Hello fellow bloggers,
I'd like to begin this post by sending all my best wishes and prayers to Jack Marino's wife Louise and of course to Jack and his family.
Prayers and best wishes also to our beloved administrator and overseer of this wonderful blog David. I haven't had time to get to the internet much in the past few weeks but both David and Jack, who have given so much to the name of Errol Flynn, have never been far from my thoughts; God bless you both.
I found a little time last night to scan a few newspaper articles about Errol… I have scanned quite a lot of these so may post a few more if they are of interest.
best wishes,
Brian.
— themainflynnman
Anonymous
May 10, 2011 at 12:59 pm
Great, Brian, thanks so much for sharing them!
Anonymous
May 10, 2011 at 6:24 pm
Hi Brian;
Thanks for posting these great articles!
Take care,
Tina
Anonymous
May 10, 2011 at 7:50 pm
Bri, thanks so much for your well wishes for Jack & Louise and myself, too. Things are getting better for Louise, and she is now breathing on her own, her movements are more pronounced and she also looks around the room, although still heavily sedated at this point. Those good thoughts sent her way are working!
I know how much work you have done for the memory of Flynn and salute you for it. I have a copy of one of your books of Flynn newspaper articles and it is a cherished item!
I had not read any review of Flynn's book Beam Ends that was as negative as this. It must have hurt his self-esteem quite a bit since it was deeply important to him to be a good writer and he certainly was. It is still somewhat the fashion to pigeon hole an actor as ONLY as actor instead of someone with other valuable talents.
His good friend David Niven was an excellent writer and did not really get credit for it until he began to write his memoirs. Niv's novel Once Over Lightly published in 1951 (in England the title was Round the Rugged Rocks) is still a fun read but didn't sell well. The reason may well be that if you are a well-known actor, you couldn't possibly also be good at anything else in critic's minds. Not until Niven wrote his series of biographical works and at least one more novel Go Slowly, Come Back Quickly did he get the recognition he deserved as a writer.
If you read Flynn's articles over the years you realize he is an excellent writer, as capable as any other writer writing for the magazines of the day. He wanted to write for newspapers, too, and was basically a journalist. At the end of his life he was offering to do a regular column about doings in Jamaica, and other places, a throwback to his early article writing for newspapers when he was in New Guinea in 1933 as a lad and wrote under a pseudonym for the Sydney Bulletin.
He did much more work than most people realize, I think, on his bio My Wicked, Wicked Ways, as well. He was in close contact with Earl Conrad and proofed the book to his satisfaction, too. I have read some of his letters to Earl Conrad (shown to me by Lincoln Hurst) about various things included in MWWWs offering Conrad more details or clarifications.
My wish for Flynn as a writer was to have lived long enough to see what a huge success it was – and my other wish was that he had done more travel-adventure documentary work and made a third career out of it for distribution as films and for TV. He was really in his element narrating documentaries he'd made, and might also have done a lot of great voice work narrating documentaries others had made, too.
Anonymous
May 10, 2011 at 9:05 pm
Hi David;
All anybody could say to you wonderful article is: “Here, here!”
“Hear ye, hear ye!” You are so right!
Tina
Anonymous
May 10, 2011 at 11:31 pm
Outstanding! I salute you Sir Brian!
Anonymous
May 11, 2011 at 12:30 am
Hello David,
Yes, the review of Beam Ends is particulary cutting and you do get the impression that the reviewer had made up his mind about the book before he had even read it; It is a rather inconstructive review. Same goes for the rather appalling review of Green Light, surely a film that deserves a much more meticulous overview than this – although Hardwicke's performance does lay the film open to this kind of cynicism.
Unfortunately when you read through the newspaper articles that chronicle Errol's career over here in the UK, these kind of comments are rife. That's not to say that everything or even the majority of press coverage about Errol was negative but these kind of comments crop up regulary and do leave a rather negative impression.
I will post some more clippings tomorrow, some clippings with a more positive leaning.
Flynn, in my opinion, was a good writer, especially when assessing himself, some of his journal entries are heart-wrenching. I love Beam Ends, Errol captured, in words, that essence of adventure that he captured so easily on screen. Showdown I've always found rather disappointing and a little bit uneven but given the period when the book was written (the drug intake) that is hardly surprising.
It puts a smile on my face to know that Flynn and Niven, great friends that they were, have given us the two greatest books on Hollywood.
best wishes,
Brian.
Anonymous
May 11, 2011 at 12:36 am
Thanks Tom!