The Mailbag brings a response by expert Errol Flynn biographer and writer Thomas McNulty to a new biography recently out in by Patricia O’Brian …
Hello David,
Our good friend Karl shared with me the notice of Patricia O’Brien’s Flynn biography. Upon examining her credentials, I was hopeful. A Ph.D. scholar setting her sights on Flynn might have been a marvelous text. Unfortunately, I have seen the publishers hype as well, but worse than that I examined a transcript of her recent talk where I listened to these statements: “There have been so many cases of celebrity men going to trial since Errol Flynn, and I keep thinking what might have happened if he had actually been held accountable back in 1943.” Flynn, of course, was held accountable. That’s what being charged and put on trial means – accountability. In her discussion (the link is below) she is quite obviously wishes Flynn had been found guilty. But that’s not the worst of it. In an interview with “Financial Review,” the tag line is: “Jailing Errol Flynn might have stopped Epstein and Weinstein.” The Financial Review further blurbs: “If Errol Flynn had been called out, it could have been harder for serial offenders like Jeffrey Epstein to get away with what he did.” Shades of Charles Higham! My reaction to this is anger. This is precisely what it appears to be; an author being complicit in intentionally condoning and fabricating clickbait headlines to sell her book. It’s disgusting and unethical, but, sadly, there’s more.
I heard from Dr. O’Brien via email in March, 2010. I’ll show you the text later. You’ll recall in the “Note and Sources” section of my book, which, incidentally, is more important than the bibliography, I had several notations that were confidential. Those individuals shared private information with me and preferred to remain anonymous. Dr. O’Brien requested I reveal my sources and provide her their contact information to assist her in her own work, which she described as being about New Guinea. I declined, and mentioned I thought her request was unprofessional (I don’t recall my exact words to her.) Her lack of ethics struck me as odd at the time given that she was signing her name as “Dr Patricia O’Brien, Visiting associate Professor, Center for Australian and New Zealand Studies.”
She has an impressive background, but she’s participating in and propagating a hateful narrative that’s nothing more than an unprovable supposition. And all of this before the book is released in the United States! It’s already a # 1 bestseller in Australia. There’s more I can say here, but now we have to wait, we have to be fair and read the actual book itself. I am hopeful to find some quality research.
I am not a fan of the Me-Too movement. I was abused by a woman at sixteen and the emotional trauma I experienced took me years to come to grips with. I don’t talk about that normally, but the narrative that men are inherently abusers is a false narrative. Did Dr. O’Brien consider how Flynn’s surviving children and grandchildren will feel by promoting this idea that a jailed Flynn would have prevented the abuse by people like Jeffrey Epstein? Does she understand what legitimate studies in cultural anthropology entail? From my admittedly biased perspective, Dr Patricia O’Brien has become an abuser herself.
Link to the Financial Review article (subscription required, but you can view the headlines:
Link to the YouTube video taken at the United States Study Center:
Thanks for responding to this publication, Tom, and I agree 100%, this is another Higham style attack on a man whose family is left wondering if their father will ever stop being the subjects of these ridiculous, unwarranted self-serving attacks?
d’
— David DeWitt
