June 20, 2009. Copyright 2009, Graphic News. All rights reserved

Dashing film star Errol Flynn, the original Hollywood swashbuckler, born 100 years ago
By Susan Shepherd

LONDON, June 20, Graphic News:  With sword in hand, he made women swoon and men cheer. Joan Crawford called him “the most beautiful man who ever lived”, while David Niven described him as “an enchanting creature”. “I had more fun with Errol than everybody else put together…It was never ending fun,” Niven told the BBC chat show host, Michael Parkinson, in 1971. By then, the Tasmanian Devil, as Hobart-born Errol Leslie Thomson Flynn was known, had been dead 12 years, felled at 50 by a heart attack after decades of drink and opium addiction.
 
His legendary looks -- fine-chiselled features with trademark pencil-thin moustache -- and natural athleticism caught the eye of studio boss Jack L. Warner, when Flynn made his first screen appearance in an Australian documentary film, In the Wake of the Bounty (1933). The fledgling actor took the part of mutineer Christian Fletcher, from whom it is often claimed Flynn’s mother was descended, admitting years later that he “hadn’t the least idea” what he was doing. His previous jobs had included shipping clerk, plantation overseer in New Guinea, and even prospector for gold and diamonds. His naturally adventurous spirit, Flynn once said, would have suited an earlier age, when the great navigators like Ferdinand Magellan were conquering the globe.
 
But fame, fortune and, to his lifelong frustration, type-casting, were just around the corner. Captain Blood (1935) saw the unknown Errol Flynn replace Robert Donat in the title role opposite Olivia de Havilland, a gamble Warner Bros never regretted. The thrilling tale of piracy on the high seas was the first of eight collaborations with de Havilland, who afterwards confessed to having had a huge crush on her co-star in their early years. Their on-screen chemistry pulled in audiences three years later with The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938), Flynn sporting a feather in his Lincoln Green cap and demonstrating both fencing and archery skills. The success of Hal Wallis’s lavish production, in all its Technicolor glory, confirmed Flynn as Hollywood’s leading man, the natural successor to Douglas Fairbanks who had set the standard a decade earlier in the silent era.
 
Flynn continued the theme of historical heartthrob in The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex (1939), with Bette Davis -- the pair are said to have fought like cat and dog off-screen -- but the war years dented his heroic image. Flynn was rejected for active service on health grounds -- his heart was weak and he suffered bouts of malaria and tuberculosis -- and his reputation as a womaniser took a darker turn when he stood trial for rape in 1942. Although acquitted, he wrote in his autobiography, published posthumously, that ever after he was “in a swamp of Errol Flynn jokes, dirty stories and snide innuendo”. Despite this, and what he saw as his miscasting in westerns like Silver River (1948), Flynn’s popularity endured. He married three times and fathered four children, including Sean, who became a photojournalist and disappeared on assignment in Cambodia. His mother, Flynn’s first wife, Lili Damita, spent years looking for her only son, whom it is believed was killed by Khmer Rouge guerillas. Flynn himself died amid scandal in Vancouver -- he was there with his teenage girlfriend -- trying to sell his yacht to ease his financial difficulties.
/ENDS