douglas as the efficient colonel - it was like he was in his own series/show and Stockwell kind of pops in. Paul Lukas is in brownface - I appreciated how he died though the film could have done a better job on the Stockwell-Lukas relationship.

The action/suspense scenes are quite exciting because they involve a young kid. I still would have liked more vigorous handling.

Movie review - "Cry Wolf" (1947) *** (warning: spoilers) (re-viewing)

A version of Jane Eyre - with Barbara Stanwyck as Jane and Errol Flynn as Rochester and Richard Basehart as the mad woman and Geraldine Brooks as the daughter. I mean that's an exaggeration but the structure is similar - Stanwyck meets Flynn, says she was married to his late brother, he's hiding a secret... which is insanity.

This is a fun movie. It's not very well directed - someone like Robert Siodmak would have really amped up the tension. You want creepy corridors and spooky angles... and it's there in theory just not done very well.

Also Stanwyck is far too sensible and strong. I get the appeal of having a powerful female lead but someone on the verge of a nervous breakdown would have given it more tension.

Flynn is an ideal Rochester. Brooks is excellent going nutty as is Basehart. The film could have used a creepy servant or two.