Love letters written by Errol Flynn to a woman from Herefordshire he was trying to woo have sold for £1,000.
The matinee film idol wrote to Marjorie Bickham who he met while performing at the Malvern Festival in 1934 – years before he achieved fame and fortune.
In one he tells Ms Bickham, of Hill Top Fruit Farm, Ledbury: “I know I shall think of you until I go to sleep.”
It is not known whether he was successful in his romantic pursuit.
Flynn met Ms Bickham while he was at Birmingham Repertory and travelling to regional theatres – before he became famous for Captain Blood and other swashbuckling roles.
Later in life he developed a reputation for womanising. At the time of his death, aged 50, Flynn was planning a fourth marriage – to his teenage girlfriend Beverly Aadland.
The sale by Fieldings Auctioneers in Stourbridge beat guide price estimates of £400 to £600.
Nick Davies, a director at Fieldings, said Ms Bickham was the great aunt of the vendor of the letters. The vendor did not really know what to do with them and would be “delighted” at the sale price, he added.
He said there had been a lot of pre-sale interest in the “unusual” lot, including from overseas.
“Anyone in the limelight will have a lot of memorabilia relating to publicity but personal things such as these letters are more unusual,” he said.
Mr Davies said the letters were sold to a bidder in the room after a “little bit of a battle with someone in America” who was bidding over the internet.
He added the auction involved 700 lots, including the sale of the signatures of Charles Dickens and Charles I.
— tassie devil
