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Archive for March, 2021

Celebrated Personalities

07 Mar

March 6, 1938

Los Angeles Examiner

Filmdom’s Elite Will Attend Reception for Mrs. Payson

Each year the Santa Anita racing season augments the number of our celebrated personalities by bringing other celebrities of the cosmopolitan world to sojourn a while in our fair village. Salient among them is the engaging Mrs. Joan Whitney Payson. And when Kendall and Lewis Milestone entertain today at cocktail time at their Beverly Hills home , she will be the party’s honored guest.

Among the illustrious cocktail sippers they’ll be Jessica and Richard Barthelmess, Ronald Colman and Benita Hume, the Bert Allenbergs, Winifred and Warner Baxter, Carole Lombard and Clark Gable, te Phil Bergs, the John Hay Whitneys, Hope and Louis Lighton, te C.V. Whitneys, Miriam Hopkins and Anatol Litvak, Rouben Mamoulian, Joan Bennett, the Nigel Bruces, Pat Patterson and Charles Boyer, Dixie and Bing Crosby.

Jean Negulesco and Binnie Barnes, the William Goetzes, Kay and John Cromwell, Constance Bennett, Gilbert Roland, Eddie Sutherland, Tala Barell, Bruce Cabot, Whitney Bourne, Dorothy Parker and Alan Campbell, the Miriam Coopers, Mary Astor and Manuel Campo, Heather Thatcher, George Cukor, Ouid and Basil Rathbone, Tim Durant, Marlene Dietrich, Douglas Fairbanks Jr., Lili Damita and Errol Flynn, Kay Francis, Whitney de Rham, Eddie Duchin, the Samuel Goldwyns, Janet Gaynor and Tyrone Power.

Also the Georg Fitzmauriees, Alfred Vanderbilt, Anita Loos and John Emerson, Christopher Dumphy, Dr. Harry Martin and Louella O. Parsons, Delmar Daves, the Lawrence Foxes, Cesar Romero, Ethel Merman, Harry Evans, Sally and Norman Foster, Winston Frost, Fransces Marion, Cary Grant, the Howard Hawks, Edmund Golden, theCourtland Hills, Alma and Frank Morgn, Vivian and Ernst Lubitsch, Andy Lawlor, Due de Verdura, Elizabeth Meyer, Ann and Jack Warner.

The Mervyn LeRoys, the Ainsworth Morgans, Sue and Chester Morris, the Bob Montgomerys, the Walter O’Keefe’s, Julie and George Murphy, David Niven, Florence Rice, Jean Arthur and Frank Rice, the Wells Roots, Wesley Ruggles, Virginia Bruce and J. Walter Rubent.

The David Selznicks, Loretta Young, Robert Riskin, the Grantland Rices, the Myron Selznicks, Fay Wray, Gregory Ratoff, Virginia and Daryl Zanuck, etc.

Ann Sheridan, Errol and Lewis Milestone on the Set of Edge of Darkness

The pioneering Joan Payson, the first woman to own a Major League baseball team (and win a Pennant and World Series.) Here with Tom Seaver, Bud Harrelson and Nancy Seaver.

— Tim

 

Robin de Los Bosques Arrives in London

06 Mar

March 5, 1937, Errol and Erben arrived in London:

“In 1935, Flynn married French-American actress Lili Damita (divorcing in 1942), with whom he had a very stormy relationship, with frequent physical fights. They were called the “Fighting Flynns,” and he called his wife “Tiger Lili.” When his friend Dr. Herman F. Erben (1897-1985) proposed that he and Errol travel to Spain in 1937, Flynn jumped at the opportunity. The friends had met three years earlier on April 14, 1933 in Salamaua, New Guinea. Born in Vienna, Erben was a physician and a world traveler, adventurer, and photographer, making a living primarily as a ship’s doctor. The two adventurers liked each other from the start and traveled together for a couple of months through the Far East. (Thomas McNulty, “Errol Flynn: The Life and Career.” Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2004. pp. 23-24) So, in early 1937, Flynn decided to go to Spain as a war correspondent with a commission from Hearst Press, to get away from it all (some say to, literally, escape from his wife) or perhaps just for the adventure. “Arriving in Spain, I felt I was right back in ‘The Charge of the Light Brigade’” (Errol Flynn, “What Really Happened to Me in Spain” Photoplay, July 1937: 12-15). Flynn and his enigmatic traveling companion, Dr. Erben, left on the Queen Mary on February 24, 1937, arriving in Southhampton, England on March 1.”

“On March 5, 1937, they arrived in London.”

Quoting “Robin de Los Bosques in the Spanish War

— Tim

 

“A Four Star Production” – 80 Years Ago Today

05 Mar

March 4, 1940

Lux Radio Theater Presents: Trade Winds

Hosted by Cecil B. De Mille

Starring Errol Flynn, Joan Bennett, Mary Astor and Ralph Bellamy

“The Gangplank is Down Curtain Call” during which Errol invites all to the March 16 premier of Virginia City:


The Full Show:

youtu.be/hp5Icb36cdA…

2012 Review on Amazon:

“TRADE WINDS is a real piece of Hollywood history – produced and narrated by no less than Cecil B. DeMille, this radio play stars some of the biggest heavyweights on the silver screen circa 1940, working before a live audience in the Lux Radio Theater. A detective story operating on the plane of light comedy, it features clever writing and laugh-out-loud performances, and manages to undercut the sappiest of its moments with stingingly sarcastic humor. Fans of Errol Flynn, or of Old Time Radio in general, will revel in this tale of love, murder, betrayal and personal growth, as told by a group of master-actors.

The story is quite simple. Errol Flynn is Sam Wye, a sauve, facetious, womanizing detective out to capture fugitive heiress Kay Karrigan (Joan Bennett), who may or may not be guilty of murder. Wise tracks Karrigan all over the Pacific, but he is not alone in his quest for the $ 100,000 reward put on Karrigan’s head. Working with him and at times, against him, are long-suffering ex-lover Jean Livingstone (Mary Astor), and blockheaded but bulldogish detective Filo Blodgett (Ralph Bellamy). Wye eventually hunts down Karrigan, but just as quickly falls in love with her, leading to a whole avalanche of comedic shennanigans that include numerous double crosses and, rather late in the story, some genuine detective work as Sam desperately tries to save his beloved’s neck from the noose.

The cast is marvelous and the dialogue often priceless. They simply do not write dialogue like they did back then: Bellamy’s mixture of pompous diction with dumb-guy delivery is fantastic, Astor steals many scenes with her sarcastic one-liners, and Flynn is, well, Flynn – suave as Satan and cool as diamonds, yet possessing a heart of (almost) pure gold.”

— Tim

 

Fred and Errol

05 Mar

New York Times
Douglas W. Churchill

Fred MacMurray Will Co-Star With Errol Flynn in ‘Dive Bomber’ for Warners

Fred MacMurray Will Co-Star With Errol Flynn in ‘Dive Bomber’ for Warners

HOLLYWOOD, Calif., Fred MacMurray will be co-starred with Errol Flynn in Warner’s “Dive Bomber,” which will go before the cameras in ten days with Michael Curtiz directing, the studio has announced.

— Tim

 

Flynn Tell

04 Mar

Dear Flynnstones,

finally we can get a one eye glimpse at Errol`s missing masterpiece “The story of William Tell”. The graphic novel “One against an empire” features a William Tell with Flynn`s features. Some scenes even resemble some of the movie stills of that missed appleshot from 1953. The content however striktly relies on the Friedrich Schiller book. A historic hybrid if you will, but not the baddest match.

Enjoy,

 

— shangheinz

 

Y?

04 Mar


March 2, 1943

From Mulholland Farm to Yale 1945

My most sincere thanks,

Errol Flynn

— Tim

 

Back in the Saddle Again

03 Mar

March 1, 1949

Sidney Skolsky
Hollywood Citizen News

Errol Flynn is far from being the happiest man in the world at this point. Not only is his domestic life in a state of chaos, but he has to make a western as his next movie. Errol is tired of shooting it up in the saddle. He doesn’t want to be the rich man’s Roy Rogers.

May 29, 1949

Hedda Hoppa
Quoting Errol in
“Flynn and Dandy”

“Acting for me is sheer fun. There’s only one thing I really don’t want to do any more and that’s Westerns. I guess I’ve trod every back trail and canyon pass in the entire west. I’ve never literally had to read the line, ‘they went that a-way pard’, but there is one cliche I’ve said so many times it comes back to me in all my nightmares. Every time there’s a gap in the story, every time the writers don’t know what to do next, they have me pull up ahead of my gang, assume a decidedly grim look, and say ‘All right men, you know what to do now.’ The fact is I’ve made so many of these things, scripts seem so much the same, that what it adds up to in my mind is that the studio says, ‘Here’s a horse. Get on.'”

— Tim

 

Not for Nothing

01 Mar

February 29, 1940

Sidney Skolsky
Watching Them Make Pictures

If you wait long enough on a Michael Curtiz set, you’re bound to hear a Curtizism. The other afternoon on the set of The Sea Hawk I had a long wait. In fact for the first time I thought reliable Mike was going to fail me. Director Curtiz had Errol play a scene over and over. And everytime he gave an order I expected him to pull a gem. But he didn’t.

Finally, Errol did the scene the way Curtiz wanted and reliable Mike came through. He said: “Errol, you worked hard. But it’s alright. You can’t get anything for nothing unless you pay for it.”

— Tim