Eighty Years Ago
Third Week of December, 1938
LOS ANGELES EXAMINER
By Erskine Johnson
Headlines that told of a short but terrific fight between Errol Flynn and Aiden Roark, polo player and studio executive, are scarcely dry when Flynn returns to work on his new picture, Dodge City. And oddly enough, his first scene requires him to leap out of a barber’s chair and slug Douglas Fowley. Several times director Michael Curtiz films the scene but Flynn makes his pulled punches look bad. Finally Curtiz becomes exasperated. “Hit him like the newspapers said you hit Roark, ” he demands. Flynn grins and in the next “take” he makes his pulled punch look like the real thing, and Fowley sails back on a pile of mattresses laid out to break his fall.
* Douglas Fowley was a long-time movie and tv bad guy, as well as the father of hyper-wacko Kim “Alley Oop” Fowley.
— Tim
