The swashbuckling playboy Errol Leslie
Flynn (1909-1959)--my favorite Hollywood film star--is still considered
one of the most handsome and debonaire actors to ever grace the screen. He was one of
the most popular actors of the mid-1930s and early 1940s, thanks in part to films like
Captain Blood (1935), The Charge of the Light
Brigade (1936), The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938) and
The Sea Hawk (1940). Flynn specialized in playing pirates and other
sword-yielding heroes. His sexual exploits are legendary, and he was linked with many of
the great Hollywood stars and starlets of the time; his actions even spawned two phrases
that became popular in describing a successful ladies' man: "In Like Flynn" and
"Errolesque." His non-stop boozing and womanizing contributed to his early death of a
heart attack at the age of 50.
Flynn was best friends with
the equally debonaire British actor, David Niven. The two appeared in many films
together, and they shared a Hollywood bungalow on the property of billionaire William
Randolph Hearst, where they entertained many famous Hollywood actresses. (Niven wrote
two critically acclaimed reminiscences of his Hollywood days with Flynn, The
Moon's a Balloon and Bring on the Empty Horses). Flynn's
excesses soon left him prematurely aged and bloated, and he found it difficult to find
satisfactory roles, acting in a number of B-movies in the last decade of his life. Among
his many exploits include:
- Charges of statutory
rape against two teenagers, which were later
dismissed. - Meeting personally with Fidel Castro in Cuba,
who Flynn said he admired, and Flynn's subsequent narration of a Cuban propaganda film.
Flynn claimed that Castro was a close friend and "drinking
partner." - Flynn's dating of a 15 year old (who he planned
to marry) at the time of his fatal heart attack. - Rumors
that Flynn was a Nazi sympathizer and spy during World War II as well as
being bi-sexual. (See Charles Higham's book, Errol Flynn: The Untold
Story, 1980.)
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