Duncan Regehr in My Wicked, Wicked Ways: The Legend of Errol Flynn, Broadcast TV, 1985
— Tim
Author Archive
Vying for an Errol
10
Feb
“A bumper year of great performances and thrilling productions”
www.tasmaniantheatreawards.org…
— Tim
Young Flynn in Cairns
08
Feb
Cairns, Queensland’s northern-most city, is an international gateway to Australia and the Great Barrier Reef. For much of the twentieth century, including during Errol’s youth, its economy depended on sugar growing and farming. Later tourism became the dominant industry.
The city looks east to the Coral Sea at Trinity Bay, which was named by James Cook in 1770. It had an excellent harbor, “lush soil” and rich mineral mines, all of which drew a motley population, including a very significant percentage of fan tan playing immigrant Chinese.
This extraordinary setting eventually developed and became widely known for a uniquely wild environment, with gambling dens, opium smugglers, Japanese geishas, and an infamous red light district.
And (therefore) then along came Flynn:
“By 1923, Cairns’ “polychromatic population” had reached 8000, enough for Cairns to be declared a city, if a very rough and ready one.
Among its visiting chroniclers was the Hobart-born Errol Flynn, then still an aspiring unknown. He found his way to the Chinese Fan-Tan gambling joints, where he witnessed an operatic all-in brawl that seems to have provided some inspiration for his swashbuckling film roles:
“It was canecutters versus Chinese,” he records in Beam Ends, his supremely unreliable celebrity memoir: “Every moment more and more belligerents joined in the scrap, for no good reason other than it was anyone’s fight. Chinamen rushed about shouting and squealing in their high-pitched voices.
In the middle of the room, Chinamen, canecutters, Malays, half-castes, dark-skinned Italians and all other multi-hued nationalities were mixed up in a confused and struggling mass, amid the tumult and babel of shouted curses and imprecations in unknown tongues.
After a while the thing assumed an impersonal aspect. A man recognised an enemy simply because he happened to be nearest to him or of a different colour. A carload of police arrived on the scene and laid heavily and indiscriminately with their truncheons.””
Perhaps a similar scence: The Battle of Paramatta Park – Cairns, July 1932.
How it looks today, in the Post Flynn era:
— Tim
The Story of Orry
07
Feb
Errol’s Fellow Aussie, Friend and Behind-the-Scenes Hollywood Costume Designing Superstar, Orry-Kelly.
See what he had to say about Errol
— Tim
The Jury is Out
05
Feb
On February 5, 1943, the jury deliberated, whether to send Errol to San Quentin, or Mulholland Farm (or the State Farm)
The Jury Members were:
Ruby Anderson
Lorene Boehm
Charles Boyd
Loren Curtis
Elaine Forbes
Homer Jacobsmeyer
Jennie Larson
Mildred Leahy
Nellie Minear
Lena Morgan
Georgette Welch
Theresa Wood
—
Alice Chalfant (Alternate)
— —
Juror Selection and Dismissed Jurors:
— Tim
From “Hail Hero!” to “Hail Caesar!”
04
Feb
Clooney Plays ~Caesar, ~Flynn & ~Barrymore???
So they say! Et tu?
With Scarlett as ~Esther and Brolin as ~Mannix!!
A Late Golden Age Farce:
— Tim
Deirdre in “Hail Hero!”
04
Feb
Great article and photos of Deirdre, stand-in for Michael Douglas, in his first starring role,
“Hail Hero!”, published on one of the most significant days in the history of mankind.
— Tim
