The Errol Flynn Blog

1947 Project blog

Olivia de Havilland's 'Advisor' Lands in Jail

May 30, 1947
Hollywood

“Psst! Olivia de Havilland! “Operation Everything” is off!”

That’s the happy news police gave today to the Academy award-winning actress,
with the arrest of her self-styled advisor, Paul Randall, a 34-year-old artist
from Chicago who has been inundating de Havilland with unsolicited advice
letters signed “St. Paul” or with a creepy P-in-a-circle motif.

The letters were followed by recent telegrams announcing Randall’s imminent
arrival in Los Angeles and demanding de Havilland meet him “alone.” Today he
angrily phoned de Havilland’s agent Kurt Frints to protest her failure to meet
him at Municipal
Airport. He told Frints that he was in town to carry out “Operations
Everything,” and that Miss de Havilland, whom he had met twelve years ago when
they were doing theatrical work (in Van Nuys, no less), would understand what
he meant. He intended to wait at 1738
N. Las Palmas Avenue, where “she better see me.”

Instead it was detectives who came to take a look at St. Paul in his new digs
in Hollywood Jail. They wired Chicago for more information, and asked that
police psychiatrist Dr. Paul De River examine him. Olivia de Havilland denies
knowing her visitor.

Maybe de Havilland was in town to work on The Snake Pit?

1738 Las Palmas Today…

Look familiar? Julia Roberts was saved from “the Life” by
Richard Gere at this hotel… in “Pretty Woman.”

Cultural historian Kim Cooper publishes Scram, a
journal of unpopular culture (www.scrammagazine.com…)

— David DeWitt