Errol Flynn (June 20, 1909 - October 14,
1959), stage name of Errol Leslie Thompson Flynn, was an actor, born in Hobart, Tasmania,
Australia.
Although he hadn't really planned on an acting career, Flynn become a star with his very first
film, Captain Blood, in 1935. He was typecast as a swashbuckler and made several
including The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938), The Sea Hawk (1940), (like Captain
Blood, based on a novel by Rafael Sabatini), and The Adventures of Don Juan (1949). He
also played opposite Olivia de Havilland in the western movie Dodge City (1939).
During the shooting of The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex (1939), Flynn and co-star Bette
Davis had some legendary off-screen fights. His reputation as a womanizer led to the
expression "In like Flynn." He was well known for having wild parties and eventually his own
reputation had him brought up on a statutory rape charge in 1942 by teenagers Betsy Hansen and
Peggy Satterlee. A group organized to support Flynn called the American Boys Club for the
Defense of Errol Flynn (ABCDEF); among its members included William F. Buckley, Jr.. 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.
By the mid 1950s, he was something of a self-parody but still won some acclaim as a drunken
ne'er-do-well in The Sun Also Rises (1957). His autobiography, "My Wicked, Wicked Ways", 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, to actress Lily Damita from 1935 until 1942 (one son, Sean);
to Nora Eddington (1924 - 2001) from 1943 until 1948 (two daughters, Deirdre and Rory); and to
actress Patrice Wymore from 1950 until his death (one daughter, Arnella Roma). His only son,
Sean Flynn, became an actor and later a war correspondent who disappeared in Cambodia in 1970
during the Vietnam Conflict. The younger Flynn's life was recounted in "Inherited Risk" by
Jeffrey Meyers (Simon & Schuster).
One of Errol Flynn's grandsons, sometime model Luke Flynn (ne Luke Stoecker, born 1976), the
only child of Arnella Flynn (1953 - 1998) and fashion photographer Carl Stoecker, was named
one of the world's sexiest bachelors by People magazine in 2003. His mother, a former fashion
model, died on the Flynn family estate in Jamaica after a hard life of alcohol and drug
addiction.
She has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6331 Hollywood Blvd.
This article is licensed under the GNU
Free Documentation License, which means that you can copy and modify it as long as the entire
work (including additions) remains under this license. See
http://www.gnu.org/
copyleft/fdl.html
for details. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Jean Arthur", which you can find
at http://en.wikipedia.org/
wiki/Jean_Arthur
|