Dear Flynnstones,
some say love is in the air, but I say Flynn is all around.
An Errolyte is never safe, ey? While watching the Scorsese classic Taxi Driver, you can witness how an “original tile of Errol Flynn‘s bathroom“ is peddled to DeNiro by his pals.
This may have given an idea to some of our blog members here. I think there were one or two flynnmates who secured a piece of ceramics from his pool at Mulholland, of even from his estate in Jamaica.
Since I can‘t remember who, will the real shard shady please stand up?
Enjoy,
— shangheinz
David DeWitt
June 11, 2024 at 10:36 am
My friend Dennis Mullen sent me some pieces of tile from the bathroom of what we thought at the time was his house on Navy Island. Some doubt about that now, it seems …
shangheinz
June 11, 2024 at 12:51 pm
A guess concerning authenticity from the late great Dennis Mullen is as good as any. What a grand gesture of friendship.
David DeWitt
June 13, 2024 at 10:38 pm
Dennis was every bit the charmer as Errol Flynn. Once, when he was working for the Errol Flynn Marina doing some publicity work, he decided he might explore Navy Island and found the house we assumed was Errol’s having the same kind of windows in from where Errol is seen busy on a small typewriter. Some doubt has cropped in since but it was in the same position as the one that Errol said he liked to to look across at his hotel,, the Titchfield to see if the bar was open and if it was, he would row over there in the mornings.
Dennis was told that NOBODY had access to the remains of the hotel as it was now a military base. But he went there anyway and was rebuffed, as everybody said he would be. So, later he came back armed with cocktails and after a few bits of conversation with the guard, was let in like Flynn! Not just once but several times. He discovered the hotel has 3 pools, not just one, and one of them was a swim-up bar, likely the first of its kind in the Caribbean. He found the ballroom with its tiles floors and a few standing walls. And a hidden path with shading trees on each side that led to the hotel. Alone on that trail Dennis said he half expected Errol to show up on the other end. Not the first time he walked in Flynn’s footsteps. In Havana, where Dennis led 12 years of his Havana Writer’s Retreat, he lived in an apartment on the edge of the square that Flynn is seen walking across in the opening of THE BIG BOODLE. He investigated many of Errol’s haunts there. Back in Jamaica he sat at Pat Wymore’s table for her 84th birthday. Many tales did my dear friend Dennis Mullen have to tell … I miss him a lot, I must say. I’d stay, he said, but there are alligators in the bathtub …
shangheinz
June 12, 2024 at 6:32 pm
News just in. A piece of flagstone from Errol`s pool at Mulholl ended up in the hands of one of the most knowledgeable flynnmates. Ricky Nelson never missed it. Ro Flo holds it dearly.
David DeWitt
July 3, 2024 at 12:04 am
Yes, it is the house said to have been owned by Errol when he said that he liked to row over from Navy Island to the Tichfield Hotel when he saw it was open. Now, Dennis Mullen being a charmer, decided against all advice to try to enter the area (now a military base) to seek out the remains of the hotel and its pool. Dennis began to chat up a guard and despite a rebuff at first charmed his way in by offering the guard a sturdy cocktail or two … and in like Flynn he was! Not once but several times. He found the hotel had not one but 3 pools and one was a swim-up bar which he believed was the first of its kind in the whole of Jamaica. He found the remains of the ballroom and it few standing walls, and the tile on the floor was intact. He sat with his soldier buddy and toasted THE ERROL FLYNN BLOG and the old boy and found a trail to the hotel that was hidden under overtopping trees as it must have been in Flynn’s day, and walking up the trail alone he half expected Errol himself to show up from the other end, he told me. Not the first time Dennis Mullen walked in Errol Flynn’s footsteps as he used to give writer’s seminars regularly in Havana, Cuba (being Canadian) and stood everywhere he knew Errol to have been. There is a square that Flynn Flynn is seen walking across in THE BIG BOODLE and Dennis’s apartment in Havana was on that square.