Here are a few discoveries about Miss Amelia Oliphant which appear in Errol MWWW.
Me and Bonnie Paraschos found a few interesting facts.
Olivia de Havilland played a role named Amelia in 1940 “my love came back”.
The River Queen was used in the movie Gone with the Wind (under a new name) and Oliphant means “olive branch” and is a Normand lastname.
We think Amelia is Olivia.
❤ open to discussion obviously
— Selene Hutchison-Zuffi
Gentleman Tim
November 8, 2020 at 3:19 am
Very cool investigation and deductions, Selene and Bonnie. Based on confidential sources, however, I believe the real Amelia actually later famously married JFK.
Gentleman Tim
November 8, 2020 at 3:21 am
Not the real JFK, of course. The one from La Jolla, not Hyannisport.
Gentleman Tim
November 8, 2020 at 3:26 am
She had a first name very much like Amelia. And the incident regarding the photographer reported in MWWW really did happen in New Orleans. In fact, it contemporaneosly made the news.
Gentleman Tim
November 8, 2020 at 4:13 am
Speaking of indirect presidential connections, she sold one of her homes to Donald Trump. As Errol indicated, she was quite wealthy and very high society. …Everyone listened when her father spoke (except her!)
Selene Hutchison-Zuffi
November 8, 2020 at 10:50 am
I stick with our deduction. He tried and tried with Olivia. The new Orleans accident did happen but I dont thinks related.
Karl
November 8, 2020 at 9:09 am
Indeed~ Selene, Bonnie and Tim… one of the truly ELUSIVE mysteries in all of Flynndom.
The account concerning Amelia Holiphant in My Wicked, Wicked Ways is a jumble of highly contradictory and conflicting information that when all taken together would lead one ABSOLUTELY nowhere as to the identity of “the only woman I ever truly loved till then”.
In the end one can, at best, speculate, except that with Tim on the Trail he appears to have a DEFINITE sense of direction… and has all but given away his choice of candidate!
(Despite the fact that Livy is a MOST intriguing possibility.)
Anyway, to bring us ALL up to speed…
Here is the case (with background noted along the way):
(Sean born 5/31/41 Flynn divorced 3/31/42)
From MWWW pg 270-4:
“I received a wire from my sister Rosemary in New York (Rosemary and family in Hollywood for a visit in mid July 1939; Flynn in NYC with father around August 3rd). She was 19 or 20 and she had just arrived from England. I had finished a picture, Dive Bomber, (newspaper reports indicate that Dive Bomber was finished in the 6/23/41- 7/3/41 time frame), and was ready for a change. I tried to tell Lili she ought to stay in Hollywood and let Rosemary and me fling around by ourselves.
“Nothing doing, Fleen. I want to meet your sister. I’m going along.” And besides that I had never been around Rosemary very much since my own childhood.
She was now a young women, and it was different. She was pretty with laughing, bright blue eyes and a tip-tilted nose. She was quiet, conventional, the opposite of me in practically all respects. She could talk German and French as well as she could speak English. She was innocent; yet she was intelligent and poised. I decided to present her to all my celebrity friends and the socialite crowd.
Rosemary and I went on the round of night clubs. We managed somehow to get away from Lili frequently. Lili could find her own pals, and I found reasons for breaking Rosemary away from her.
One night as we sat at the Club 21 I saw someone at a distant table. I know who she is, I said to myself, that’s Amelia Oliphant. Lili had introduced me to her three years earlier.
Amelia was married, beautiful, wealthy, well educated. No Lili was with me to stop me, so I excused myself to Rosemary and walked across the room.
I shook hands with Amelia, bowed politely to her husband, and in a moments talk found out enough to be able to get in touch with her.
From then on, I suppose, I neglected Rosemary.
My courtship with Amelia prospered so swiftly that I could hardly believe it. I knew at once that I was in love, genuinely in love.Everything else, until now, had been meek affairs. She was delicate, fragile, with tiny wrists, tiny ankles, a small neck, minute ears. She had a complexion that was indescribable, and it wasn’t make-up. She had dark blond curly hair. Beyond those physical allures she had a sense of humor, a musical voice, a lovely feminine magnetism.
After a few secret meetings in Central Park,-by which time Lili knew exactly whom I was seeing-we decided we had to get away. We didn’t know where or how. She had a child, she had a devoted husband, but she was ready to forget everything. I felt the same desperate need to be with her, no matter what happened.
One morning about 3 o’clock I waited in a cab outside the apartment where she lived with her husband. Her clothes came down in a large trunk. That is apparently what happens when a prominent socialite abandons home and child and runs off with a star. A trunk comes first. Then she floats down.
Away we went to the airport.
When we got to New Orleans, I said, “Amelia, we’re alone at last. Nobody will ever find us here.”
I no sooner said that, in the airport waiting room, than I bumped into Norval Harris. He was the chap who afterward had the misfortune to go to jail when Huey Long was shot. Norval, a well-to-do big shot o the region, was a night club pal of mine. At once he asked me how he could help out.. I told him I wanted seclusion. “Norval, I have a wife from whom a lion would cower. If she learns I am down here I’ve had it.”
Just before we left New York, I had a phone talk with Lili in which I said I’d be home late. “If you zee zat women again-“ she said in her most menacing French accent.
So I had plenty of reason to want secrecy. Norval sympathized. So what to do?
Then I hit it.
I told him I wanted to hire a steamboat for Amelia and myself. We’d sail up the Mississippi, and we’d have privacy if I went broke securing it.
“What?” said Norval. “I never heard of such a thing. These ships are built to carry five hundred people.”
“I can’t help it. Lili may have me traced. The press watches me the way astronomers watch the stars. We’ve got to be alone.”
“How about a small motorboat?”
“The steamboat. Please, Norval.”
The price was atrocious. It must have cost me a month’s work.
In Norval’s 22-foot-long, gold-plated custom-built car, conspicuous enough to blind people at a hundred yards, we drove to a quiet place along the banks of the Mississippi.
There she was, the River Queen, about a block long, with a high tower, handsome rails, artistically painted, looking like an aged- in-magnolia Southern belle. And for now it was all ours.
I led Amelia out of the car, and we went up the gangplank. I was about to return to the auto to gather our luggage when there, at the top of the gangplank, were two smiling reporters. One had a camera and he was shooting me busily. The other greeted me, talking fast about how well connected they were. What about some pictures and who was with me?
I did the first thing that crossed my mind. With all that passion which I had been reserving for Amelia and hadn’t been able to expend on her yet- because we’d almost never been alone in a place where a little expending could be done- I lifted this newspaper fellow right up in air, as I would a package, and delivered the package over the side over the side of the rail, plump into the Mississippi mud.
I had to get my hands on the camera man. These fellows are usually not too fleet- footed. They have a tendency to hang around until the camera is knocked out of their hands.. I caught this joker about twenty yards from the gangplank and pulled an old aussie trick on him, stamping on his feet while I pushed him. That doesn’t leave a man many places to go.
I grabbed the camera away from him and took out the film. I gave the camera back.
I knew the reporter had the story anyway. He may not have known who was with me, but he could release a story about Errol Flynn, seeking A bit of privacy, had hired a steamboat and crew for himself and a mysterious little lady.
(Editor’s note: “2/22/39 HCN ERROL FLYNN RETURNS FILM SNATCHED AT MARDI GRAS FESTIVAL- New Orleans, 2/22 – Errol Flynn, the film star, gave an interview here today- and gave back the film pack he snatched from a photographer last night when the cameramen snapped his picture with a local girl at a Mardi Gras parade.
Flynn was watching the parade with a New Orleans sub-deb. He jumped at the photographer’s flash, demanded the film, and grabbed the photographer’s film pack. He gave it back to a reporter and another photographer this morning. Flynn came up here from Florida on a vacation trip.”) *
The River Queen pulled out.
Five days up the Mississippi on this huge steamer.
Only Amelia and me and the crew.
Every moment was a thing of beauty. We discussed palns for the furure, all the possibilities.She might face divorce, she might lose her child. She was wrong and so was I to be doing what we were doing, we admitted to one another, but we couldn’t help it.
Our only justification was that she said that she didn’t love her husband and I told her I didn’t love Lili.
The world rolled by.
I never saw a newspaper, nor cared less for one. We saw, from time to time, from our stateroom, the shores on either side of the long river. Sometimes the river was muddy, sometimes it seemed to swirl. The shores might be close, or miles apart.
I was in love. I have always loved Amelia and I always will love her. She was, I think, the only woman I ever truly loved till then.
My affair with her continued intermittently for a year or more. I saw her whenever I went East. But there were barriers. Her husband threatened to shoot me. He even came to Hollywood and surprised me one night at my home, pulling a gun and brandishing it. But he didn’t shoot, not having quite gotten himself loaded enough.
Beyond the barrier of a husband who was loath to let her go, Amelia was full of high-society manners that I couldn’t fully cotton to. A bit of stuffiness you might say. She was a living incarnation of the ornate salons of her class, of the leisure and the remoteness from the reality of life on the top.
My inability to get together with her in a real way, the complication she represented in my life, had a deep effect upon me. It sharpened the schism between Lili and me. It made me sense the hopelessness of ever finding a real, a permanent, a workable relationship with any woman. Something- perhaps it was biological-stood between me and a prolonged relationship with even so wonderful a creature as Amelia.
I plunged into picture-making and tried not to figure out the tangle of my relationships. Besides, I now had a new interest: Mulholland House, overlooking the San Fernando Valley.”
* This article date, of course, disagrees with the Dive Bomber timeline.
Gentleman Tim
November 8, 2020 at 12:03 pm
Coincidentally, Bonnie’s reference to the Raniers is very notable, because – as a consequence of her high society sophistication, elegance, and (blonde) beauty – the real Amelia was sometimes compared to Grace Kelly.
Selene Hutchison-Zuffi
November 8, 2020 at 12:41 pm
There are more clues that it was Olivia by looking and studying their stories. I personally dont think it was anyone else but Olivia. Olivia might have taken that secret to the grave. We know it was more than friendship as several pictures from 1939 -1941 show. He was jealous. Also, it would explain Huston fight. We have been investigating.
Gentleman Tim
November 8, 2020 at 2:44 pm
I do think Errol loved and treasured Olivia, of course. But I don’t believe his Amelia narrative describes her. Flynn being Flynn he could be mixing, exaggerating, and even fictionalizing extensively. Even so, I believe Errol had a very famous socialite in mind when he wrote this particular passage of MWWW. The presidential election results of 2020 may prove less controversial, especially among fans of Errolivia.
Gentleman Tim
November 8, 2020 at 2:58 pm
P.S. Lili lived right next to her for years . Her house was right behind Lili’s pool. The following is a photo of her living room:
[img]https://www.newyorksocialdiary.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/image073-5.jpg[/img]
Selene Hutchison-Zuffi
November 8, 2020 at 5:30 pm
Of course he is mixing. He is hiding olivia identity. And he could have put the photographer story just to throw people off, but not Olivia. Not with Oliphant meaning Olive. Not with Olivia playing Amelia in 1940. Not with the River Queen being in Gone with the Wind. I dont believe in coincidences.
barb
November 8, 2020 at 2:58 pm
Tim, are you looking for someone to make a guess based on your clues? There’s only one person I can think of.
Gentleman Tim
November 8, 2020 at 3:47 pm
Who would you say based on my clues, barb?
Karl
November 8, 2020 at 4:18 pm
Indeed~ Selene, Bonnie and Tim… one of the truly ELUSIVE mysteries in all of Flynndom.
The account concerning Amelia Holiphant in My Wicked, Wicked Ways is a jumble of highly contradictory and conflicting information that when all taken together would lead one ABSOLUTELY nowhere as to the identity of “the only woman I ever truly loved till then”.
In the end one can, at best, speculate, except that with Tim on the Trail he appears to have a DEFINITE sense of direction… and has all but given away his choice of candidate!
(Despite the fact that Livy is a MOST intriguing possibility.)
Anyway, to bring us ALL up to speed…
Here is the case (with background noted along the way):
(Sean born 5/31/41 Flynn divorced 3/31/42)
From MWWW pg 270-4:
“I received a wire from my sister Rosemary in New York (Rosemary and family in Hollywood for a visit in mid July 1939; Flynn in NYC with father around August 3rd). She was 19 or 20 and she had just arrived from England. I had finished a picture, Dive Bomber, (newspaper reports indicate that Dive Bomber was finished in the 6/23/41- 7/3/41 time frame), and was ready for a change. I tried to tell Lili she ought to stay in Hollywood and let Rosemary and me fling around by ourselves.
“Nothing doing, Fleen. I want to meet your sister. I’m going along.” And besides that I had never been around Rosemary very much since my own childhood.
She was now a young women, and it was different. She was pretty with laughing, bright blue eyes and a tip-tilted nose. She was quiet, conventional, the opposite of me in practically all respects. She could talk German and French as well as she could speak English. She was innocent; yet she was intelligent and poised. I decided to present her to all my celebrity friends and the socialite crowd.
Rosemary and I went on the round of night clubs. We managed somehow to get away from Lili frequently. Lili could find her own pals, and I found reasons for breaking Rosemary away from her.
One night as we sat at the Club 21 I saw someone at a distant table. I know who she is, I said to myself, that’s Amelia Oliphant. Lili had introduced me to her three years earlier.
Amelia was married, beautiful, wealthy, well educated. No Lili was with me to stop me, so I excused myself to Rosemary and walked across the room.
I shook hands with Amelia, bowed politely to her husband, and in a moments talk found out enough to be able to get in touch with her.
From then on, I suppose, I neglected Rosemary.
My courtship with Amelia prospered so swiftly that I could hardly believe it. I knew at once that I was in love, genuinely in love.Everything else, until now, had been meek affairs. She was delicate, fragile, with tiny wrists, tiny ankles, a small neck, minute ears. She had a complexion that was indescribable, and it wasn’t make-up. She had dark blond curly hair. Beyond those physical allures she had a sense of humor, a musical voice, a lovely feminine magnetism.
After a few secret meetings in Central Park,-by which time Lili knew exactly whom I was seeing-we decided we had to get away. We didn’t know where or how. She had a child, she had a devoted husband, but she was ready to forget everything. I felt the same desperate need to be with her, no matter what happened.
One morning about 3 o’clock I waited in a cab outside the apartment where she lived with her husband. Her clothes came down in a large trunk. That is apparently what happens when a prominent socialite abandons home and child and runs off with a star. A trunk comes first. Then she floats down.
Away we went to the airport.
When we got to New Orleans, I said, “Amelia, we’re alone at last. Nobody will ever find us here.”
I no sooner said that, in the airport waiting room, than I bumped into Norval Harris. He was the chap who afterward had the misfortune to go to jail when Huey Long was shot. Norval, a well-to-do big shot o the region, was a night club pal of mine. At once he asked me how he could help out.. I told him I wanted seclusion. “Norval, I have a wife from whom a lion would cower. If she learns I am down here I’ve had it.”
Just before we left New York, I had a phone talk with Lili in which I said I’d be home late. “If you zee zat women again-“ she said in her most menacing French accent.
So I had plenty of reason to want secrecy. Norval sympathized. So what to do?
Then I hit it.
I told him I wanted to hire a steamboat for Amelia and myself. We’d sail up the Mississippi, and we’d have privacy if I went broke securing it.
“What?” said Norval. “I never heard of such a thing. These ships are built to carry five hundred people.”
“I can’t help it. Lili may have me traced. The press watches me the way astronomers watch the stars. We’ve got to be alone.”
“How about a small motorboat?”
“The steamboat. Please, Norval.”
The price was atrocious. It must have cost me a month’s work.
In Norval’s 22-foot-long, gold-plated custom-built car, conspicuous enough to blind people at a hundred yards, we drove to a quiet place along the banks of the Mississippi.
There she was, the River Queen, about a block long, with a high tower, handsome rails, artistically painted, looking like an aged- in-magnolia Southern belle. And for now it was all ours.
I led Amelia out of the car, and we went up the gangplank. I was about to return to the auto to gather our luggage when there, at the top of the gangplank, were two smiling reporters. One had a camera and he was shooting me busily. The other greeted me, talking fast about how well connected they were. What about some pictures and who was with me?
I did the first thing that crossed my mind. With all that passion which I had been reserving for Amelia and hadn’t been able to expend on her yet- because we’d almost never been alone in a place where a little expending could be done- I lifted this newspaper fellow right up in air, as I would a package, and delivered the package over the side over the side of the rail, plump into the Mississippi mud.
I had to get my hands on the camera man. These fellows are usually not too fleet- footed. They have a tendency to hang around until the camera is knocked out of their hands.. I caught this joker about twenty yards from the gangplank and pulled an old aussie trick on him, stamping on his feet while I pushed him. That doesn’t leave a man many places to go.
I grabbed the camera away from him and took out the film. I gave the camera back.
I knew the reporter had the story anyway. He may not have known who was with me, but he could release a story about Errol Flynn, seeking A bit of privacy, had hired a steamboat and crew for himself and a mysterious little lady.
(Editor’s note: “2/22/39 HCN ERROL FLYNN RETURNS FILM SNATCHED AT MARDI GRAS FESTIVAL- New Orleans, 2/22 – Errol Flynn, the film star, gave an interview here today- and gave back the film pack he snatched from a photographer last night when the cameramen snapped his picture with a local girl at a Mardi Gras parade.
Flynn was watching the parade with a New Orleans sub-deb. He jumped at the photographer’s flash, demanded the film, and grabbed the photographer’s film pack. He gave it back to a reporter and another photographer this morning. Flynn came up here from Florida on a vacation trip.”) *
The River Queen pulled out.
Five days up the Mississippi on this huge steamer.
Only Amelia and me and the crew.
Every moment was a thing of beauty. We discussed palns for the furure, all the possibilities.She might face divorce, she might lose her child. She was wrong and so was I to be doing what we were doing, we admitted to one another, but we couldn’t help it.
Our only justification was that she said that she didn’t love her husband and I told her I didn’t love Lili.
The world rolled by.
I never saw a newspaper, nor cared less for one. We saw, from time to time, from our stateroom, the shores on either side of the long river. Sometimes the river was muddy, sometimes it seemed to swirl. The shores might be close, or miles apart.
I was in love. I have always loved Amelia and I always will love her. She was, I think, the only woman I ever truly loved till then.
My affair with her continued intermittently for a year or more. I saw her whenever I went East. But there were barriers. Her husband threatened to shoot me. He even came to Hollywood and surprised me one night at my home, pulling a gun and brandishing it. But he didn’t shoot, not having quite gotten himself loaded enough.
Beyond the barrier of a husband who was loath to let her go, Amelia was full of high-society manners that I couldn’t fully cotton to. A bit of stuffiness you might say. She was a living incarnation of the ornate salons of her class, of the leisure and the remoteness from the reality of life on the top.
My inability to get together with her in a real way, the complication she represented in my life, had a deep effect upon me. It sharpened the schism between Lili and me. It made me sense the hopelessness of ever finding a real, a permanent, a workable relationship with any woman. Something- perhaps it was biological-stood between me and a prolonged relationship with even so wonderful a creature as Amelia.
I plunged into picture-making and tried not to figure out the tangle of my relationships. Besides, I now had a new interest: Mulholland House, overlooking the San Fernando Valley.”
* This article date, of course, disagrees with the Dive Bomber timeline.
barb
November 8, 2020 at 4:34 pm
Tim, I’d guess actress Dina Merrill, daughter of E. F. Hutton and Marjorie Merriweather Post. Flynn was no slouch in the fame department, but that family is in a different stratosphere on so many levels.
Gentleman Tim
November 8, 2020 at 4:38 pm
That’s correct, barb! “Amelia” was Nedenia Hutton, aka Dina Merrill.
[img]https://deadline.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/screen-shot-2017-05-23-at-10-25-15-am.png[/img]
Karl
November 8, 2020 at 4:40 pm
Indeed~ Selene, Bonnie, Barb and Tim… one of the truly ELUSIVE mysteries in all of Flynndom.
The account concerning Amelia Holiphant in My Wicked, Wicked Ways is a jumble of highly contradictory and conflicting information that when all taken together would lead one ABSOLUTELY nowhere as to the identity of “the only woman I ever truly loved till then”.
In the end one can, at best, speculate, except that with Tim on the Trail he appears to have a DEFINITE sense of direction… and has all but given away his choice of candidate!
(Despite the fact that Livy is a MOST intriguing possibility.)
Anyway, to bring us ALL up to speed…
Here is the case (with background noted along the way):
(Sean born 5/31/41 Flynn divorced 3/31/42)
From MWWW pg 270-4:
“I received a wire from my sister Rosemary in New York (Rosemary and family in Hollywood for a visit in mid July 1939; Flynn in NYC with father around August 3rd). She was 19 or 20 and she had just arrived from England. I had finished a picture, Dive Bomber, (newspaper reports indicate that Dive Bomber was finished in the 6/23/41- 7/3/41 time frame), and was ready for a change. I tried to tell Lili she ought to stay in Hollywood and let Rosemary and me fling around by ourselves.
“Nothing doing, Fleen. I want to meet your sister. I’m going along.” And besides that I had never been around Rosemary very much since my own childhood.
She was now a young women, and it was different. She was pretty with laughing, bright blue eyes and a tip-tilted nose. She was quiet, conventional, the opposite of me in practically all respects. She could talk German and French as well as she could speak English. She was innocent; yet she was intelligent and poised. I decided to present her to all my celebrity friends and the socialite crowd.
Rosemary and I went on the round of night clubs. We managed somehow to get away from Lili frequently. Lili could find her own pals, and I found reasons for breaking Rosemary away from her.
One night as we sat at the Club 21 I saw someone at a distant table. I know who she is, I said to myself, that’s Amelia Oliphant. Lili had introduced me to her three years earlier.
Amelia was married, beautiful, wealthy, well educated. No Lili was with me to stop me, so I excused myself to Rosemary and walked across the room.
I shook hands with Amelia, bowed politely to her husband, and in a moments talk found out enough to be able to get in touch with her.
From then on, I suppose, I neglected Rosemary.
My courtship with Amelia prospered so swiftly that I could hardly believe it. I knew at once that I was in love, genuinely in love.Everything else, until now, had been meek affairs. She was delicate, fragile, with tiny wrists, tiny ankles, a small neck, minute ears. She had a complexion that was indescribable, and it wasn’t make-up. She had dark blond curly hair. Beyond those physical allures she had a sense of humor, a musical voice, a lovely feminine magnetism.
After a few secret meetings in Central Park,-by which time Lili knew exactly whom I was seeing-we decided we had to get away. We didn’t know where or how. She had a child, she had a devoted husband, but she was ready to forget everything. I felt the same desperate need to be with her, no matter what happened.
One morning about 3 o’clock I waited in a cab outside the apartment where she lived with her husband. Her clothes came down in a large trunk. That is apparently what happens when a prominent socialite abandons home and child and runs off with a star. A trunk comes first. Then she floats down.
Away we went to the airport.
When we got to New Orleans, I said, “Amelia, we’re alone at last. Nobody will ever find us here.”
I no sooner said that, in the airport waiting room, than I bumped into Norval Harris. He was the chap who afterward had the misfortune to go to jail when Huey Long was shot. Norval, a well-to-do big shot o the region, was a night club pal of mine. At once he asked me how he could help out.. I told him I wanted seclusion. “Norval, I have a wife from whom a lion would cower. If she learns I am down here I’ve had it.”
Just before we left New York, I had a phone talk with Lili in which I said I’d be home late. “If you zee zat women again-“ she said in her most menacing French accent.
So I had plenty of reason to want secrecy. Norval sympathized. So what to do?
Then I hit it.
I told him I wanted to hire a steamboat for Amelia and myself. We’d sail up the Mississippi, and we’d have privacy if I went broke securing it.
“What?” said Norval. “I never heard of such a thing. These ships are built to carry five hundred people.”
“I can’t help it. Lili may have me traced. The press watches me the way astronomers watch the stars. We’ve got to be alone.”
“How about a small motorboat?”
“The steamboat. Please, Norval.”
The price was atrocious. It must have cost me a month’s work.
In Norval’s 22-foot-long, gold-plated custom-built car, conspicuous enough to blind people at a hundred yards, we drove to a quiet place along the banks of the Mississippi.
There she was, the River Queen, about a block long, with a high tower, handsome rails, artistically painted, looking like an aged- in-magnolia Southern belle. And for now it was all ours.
I led Amelia out of the car, and we went up the gangplank. I was about to return to the auto to gather our luggage when there, at the top of the gangplank, were two smiling reporters. One had a camera and he was shooting me busily. The other greeted me, talking fast about how well connected they were. What about some pictures and who was with me?
I did the first thing that crossed my mind. With all that passion which I had been reserving for Amelia and hadn’t been able to expend on her yet- because we’d almost never been alone in a place where a little expending could be done- I lifted this newspaper fellow right up in air, as I would a package, and delivered the package over the side over the side of the rail, plump into the Mississippi mud.
I had to get my hands on the camera man. These fellows are usually not too fleet- footed. They have a tendency to hang around until the camera is knocked out of their hands.. I caught this joker about twenty yards from the gangplank and pulled an old aussie trick on him, stamping on his feet while I pushed him. That doesn’t leave a man many places to go.
I grabbed the camera away from him and took out the film. I gave the camera back.
I knew the reporter had the story anyway. He may not have known who was with me, but he could release a story about Errol Flynn, seeking A bit of privacy, had hired a steamboat and crew for himself and a mysterious little lady.
(Editor’s note: “2/22/39 HCN ERROL FLYNN RETURNS FILM SNATCHED AT MARDI GRAS FESTIVAL- New Orleans, 2/22 – Errol Flynn, the film star, gave an interview here today- and gave back the film pack he snatched from a photographer last night when the cameramen snapped his picture with a local girl at a Mardi Gras parade.
Flynn was watching the parade with a New Orleans sub-deb. He jumped at the photographer’s flash, demanded the film, and grabbed the photographer’s film pack. He gave it back to a reporter and another photographer this morning. Flynn came up here from Florida on a vacation trip.”) *
The River Queen pulled out.
Five days up the Mississippi on this huge steamer.
Only Amelia and me and the crew.
Every moment was a thing of beauty. We discussed palns for the furure, all the possibilities.She might face divorce, she might lose her child. She was wrong and so was I to be doing what we were doing, we admitted to one another, but we couldn’t help it.
Our only justification was that she said that she didn’t love her husband and I told her I didn’t love Lili.
The world rolled by.
I never saw a newspaper, nor cared less for one. We saw, from time to time, from our stateroom, the shores on either side of the long river. Sometimes the river was muddy, sometimes it seemed to swirl. The shores might be close, or miles apart.
I was in love. I have always loved Amelia and I always will love her. She was, I think, the only woman I ever truly loved till then.
My affair with her continued intermittently for a year or more. I saw her whenever I went East. But there were barriers. Her husband threatened to shoot me. He even came to Hollywood and surprised me one night at my home, pulling a gun and brandishing it. But he didn’t shoot, not having quite gotten himself loaded enough.
Beyond the barrier of a husband who was loath to let her go, Amelia was full of high-society manners that I couldn’t fully cotton to. A bit of stuffiness you might say. She was a living incarnation of the ornate salons of her class, of the leisure and the remoteness from the reality of life on the top.
My inability to get together with her in a real way, the complication she represented in my life, had a deep effect upon me. It sharpened the schism between Lili and me. It made me sense the hopelessness of ever finding a real, a permanent, a workable relationship with any woman. Something- perhaps it was biological-stood between me and a prolonged relationship with even so wonderful a creature as Amelia.
I plunged into picture-making and tried not to figure out the tangle of my relationships. Besides, I now had a new interest: Mulholland House, overlooking the San Fernando Valley.”
* This article date, of course, disagrees with the Dive Bomber timeline.
Gentleman Tim
November 8, 2020 at 4:54 pm
One very compelling reason Errol did not reveal his desire for Dina was because of her age,. She was a “Sub Deb”. That’s also why he so desperately went after the photographer in New Orleans.
Selene Hutchison-Zuffi
November 8, 2020 at 5:28 pm
Again. I stick with Olivia. Is 2020. If it was Dina it would have come out. He didnt know Dina in 1939.
He spoke of the timeframes as 1941. Errol was reported dating Olivia in 1941.
The photographer accident was early 1939.
Errol run after photographers several times. (Found one for example of him in 1949, nothing crazy he just didnt like paparazzi). He was with Bev (15) Gloria Vanderbilt married underage wasnt that crazy. No. There is no evidence that was Dina. He camouflaged the story.
Gentleman Tim
November 8, 2020 at 5:46 pm
Errol knew Dina before Gloria Vanderbilt’s wedding, Selene. That’s not where he first met her. He met and pursued her in multiple states before the GV wedding.
Gentleman Tim
November 8, 2020 at 5:53 pm
Per our wonderful. EFB Author Maria, you may look for a clue in GV’s Black Knight-White Knight:
[img]https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/41qvoukyk5L._AC_SY400_.jpg[/img]
Gentleman Tim
November 8, 2020 at 5:56 pm
Additionally, I believe if you keep searching with an open mind that you may find that Errol’s pursuit of Dina was well known in her family. Perhaps you may find in another very significant family as well.
Gentleman Tim
November 8, 2020 at 6:14 pm
February 22, 1939
Hollywood Citizen News
ERROL FLYNN RETURNS FILM SNATCHED AT MARDI GRAS FESTIVAL
Errol Flynn on vacation trip, having come from Florida, is now in New Orleans, takes film pack from photographer who snapped his picture while watching a parade with a New Orleans sub deb the previous night, and today, gives interview and gives it back.
Gentleman Tim
November 8, 2020 at 6:19 pm
Dina was born on December 29, 1923. Therefore, she was a “sub deb” during the Mardi Gras of ’39. A very powerful reason for Errol to snatch that film.
Gentleman Tim
November 8, 2020 at 8:05 pm
From GV’s ‘Black Night-White Knight’ via EFB Author, Maria. (I have not personally read the book, but Maria is a very reliable source.)
“The Deenie Hutton situation, for example. Errol met her on a train going somewhere and went coo-coo over her ” Errol wanted Gloria to invite Deenie to be a bridesmaid -she refused as Gloria knew she would -as they were never that close. (‘Deenie” is Dina Merrill)
Gentleman Tim
November 8, 2020 at 8:45 pm
From King Karl Holmberg comes this expert information and insight, written hours ago:
Indeed~ Selene, Bonnie, Barb and Tim… one of the truly ELUSIVE mysteries in all of Flynndom.
The account concerning Amelia Holiphant in My Wicked, Wicked Ways is a jumble of highly contradictory and conflicting information that when all taken together would lead one ABSOLUTELY nowhere as to the identity of “the only woman I ever truly loved till then”.
In the end one can, at best, speculate, except that with Tim on the Trail he appears to have a DEFINITE sense of direction… and has all but given away his choice of candidate!
(Despite the fact that Livy is a MOST intriguing possibility.)
Anyway, to bring us ALL up to speed…
Here is the case (with background noted along the way):
Amelia Holiphant was possibly (?) the socialite and actress Dina Merrill. She was born Nedenia Marjorie Hutton on 10/29/23 or 12/9/25, in New York City, the only child of Post Cereals heiress Marjorie Merriweather Post and her second husband, Wall Street stockbroker Edward Francis (“E. F.”) Hutton. Her first husband was Stanley M. Rumbough, Jr., an heir to the Colgate-Palmolive toothpaste fortune and entrepreneur (married 3/23/46). They had three children, of which Stanley Hutton Rumbough (born 1946-48?) was the first and could possibly figure into this story. Also David Post RUMBOUGH b: 27 SEP 1949 and Nedenia (“Nina”) Colgate Rumbough.
There is a news item where they were in attendance (EF, 32, and DM, 17) at a weekend party in Wisconsin in December, 1941. And that’s it. Then, a brief mention in Gloria Vanderbilt’s book, “Black Knight White Knight”, 1987, suggesting Dina’s reluctance to be in his company again at a wedding. And recently, 2014, Dina’s granddaughter, in a magazine brief shared: “I love to hear her tell Hollywood stories. One of my favorites involves fending off the constant advances of the gorgeous Errol Flynn- the hottest actor of his era, the Brad Pit of his time. She was 17, I believe.”
And finally, some additional timeline points: Sean born 5/31/41; Flynn divorced 3/31/42.
From MWWW pg 270-4:
“I received a wire from my sister Rosemary in New York (Rosemary and family in Hollywood for a visit in mid July 1939; Flynn in NYC with father around August 3rd). She was 19 or 20 and she had just arrived from England. I had finished a picture, Dive Bomber, (newspaper reports indicate that Dive Bomber was finished in the 6/23/41- 7/3/41 time frame), and was ready for a change. I tried to tell Lili she ought to stay in Hollywood and let Rosemary and me fling around by ourselves.
“Nothing doing, Fleen. I want to meet your sister. I’m going along.” And besides that I had never been around Rosemary very much since my own childhood.
She was now a young women, and it was different. She was pretty with laughing, bright blue eyes and a tip-tilted nose. She was quiet, conventional, the opposite of me in practically all respects. She could talk German and French as well as she could speak English. She was innocent; yet she was intelligent and poised. I decided to present her to all my celebrity friends and the socialite crowd.
Rosemary and I went on the round of night clubs. We managed somehow to get away from Lili frequently. Lili could find her own pals, and I found reasons for breaking Rosemary away from her.
One night as we sat at the Club 21 I saw someone at a distant table. I know who she is, I said to myself, that’s Amelia Oliphant. Lili had introduced me to her three years earlier.
Amelia was married, beautiful, wealthy, well educated. No Lili was with me to stop me, so I excused myself to Rosemary and walked across the room.
I shook hands with Amelia, bowed politely to her husband, and in a moments talk found out enough to be able to get in touch with her.
From then on, I suppose, I neglected Rosemary.
My courtship with Amelia prospered so swiftly that I could hardly believe it. I knew at once that I was in love, genuinely in love. Everything else, until now, had been meek affairs. She was delicate, fragile, with tiny wrists, tiny ankles, a small neck, minute ears. She had a complexion that was indescribable, and it wasn’t make-up. She had dark blond curly hair. Beyond those physical allures she had a sense of humor, a musical voice, a lovely feminine magnetism.
After a few secret meetings in Central Park,-by which time Lili knew exactly whom I was seeing-we decided we had to get away. We didn’t know where or how. She had a child, she had a devoted husband, but she was ready to forget everything. I felt the same desperate need to be with her, no matter what happened.
One morning about 3 o’clock I waited in a cab outside the apartment where she lived with her husband. Her clothes came down in a large trunk. That is apparently what happens when a prominent socialite abandons home and child and runs off with a star. A trunk comes first. Then she floats down.
Away we went to the airport.
When we got to New Orleans, I said, “Amelia, we’re alone at last. Nobody will ever find us here.”
I no sooner said that, in the airport waiting room, than I bumped into Norval Harris. He was the chap who afterward had the misfortune to go to jail when Huey Long was shot. Norval, a well-to-do big shot o the region, was a night club pal of mine. At once he asked me how he could help out.. I told him I wanted seclusion. “Norval, I have a wife from whom a lion would cower. If she learns I am down here I’ve had it.”
Just before we left New York, I had a phone talk with Lili in which I said I’d be home late. “If you zee zat women again-“ she said in her most menacing French accent.
So I had plenty of reason to want secrecy. Norval sympathized. So what to do?
Then I hit it.
I told him I wanted to hire a steamboat for Amelia and myself. We’d sail up the Mississippi, and we’d have privacy if I went broke securing it.
“What?” said Norval. “I never heard of such a thing. These ships are built to carry five hundred people.”
“I can’t help it. Lili may have me traced. The press watches me the way astronomers watch the stars. We’ve got to be alone.”
“How about a small motorboat?”
“The steamboat. Please, Norval.”
The price was atrocious. It must have cost me a month’s work.
In Norval’s 22-foot-long, gold-plated custom-built car, conspicuous enough to blind people at a hundred yards, we drove to a quiet place along the banks of the Mississippi.
There she was, the River Queen, about a block long, with a high tower, handsome rails, artistically painted, looking like an aged- in-magnolia Southern belle. And for now it was all ours.
I led Amelia out of the car, and we went up the gangplank. I was about to return to the auto to gather our luggage when there, at the top of the gangplank, were two smiling reporters. One had a camera and he was shooting me busily. The other greeted me, talking fast about how well connected they were. What about some pictures and who was with me?
I did the first thing that crossed my mind. With all that passion which I had been reserving for Amelia and hadn’t been able to expend on her yet- because we’d almost never been alone in a place where a little expending could be done- I lifted this newspaper fellow right up in air, as I would a package, and delivered the package over the side over the side of the rail, plump into the Mississippi mud.
I had to get my hands on the camera man. These fellows are usually not too fleet- footed. They have a tendency to hang around until the camera is knocked out of their hands.. I caught this joker about twenty yards from the gangplank and pulled an old aussie trick on him, stamping on his feet while I pushed him. That doesn’t leave a man many places to go.
I grabbed the camera away from him and took out the film. I gave the camera back.
I knew the reporter had the story anyway. He may not have known who was with me, but he could release a story about Errol Flynn, seeking A bit of privacy, had hired a steamboat and crew for himself and a mysterious little lady.
(Editor’s note: “2/22/39 HCN ERROL FLYNN RETURNS FILM SNATCHED AT MARDI GRAS FESTIVAL- New Orleans, 2/22 – Errol Flynn, the film star, gave an interview here today- and gave back the film pack he snatched from a photographer last night when the cameramen snapped his picture with a local girl at a Mardi Gras parade.
Flynn was watching the parade with a New Orleans sub-deb. He jumped at the photographer’s flash, demanded the film, and grabbed the photographer’s film pack. He gave it back to a reporter and another photographer this morning. Flynn came up here from Florida on a vacation trip.”) *
The River Queen pulled out.
Five days up the Mississippi on this huge steamer.
Only Amelia and me and the crew.
Every moment was a thing of beauty. We discussed plans for the future, all the possibilities. She might face divorce, she might lose her child. She was wrong and so was I to be doing what we were doing, we admitted to one another, but we couldn’t help it.
Our only justification was that she said that she didn’t love her husband and I told her I didn’t love Lili.
The world rolled by.
I never saw a newspaper, nor cared less for one. We saw, from time to time, from our stateroom, the shores on either side of the long river. Sometimes the river was muddy, sometimes it seemed to swirl. The shores might be close, or miles apart.
I was in love. I have always loved Amelia and I always will love her. She was, I think, the only woman I ever truly loved till then.
My affair with her continued intermittently for a year or more. I saw her whenever I went East. But there were barriers. Her husband threatened to shoot me. He even came to Hollywood and surprised me one night at my home, pulling a gun and brandishing it. But he didn’t shoot, not having quite gotten himself loaded enough.
Beyond the barrier of a husband who was loath to let her go, Amelia was full of high-society manners that I couldn’t fully cotton to. A bit of stuffiness you might say. She was a living incarnation of the ornate salons of her class, of the leisure and the remoteness from the reality of life on the top.
My inability to get together with her in a real way, the complication she represented in my life, had a deep effect upon me. It sharpened the schism between Lili and me. It made me sense the hopelessness of ever finding a real, a permanent, a workable relationship with any woman. Something- perhaps it was biological-stood between me and a prolonged relationship with even so wonderful a creature as Amelia.
I plunged into picture-making and tried not to figure out the tangle of my relationships. Besides, I now had a new interest: Mulholland House, overlooking the San Fernando Valley.”
* This article date, of course, disagrees with the Dive Bomber timeline.
Karl
November 9, 2020 at 12:50 pm
I would further offer up this PS…
the late Lincoln Hurst, (a PREEMINENT biblical scholar in his day job) simply somehow KNEW many unique bits of information concerning our man Flynn, and saving much of it for the unveiling in his book.
(In the course of his study of Flynn, and I do mean STUDY- he accumulated 2 diaries, MANY unique photographs, personal correspondence- even a lock of his hair… all of the aforementioned I saw myself!)
And in his preparation for the “final” touches to that book (besides getting the necessary permissions for photographs) wrote Dina Merrill requesting permission to reveal her to be the actual Amelia Holiphant.
This was well in advance of his own passing, and… she never responded one way or the other…
So, in the meantime, it is left to others to continue in the search and (in the words of our most generous and dedicated host) continue to plumb the depths of “the mystery and mystique of Errol Flynn”.
Gentleman Tim
November 9, 2020 at 1:45 pm
Thank you Karl. It’s hard to debate Lincoln Douglas Hurst, an ultimate Flynn scholar, with double masters from Princeton, a doctorate from Oxford, a a friend of the Flynn family, not to mention the author of:
[img]http://www.theerrolflynnblog.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/HurstRogueCover1.jpg[/img]
And historical consultant on all things Flynn (and Errolivia.)
[img]http://www.theerrolflynnblog.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2008/11/cap446.bmp[/img]
Selene Hutchison-Zuffi
November 9, 2020 at 9:05 pm
Yes I know of Lincoln. I think we are all good researchers. I wish we could all unite and share our discoveries. I think we all should share what we think and what we found. Only that way the truth will be fully told. I dont think the ultimate biography as been written yet
I wish Lincoln actually wrote the book. Sad he didnt.
Gentleman Tim
November 10, 2020 at 1:29 am
Very few are Flynn scholars in the league of Lincoln, I am certainly not. Before his book on Errol was published, Lincoln died, but his work remains monumental nonetheless. We are walking in the footsteps of magnificent historians and pioneers – Lincoln, Jack Marino, Rudy Behlmer, Karl Holmberg,, Rick Dodd, et al – each of whom have shared their magnificent knowledge and discoveries, and all of whom have heroically championed, empowered and facilitated Flynn resesrch. David DeWitt and Rory Flynn herself are the preeminent leaders in this regard. We are walking in the footsteps of giants. We are not in their league, but should aspire to be.
David DeWitt
November 10, 2020 at 2:38 pm
Over the years I have been in contact with many researchers who have dug deep into Errol’s history and both here on the main blog and on the FB version we have many dedicated and skilled researchers. Linc Hurst, Tom McNulty, Karl Holmberg, Tim Reid, Tina, Bonnie, Selene, Jack, Topper, Robert, those who have written books …I won’t try to name everybody for fear of leaving somebody out are excellent researchers … but of them all my friend Linc was at the top of his game and he was a dear much loved friend. I can’t bring myself to view the memorial above posted by Gentleman Tim because it brings up sensitive feelings to this day … but as I have always said, the blog is not just for researchers. It is for everybody. If you only know Flynn from his movies, you are welcome here and whatever you say will be appreciated and there will never be a feeling of competition to see who is Top Dog or the most informed or the best researcher. Errol Flynn is a fascinating man, and HE struggled to understand himself … what we do is love the guy, and try to understand him, appreciate his legacy, the Mystery & Mystique is a subtitle of this blog for a good reason … all of you are appreciated and respected. We can disagree, but not be disagreeable on these pages. And I am proud of all of you who have come here to spend time …
Gentleman Tim
November 11, 2020 at 2:51 am
To answer questions posed to me, I tried to post the following response on your FB post, Selene. But I received some kind of message that you blocked comments. Is that true?
…
As Errol said, his life was threatened for the relationship. It was not uncommon nor necessarily outrageous in Errol’s day for men in their 20s to marry 17 year old young women. Selene gave some examples and expressed how there would not be much outrage. Plus, Errol had very young girlfriends in PNG, as was the custom, and often took great risks.
Daddy Big Bucks Hutton would likely have been infuriated and tried to sabotage the relationship – perhaps more to prevent perceived fortune hunting than to protect Dina’s youth and innocence. After all, E.F. (Hutton) was a notorious philanderer, divorced from Deena’s mom already (I think). Additionally, he would have known very well that Errol’s best friend, Freddie McEvoy, was notorious on Palm Beach as a fortune hunting gigolo. Mr. Hutton would not likely have approved of Errol, nor would he have been impressed that he was an actor.
Many 16 year olds are able to get away for a few days, especially for big events, like Mardi Gras or Woodstock – either honestly or covertly. Deena was already a world traveler, Mom was probably throwing parties on PB at the time, and Daddy was either busy on Wall Street, sailing on Sea Cloud, and/or fooling around with younger women himself. I believe her cereal heir Mom had serial lovers, too.
But this all begs the big question: If it wasn’t Dina in the Big Easy, then what famous sub deb would it have been? I know of no other viable candidates.
Gentleman Tim
November 11, 2020 at 7:21 am
And here’s Dina talking with Joan Rivers about 16 year olds dating!
Gentleman Tim
November 11, 2020 at 7:59 am
This is how Dina lived:
And here is a wonderful summary of her spectacularly fashionable.life. From about the 19 minute mark it can be seen how she looked when Errol likely first met her. Watching this whole video makes very clear why Errol found her so attractive and desirable. She was a stunningly beautiful woman who seemed also to have a wonderfully positive personality and active life. Not at all like Barbara Hutton, Gloria Vanderbilt, or Doris Duke, or any of that ilk.
Gentleman Tim
November 11, 2020 at 8:09 am
P.S. In light of her frequent world travel, her very extensive involvement in fashion and cosmetics, and apparent family connections in Paris, it would not be surprising at all if Dina was the high society woman Errol saw in Paris when he was with Beverly. She was still very beautiful and active even as a model at that time. For example, see the following photos from 1958.
images.app.goo.gl/pppvZLe9VkdzvhfQ8…
hips.hearstapps.com…