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Archive for the ‘Behind the Scenes’ Category

VIRUS X!

11 Jul

“VIRUS” X STRIKES BING CROSBY AND ERROL FLYNN!

In late 1947 or early 1948, Errol and Bing Crosby were stricken by a very serious and mysterious disease the Los Angeles Health Department of Health called “Virus X”. Ultimately, a ‘Virux X’ epidemic spread through California, Oregon, and Washington. In Greater LA alone, there were hundreds of thousands of cases. It contributed to the early death (at 53 years old) of Hollywood star Warren Williams.

It’s not known how Errol got the virus. Perhaps kissing the wrong person?

— Tim

 

Sailing the Bounding Main

09 Jul

July 8, 1938

Louella O. Parsons
Los Angeles Examiner

Talked with both Errol Flynn and Lili Damita together and both deny that Lili is planning to take a holiday in Europe. These two kids have been married four years now and while occasionally they may have a little spat as do all married people, they both tell me there has never been any thought of divorce between them. Errol is bringing his boat to California, the very one which caused Warners so much worry while the adventurous Errol was sailing the Bounding Main and couldn’t be located and he and Lili will probably take their vacation together. Lili probably has the right idea. When Errol wants to go away with his men friends fishing or on a holiday, she gives him her blessing.

Sailing along circa the Spring ’38


July 8, 1938

Harrison Carroll
Evening Herald Express

Lili Damita and Errol Flynn are touring the late spots together again, so their troubles must be patched up.

Speeding along a year or so later

— Tim

 

Opening of the Vogue

08 Jul

July 8, 1935

Reine Davies
Hollywood Parade

The Vogue Theater will be the bright spot on the Boulevard tomorrow night, when Winnie Sheehan’s brother, Howard, opens the ultra-modernistic theater with Ladies Crave Excitement and the thriller, The Phantom Fiend.

Howard opened his first theater in 1916 in San Francisco, has since been vice president of Fox West Coast Theaters, and there is little he doesn’t know about “packing ’em in.”

Felicitating friends who will be on hand tomorrow night are Winnie Sheehan, Jesse Lasky, Sam Briskin, Louis B. Mayer, Carl Laemmle, Norman Foster, Evelyn Knapp, H.B. Warner, Thelma Todd, Hardie Albright and Martha Sleeper, Esther Ralston, Jack Oakie, Jack La Rure, Charles Ray, I. Wolfe Gilbedrt, Bill Robinson, Bert Wheeler, Monte Blue, Patricia Ellis, Alice Faye Lily Damita and Errol Flynn, and loads of others.


Images from the excellent Los Angeles Theatres website.

Original Architectural Drawings for the Ultra-Modern Facade

Fifty-two or so years later with another famous Hollywood American Australian

— Tim

 

Behind the Green Light

06 Jul

“You’ve done it, Newell, you’ve found a vaccine.”

Before Covid-19, there was Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever.

Before Dr. Anthony Fauci, there was Dr. Errol, I mean Newell, Paige.

“In the 1937 movie Green Light, Hollywood heartthrob Errol Flynn plays a doctor investigating a devastating new ailment plaguing a remote town in Montana. The story of a heroic doctor infecting himself with the disease to find a cure is fictional, but it’s based in truth. In the early 1900s, Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever, a deadly tick-borne disease, was erupting. No one knew exactly what caused it or how to cure it.”

— Tim

 

“Destination Unknown” Quiz

05 Jul

July 4, 1936

Louella O. Parsons

Los Angeles Examiner

Errol Flynn away on a three-day holiday, destination unknown, just for a rest before he starts that new picture.

….

Where did Errol go? and What “new picture’ was Louella referring to??

Added @ 5:15 PM EST

— Tim

 

The Honeymoon’s Over —— 1, 2, 3 – Kick

30 Jun

Only two days after their “Slight Misunderstanding”, Errol was out on the town at the Cubanola, a nightclub that opened that very month, at the height of Hollywood’s conga craze.*

June 30, 1938

Harrison Carroll
Evening Herald Express

Errol Flynn, sans Lili Damita, was having a fine time at the Cubanola…

* Here’s Senor Fleen two years later getting his kicks at the La Conga Club in Manhattan with model Patricia Byrnes in a conga line led by a young Desi Arnaz.

— Tim

 

“A Slight Misunderstanding”

29 Jun

June 28, 1938

Evening Herald Express

ERROL FLYNN, WIFE ‘SCENE’ EXPLAINED

Errol Flynn and his wife, Lili Damita, explained today it was a “slight misunderstanding” that sent Lili running half the length of an airport runway chasing him and a transport plane.

The Irish actor, so-called “glamour boy” of the movies, needed to grow a beard for a picture, it seems, and decided to be alone while he did it. He went to San Diego, for two days but neglected to tell his wife. She was waiting at Union Air Terminal when he flew in.

Everybody got out of the plane but Flynn. He saw the flash in Lili’s dark eyes and an angry foot-tapping. Waving the pilots to go ahead, he ducked down in the seat while the plane taxied toward a hangar.

Lili burst through the gate and pattered down the runway at a dead run, clothes fluttering in the propeller’s breeze, an angry airport guard chasing after her.

“Come on, come out, honey,” she cried. Flynn looked out and shook his head. The airport guard ordered Lili off the field. She started off and then the plane started again, and away she went after it.

An airport car and two more guards caught up with Lili and bundled her out the gates.

Flynn popped in to studio car and sped off.

A studio spokesman said that both are happily at home and Flynn had explained away a “slight understanding.”

Union Air Terminal is now known as “Hollywood Burbank Airport”. It’s been said that “Union Air Terminal was always a better place to see movie stars that any place in Hollywood.”

— Tim

 

Seventy Years Ago Quiz — June 27

26 Jun

Errol wrote this person a letter seventy years ago tomorrow, June 27.

Before Errol employed him or her, this man below employed him or her:

youtu.be/B25lNnrjCAw…

One of the two stars doing the heavenly dancing in this film clip also has a connection to our mystery man or woman:

youtu.be/ILxo-TUkzOQ…


ADDED ~ 6PM EST

It was one of these two people:

Errol wrote on stationary from this motel:

— Tim

 

Errol’s 32nd Birthday Party — Hadler Had it Coming?

26 Jun

June 26, 1942

Los Angeles Times

— Tim

 

June 25, 1876 – “a la Errol”

25 Jun

“a la Errol Flynn”

“There is a fascination with the battle unlike interest in any other historical event that comes to mind,” Scott said, standing on a spot overlooking the treeless ground where 250 white stones are scattered up and down the ridges marking where each soldier fell.

Indeed, the battle of the Little Big Horn has moved Hollywood to produce 41 movies featuring Custer`s Last Stand, including ”They Died With Their Boots On,” in which Errol Flynn played Custer bravely fighting to the death, bullets spent, waving his saber as hordes of Indians finally overran his men. ”Perhaps the most amazing thing that our research last year and this year indicates is that there really was a last stand and that it was just where they put the marker,” Scott said.

He said bullets, bones, arrowheads and other items recovered by the archeologists show that the stand took place at the top of ”Custer Hill,”

where an obelisk and 50 white stones are supposed to mark where the vastly superior force of Indians finally overcame the last defenders of the 7th Cavalry.

Scott said the National Park Service will publish the archeological findings of his study in late June or early July.

About 300 other books have been written about the battle as well as hundreds of academic papers, many of which seek to dispel ”myths” about the world-famous battle, Scott said.

Many authors of Custer literature have singled out the picture of a hilltop last stand as one of the major myths of the Custer legend. But, Scott said, the current research has used sophisticated computer analysis and other techniques to ”essentially confirm that there was indeed a last stand” a la Errol Flynn.”

He Died with His Boots On

youtu.be/ZDKnyMgFFxI…

— Tim