Weekend Economists "In Like Flynn" June 17-19, 2011 [View All]

Due to popular demand (and believe me, Tansy Gold is popular around the Marketeers!) we celebrate the life and times of Errol Leslie Thomson Flynn, Born: 20-06-1909, Died: 14-10-1959 in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. His Birth Place: Hobart, Tasmania, Australia.

Flynn was the son of a prominent Australian marine biologist and zoologist Theodore Thomson Flynn, a biologist, and Marrelle Young, an adventurous young woman and supposed descendant of a sailor on HMS Bounty... As such, he was sent to the best schools available—and was expelled from virtually all of them. Flynn's restless, rebellious nature carried over into his early adulthood, as he unsuccessfully pursued such professions as government official, plantation overseer, gold miner, and journalist. In 1933 an Australian film producer saw some photographs of Flynn and offered the ruggedly handsome 24-year-old the role of the mutineer Fletcher Christian in the semidocumentary feature In the Wake of the Bounty. Encouraged by this experience to pursue acting as a career, Flynn joined England's Northampton Repertory Company, which led to a few roles in British films and ultimately to a contract with Warner Bros. in Hollywood. When Robert Donat dropped out of the title role in the expensive adventure film Captain Blood (1935), Warners took a chance on Flynn, thereby assuring stardom for him. Although he hadn't really planned on an acting career, Flynn become a star with his very first film. Typecast as a dashing, fearless adventurer, he went on to star in such colourful costume dramas as The Charge of the Light Brigade (1936), The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938), and The Sea Hawk (1940) and also such big-budget westerns as Dodge City (1939) and They Died with Their Boots On (1941).

During the shooting of The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex, Flynn and co-star Bette Davis had some legendary off-screen fights.

When Flynn became a naturalised American citizen on 15 August 1942, he also became eligible for the military draft, as the United States had entered World War II eight months earlier. Grateful to the country that had given him fame and wealth, Flynn attempted to join every branch of the armed services. But Flynn had several health problems. His heart was enlarged, with a murmur, and he'd already suffered at least one heart attack. That was not all: he had recurrent malaria (contracted in New Guinea), chronic back pain (for which he self-medicated with morphine and later, with heroin), lingering chronic tuberculosis, and numerous venereal diseases. Flynn, famous for his athletic roles and promoted as a paragon of physical beauty, was classified 4-F – unqualified for military service for not meeting the physical fitness standards...he instead acted the part of a soldier in such films as Desperate Journey (1942) and Objective, Burma! (1945).

This created a public image problem for both Flynn and Warner Brothers. Flynn was often criticised for his failure to enlist while continuing to play war heroes in films. The studios' failure to counter the criticism was due to a desire to hide the state of Flynn's health.

Almost as soon as he arrived in Hollywood, Flynn established a reputation as an irrepressible drinker, carouser, and womanizer. His reputation as a womaniser led to the expression "In like Flynn"...He was well known for having wild parties and was eventually brought up on a statutory rape charge, in 1942, by teenagers Betsy Hansen and Peggy Satterlee. The trial took place in January and February of 1943, and Flynn was cleared of the crime, but he suffered both personally and in his career... he was acquitted as a result of the flamboyant legal maneuvers of his attorneys. Inevitably, his self-indulgence caught up with him; in his later Hollywood films he appeared haggard, distracted, and far older than his years. He also lost a great deal of money in a variety of ill-advised business ventures and headed to England and Europe in hopes of revitalizing his career.

Returning to America in 1956, he was something of a self-parody, but still won some acclaim and brief resurgence of movie popularity with his brilliant performances in The Sun Also Rises (1957), The Roots of Heaven (1958), and Too Much, Too Soon (1958); in each film, he played a wasted, self-destructive drunkard, and some critics suggested that he wasn't acting. He also hosted an Anglo-American television anthology, The Errol Flynn Theater (1957), the nature of which allowed him to display a hitherto untapped versatility.

As a curious postscript to his life of adventure, Flynn went to Cuba in late 1958 to meet with the rebel leader Fidel Castro. Flynn was a great supporter of Castro and narrated a short movie titled Cuban Story:The Truth About Fidel Castro Revolution, one of his last works as an actor.He also made a cheaply filmed paean to Fidel Castro, Cuban Rebel Girls (1959).

He wrote a remarkably candid (if often wildly inaccurate) autobiography, My Wicked, Wicked Ways (1959), which was published just months after his death from alcoholism and contains humorous anecdotes about Hollywood. Flynn wanted to call the book 'In Like Me', but his publishers refused.

Flynn was married three times and was the father of four; his son, Sean, was a photojournalist who disappeared in 1970 while covering the war in Southeast Asia.

Errol Flynn is interred in Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery, in Glendale, California. Both of his parents survived him.

http://www.thebiographychannel.co.uk/biographies/errol-flynn.html


http://www.biography.com/articles/Errol-Flynn-9297594

See also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Errol_Flynn

Flynn co-starred with Olivia de Havilland in eight films: Captain Blood (1935), The Charge of the Light Brigade (1936), The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938), Four's a Crowd (1938), Dodge City (1939), The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex (1939), Santa Fe Trail (1940), and They Died with Their Boots On (1941)