A Tribute to Errol – Eternal Voyager – June 20, 1909 to Infinity
What is the indirect connection between “The Golden Record” that went into space with Voyager in 1977
and Errol’s death in Vancouver, 1959? (Focus on the brilliantly-played music)
— Tim
Would Errol have been better than the usually great Fredric March in this film? I believe so.
October 10, 1935
Los Aneles Times
I Cover Hollywood
By Lloyd Pantages
Warner Brothers are so enthused about Errol Flynn’s work in Captain Blood that they would like to give him the lead in Anthony Adverse only there’s a slight catch, as they already signed Fredric March for the part. Nevertheless, seeing how Errol is under a long-term contract to them and March isn’t, maybe they’ll give it to him and put Freddy in something else.
…
— Tim
“The big trouble with the 14th century insofar as the movies are concerned is the fact that most of the ladies dressed like nuns.”
…
October 8, 1937
The Evening Herald
Klamath Falls, Oregon
DREARY DUDS IRK STYLIST AT FILM LOT
By Frederick C. Othman
Hollywood Citizen News
The big trouble with the 14th century insofar as the movies are concerned is the fact that most of the ladies dressed like nuns. This is particularly bad for movies in full color, and it explains why Milo Anderson, Warner Brothers costume expert, is cheating on history today in dressing the folks appearing in Hollywood’s latest version of Robin Hood.
This picture first was made in 1922 by Douglas Fairbanks, when movies were black and white and noiseless. Warners’ version calls tor full color and a couple of million dollars to make it realistic. Nearly $500,000 of this money went to Anderson for fancy clothes. He was ready for a real spree in silver cloth and slashed velvet and whatnot, when he discovered that all the women of Robin Hood’s time. from the queen on down to the lowliest peasant, dressed mostly in black and dark brown. They all wore coifs, such as nuns still wear, and shoes which look a lot like gymnasium slippers.
CHEATS A LITTLE
“So we had to cheat a little.” young Anderson said. “We put In a spot of color here and a splash there. We had to.”
His spots and splashes looked pretty gay to us. One bolt of cloth, with silver threads running through the gold, cost Warners $25 a yard. “But it looks too fine,” he said. “So I had it dyed a light blue and I told the dyer to be a little careless. The result looks like it may really have been made six centuries ago. He had to make 45 costumes for the ladies in the picture, of whom Olivia de Havilland, as Maid Marian, is the most important. Each dress took about 40 yards of velvet and other rich cloth, which cost an average of $4 a yard.
The result was inclined to depress Anderson. He cheered up only when he got the chance to rig out the men in the film. “They were the gay sex in those days,” he said. “They went in for slashed silks and doublets and whatnot, all in the brightest color combinations available.”
Anderson displayed the costumes he’d built for Errol Flynn as “Robin Hood”; Ian Hunter as “King Richard”; Claude Rains as “Prince John”; Basil Rathbone as “Sir Guy”; Alan Hale as “Little John”; and Eugene Pallette as “Friar Tuck.” These garments really were something with long tight pants of rainbow hue and doublets and tabards and curves of spots and stripes and curlicues.
On the same movie lot we met Mrs. Felix Mauch, wife of the general agent in New York city of the Toledo. Peoria, and Western railroad, and her two 13-year-old sons, Billy and Bobby. Mrs. M. stands by to keep an eye on her famous twins, who now are starring in “Penrod and His Twin Brother.” But it doesn’t do her much good. “I can’t tell them apart myself,” she confessed. “When one of them needs a whipping. I have to spank both of them to make sure I’m punishing the right one.”
…
Milo Anderson designs for Robin Hood:
— Tim
October 7, 1937
Elizabeth Yeaman
Hollywood Citizen News
Old Sol is being amplified by electrical generators on the location site of The Adventures of Robin Hood at Chico. When the sun failed to beam, the company employed the generators. Then the generators failed. At least one of them blew out yesterday afternoon. Al Alborn, the company manager, promptly called the studio to order another generator to be sent out. Fifteen minutes after his call was received, the new generator was on its way to Chico, 600 miles away. It arrived in time for the regular shooting schedule this morning.
— Tim
Los Angeles Times
I Cover Hollywood
By Lloyd Pantages
Errol Flynn is making a personal version of Another Dawn, in which he is appearing with Kay Francis, with a 16-millimeter camera, all of which he will dub with sound-effects and narration.
…
— Tim
October 4, 1938
Los Angeles Examiner
Louella Parsons
Errol Flynn heard yesterday for the first time that he had pneumonia when he was so critically ill last week. So remarkable was his recovery that he is expected to go home today, and Lili Damita will sail Thursday on the Queen Mary. Errol’s doctors have ordered him to rest for two weeks, after which he is to report to Warner studio for Dodge City.
…….
October 5, 1938
Los Angeles Evening Herald Express
Harrison Carroll
Errol Flynn went from the hospital to Edmund Goulding’s house at Palm Springs. He wanted to take a trip to Mexico City, but doctors vetoed it.
…….
Perhaps Errol just needed some nursing South of the Border, rather than what he was receiving in the U.S.:
If only he could have waited till ’42, when Lili became a nurse…
— Tim
October 2, 1935
Los Angeles Examiner
I Cover Hollywood
By Lloyd Pantages
After Captain Blood is released Warners are a cinch to tear up Errol Flynn’s contract and slip him a new one. They originally signed him literally on a shoe string and they did nothing about him until the other studios started bidding for his services. Now that he’s doing so magnificently in the Blood epic, he’s sure fire for better consideration.
…
— Tim
Olivia de Havilland starred as Maid Marian in the 1938 “The Adventures of Robin Hood,” which was filmed in fall of 1937 in Bidwell Park in Chico. (Enterprise-Record files)
Chico was charmed by Olivia de Havilland, and she by Chico. She graced Bidwell Park in the form of Maid Marian, but it was not Bidwell Park. It was Sherwood Forest in the 1938 classic “The Adventures of Robin Hood.”
It was in late September 1937 that she descended the train into Chico as a 22-year-old. The trees were aflame with orange, red and yellow tinges.
The train held not only her, but all the stars, technicians and props Warner Bros. needed to create a miniature Hollywood set on the banks of Big Chico Creek.
“I thought Chico a most charming town and its citizens welcoming and kind,” de Havilland wrote in a 1987 correspondence with the Chico Enterprise-Record from Paris.
The headquarters were set up in the form of tents by Sycamore Pool. Bidwell Park became a medieval forest.
According to a Sept. 15, 1937 Chico Record clipping, the park had been discovered by a Warner Bros. location scout and film director William Keighley.
“There was no location in California that could compare with Bidwell Park. I can’t understand why Chico has not been discovered before as a site for movies. I must confess my ignorance,” Keighley said.
“When Robin Hood was named for production, I thought a trip to the East or at least the Midwest would be necessary. I did not have any idea that anything such as Bidwell Park existed.”
More than 100 extras were hired for $10 a day. If someone was willing to let actor and famous archer Howard Hill shoot their padded body with an arrow, they could earn an extra $150 a day.
The film had an original budget of $1.25 million, yet it rounded the $2 million mark, making it the most expensive film Warner Bros. had produced to that date.
In an October 1987 interview with this newspaper, the late television director and producer Rudy Behlmer said, “(de Havilland) was so beautiful then, the rest of the cast, the breadth of the staging. There wasn’t anything you could point to and say, ‘Well, that didn’t work very well.’”
One reason the aesthetic was so appealing was the new three-strip Technicolor process used to create it. Three separate strips of film were exposed simultaneously in the same camera, providing rich color on screen.
“This was the best example of that early Technicolor process with the forest scenes and the costumes and so on. And it is still considered one of the best examples of Technicolor,” Behlmer said.
After six weeks of shooting, de Havilland, as well as the rest of the crew, left Chico on Nov. 9, 1937, to the sight of 500 well-wishers gathered at the train station to bid them adieu. The Chico High band played music for them. The north section of Ivy Street was named Warner Street to commemorate the time of production.
It wasn’t until May 1938 that “The Adventures of Robin Hood” was released to great critical and popular acclaim. On May 14, 1938, it arrived at the Senator Theatre for a three-day run.
The actress came back to Butte County in October 1979 to speak at the Oroville State Theatre.
She remembered Chico as a small, quiet town with an “adorable little hospital.”
A 1987 E-R clipping said that one of the many locals to “fall under the dark-eyed beauty’s spell” was Doctor Newton Thomas Enloe, the founder of Enloe Medical Center. He let de Havilland witness an operation firsthand after she kindly asked.
She and other cast members attended square dances in Paradise on the weekends. The fiddle music delighted them, as did the hospitality of the locals.
“A very kind local gentleman taught me the steps and I joined in with immense pleasure,” de Havilland recalled.
During her stay in Oroville, her motel room was broken into. The doing was not that of Robin Hood. It was at 10 a.m. at the Villa Motel (now Villa Court Inn) that $4,959 worth of clothing and jewelry were stolen and the rest of her belongings scattered about.
Even so, she showed her gratitude to the audience for having her.
“Thank you for recognizing me,” she said.
De Havilland’s acting prowess, among other things, created a fairy tale out of Chico that, like her impact on Hollywood, lasts to this very day
— Tim
