“10 favorite Western movies”
Number 1:
“They Died with Their Boots On” (1941): Friends of mine know how much I enjoy the old Errol Flynn movies, and this might be the best of them all.
— Tim
Author Archive
It Happened in Little Havana — — Errol Flynn’s Ghost @ The Tower Theater
07
Mar
Saw a premier of ‘Errol Flynn’s Ghost’ tonight at the Tower Theater on Calle Ocho, in Little Havana, Miami. It is a superb documentary, written and directed by an extraordinary talent, Gaspar Gonzalez.
Author and historian Megan Feeny is also sensational in this, drawing on her research from her new book, ‘Hollywood in Havana’.
Making everything about this film even better is the prominent inclusion of magnificent writer and Flynn biographer (and EFB Author) Tom McNulty, which adds very significantly to its caliber, credibility, and importance. Thank you, Tom.
Every fan of Errol and/or Hollywood’s Golden Age should see this fascinating, first-class documentary.
It’s playing one more time in Miami, this Sunday, 1 PM @ The Silverspot Theater.
— Tim
Writer, Explorer, Bicyclist
05
Mar
FLYNN QUIZ:
What famous writer and explorer bought a plantation from Errol?
CLUE:
In addition to writing and exploring, did a lot of bicycling, too!
— Tim
The Unsinkable Secret of Sherwood Forest
04
Mar
First emerging from medieval ballads in the 14th century, the legend of Robin Hood was expanded during Shakespeare’s day, and Sir Walter Scott took it up in Ivanhoe in 1820. Hollywood picked up the tale with Errol Flynn’s masterpiece in 1938, and later with Disney’s popular animated 1973 version, followed by more recent versions including a film by Ridley Scott.
Oklahoma has its own inspiring connection to this timeless tale. In 1943 a band of roughnecks in their teens and early 20s volunteered for a secret mission to go abroad to assist in developing an oil field located deep in England’s Sherwood Forest. Oklahoma-based Noble Drilling Co., along with Fain-Porter signed a contract to drill 100 wells to help fuel England, mired in World War II and desperate for oil, merely for costs and expenses.
England’s oil production had shot from 300 barrels of oil a day to more than 3,000 barrels of oil a day.
By the end of the war, more than 3.5 million barrels of crude had been pumped from England’s “unsinkable tanker” oilfields.
Today, The Oil Patch Warrior, a seven foot bronze statue of an Oklahoma roughneck holding a four foot pipe wrench stands near Nottingham England.
www-examiner–enterprise-com.cdn.ampproject.org…
— Tim
Errol Flynn In Town Tonight
02
Mar
New article on when Errol appeared on In Town Tonight BBC show humorously trying to convince host John Ellison to get his cheque book out to help fund the completion of The Adventures of William Tell.
www.bbc.co.uk/archive/hollywood/10219.shtml…
“In this light-hearted interview, swashbuckling Hollywood star Errol Flynn talks with John Ellison about the filming of his current movie, which recounts the story of folk hero William Tell, and explains that he is in London to see whether anyone can lend him the £50,000 he needs to complete it.”
As Flynnmates know:”Errol was unable to raise the money he needed for his William Tell project and the film was never finished.”
For more on Errol’s William Tell,see shangheinz’ superb posts.he’s the no tell errol tell authority.
The William Tell trail- Errol Flynn`s swashbuckling swansong
— Tim
SEE ERROL FLYNN’S GHOST — IN MIAMI!
28
Feb
MIAMI FILM FESTIVAL 2019
ERROL FLYNN’S GHOST: HOLLYWOOD IN HAVANA
FLORIDA PREMIERE
SHOWTIMES:
@ The MDC Tower Theater: Wednesday March 6th @ 6:30 PM towertheatermiami.com…
@ The Silverspot Cinema: Sunday March 10th @ 1:00 PM downtownmiami.silverspot.net…
DIRECTED BY Gaspar González
Country: USA
Language: English, Spanish
Subtitles: English
Running Time: 50min
Film Year: 2018
Category: Documentary Achievement Award
Cuba’s pre-revolution obsession with Hollywood cinema in the first half of the 20th century led Havana to create some of the most majestic movie palaces of their time in the Americas, where millions of Cubans spent their evenings gazing at the silver screen stars of yesteryear. One of those stars, Errol Flynn, Hollywood’s most famous swashbuckler, traveled to Cuba in late 1958 to overcome his stage a Hollywood comeback, but instead found himself in the middle of a real-life adventure more improbable than the plot of any film he ever made: recklessly endorsing the rhetoric of Fidel Castro and the soon-to-come revolution. Flynn self-produced a disastrous B-movie, Cuban Rebel Girls, and died soon afterwards.
Miami filmmaker Gaspar González finds in Flynn’s demise a fitting parallel to the end of Hollywood glamor in the Havana movie palaces. Although many of the great Havana movie houses are still standing, they are haunted by their long-gone heydays. With a detailed and careful eye, González reflects on the remnants of a film culture that so deeply affected and defined a nation’s collective memory.
SHOWTIMES:
CREDITS
Director: Gaspar González
Producer: Gaspar González
Screenwriter: Gaspar González
Executive Producer: Gaspar González
Production Company: Hammer and Nail Productions
Music: Mickey de Grand IV
Cinematographer: Richard Patterson
Editor: Jorge Rubiera
Cast: Scott Eyman, Megan Feeney, Christina Lane, Nat Chediak
— Tim
Flynnfluences in Star Wars
27
Feb
It was just announced that Star Wars Episode IX, will be released in December. Though the “final chapter of the Star Wars saga”, Errol’s inspiration on the series has been profound, from the very start, as confirmed by the quotes below.
Lucas and Spielberg
“If one man defines the era of swashbuckling Hollywood action that George Lucas and Steven Spielberg (used as a model) it’s Errol Flynn.”
Harrison Ford/Hans Solo
“Ford’s Han Solo is a watershed creation … a conscious throwback —you can see Errol Flynn’s lightness there …”
Billy Dee Williams/Lando Calrissian
“I patterned Lando after actors I saw when I was a boy, like Errol Flynn and all those swashbucklers. I always liked those bigger-than-life characters.”
“Lando is fun-loving, kind of roguish. He was a swashbuckling character, kind of an Errol Flynn. I wanted to make the character bigger than life.”
Samuel K. Jackson/Mace Windu
“Errol Flynn films he watched as a boy informed his role in Star Wars.”
“What I love about ‘Star Wars’ is that it’s your basic Errol Flynn movie, but it’s science fiction,”
“For me, it was the ’70’s Errol Flynn movie. And as a kid I’d always wanted to be … that swash-buckling pirate, you know — jumping over stuff and getting busy that way. And all of a sudden we got some space buccaneers.”
Alden Ehrenreich/Hans Solo in Solo: A Star Wars Story
“Ehreneich channels a young Errol Flynn as this galaxy’s favorite rogue.”
Carrie Fisher
“Not only all this, but we find Olivia de Havilland as Maid Marian, sporting that imperious hauteur and even Princess Leia’s hairdo long before they were fashionable.”
Light-Saber Duels
Errol Flynn’s charming scoundrel may be closer in character to Han Solo than Luke Skywalker, but his acrobatic swordplay – especially the famous fight with Basil Rathbone – became a crucial touchstone for the latter’s saber choreography. Bob Anderson was a fencing choreographer and double for both Flynn (in the 50s) and for Star Wars.
John Williams
The composer of this matinee favourite was one Erich Wolfgang Korngold, from whom John Williams derived a brassy, fanfare-rich approach to orchestration and even a theme or two – Korngold’s score for King’s Row (1942) was used as a temp track while Lucas was cutting Star Wars together.
— Tim
Summer Up the Hudson
26
Feb
KORNGOLD AND HIS WORLD @ The Bard Music Festival/Summerscape, 2019.
Weekend One: August 9–11
Korngold and Vienna
Weekend Two: August 16–18
Korngold in America
…
The Bard Music Festival/Summerscape is “a highlight of the musical year” (Wall Street Journal) and “the most intellectually ambitious of America’s summer music festivals.” (London Literary Times)
The subject of this season is a composer who straddled the worlds of fin-de-siècle Vienna and the Golden Age of Hollywood. “Korngold and His World” comprises an illuminating series of chamber, vocal, operatic, and orchestral concerts – as well as pre-concert talks, commentaries, and panel discussions – devoted to the life and times of Erich Wolfgang Korngold (1897-1957).
…
Perhaps the greatest musical prodigy since Mozart, before turning twelve Korngold had already been proclaimed a genius by both Gustav Mahler and Richard Strauss, while his concert and operatic works were routinely premiered and championed by the likes of Bruno Walter, Artur Schnabel, Jascha Heifetz, and Lotte Lehmann. Combining voluptuous chromaticism, soaring melodies, opulent orchestration, operatic leitmotifs, and a nostalgia for the Romanticism of his youth, Korngold’s distinctive compositional voice would revolutionize film music, winning him two Academy Awards along the way. His music was performed for European royalty and at both of Reagan’s inaugurations, while his influence continues to permeate the soundtracks of more recent films, like Star Wars, E.T., and Raiders of the Lost Ark. In light of this, he is surely “one of the most influential composers of the 20th century.”
…
Korngold’s first full-length score was for Michael Curtiz’s Captain Blood (1935), which not only established the template for the sound-era Hollywood swashbuckler but also marked Errol Flynn’s emergence as a major star.
www-broadwayworld-com.cdn.ampproject.org…
A TASTE OF SEA HAWK
— Tim
Errol & Livvie at the Library
25
Feb
“One Eyed Willie’s ship, The Inferno, was 105 feet long and took 2-1/2 months to construct. It was modeled after Errol Flynn’s ship in The Sea Hawk (1940).”
— Tim
