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Archive for the ‘Behind the Scenes’ Category

Wedding Dinner Like Flynn

23 Jun

June 22, 1935

Louella Parsons
Los Angeles Examiner

Lily Damita and Errol Flynn entertaining twelve of their intimates at a wedding dinner.

*******

June 24, 2019

Reine Davies
Hollywood Parade

Lily Damita and Errol Flynn’s honeymoon house atop Lookout Mountain was the “location” for high revelry last Thursday night, when the entertained at a formal dinner, not only to celebrate their marriage the previous day, but Errol’s birthday as well.

The vivacious Lili had the attractive home bounding with valley lilies, white roses and gardenias, and the party was high-spotted when the butler, with befitting fanfare, brought on a huge wedding cake, followed by another for Errol.

Those who wished the Frenchy Lili and her Irish husband great happiness were Dolores Del Rio and Cedric Gibbons, the Countess de Maigret, Peggy Fears, George Cukor, Al Kaufman, Lloyd Pantages, Rene Hubert, and those hospitable romancers, Lyda Roberti and Bud Ernst.

To carry on the celebrating, Al Kaufman later took the entire party to the Miramar Hotel, where they greeted “Colonel” Gus Arnheim, and danced to his very danceable music.

*******

Up on Lookout Mountain with newlyweds Errol and Lookout Lili Flynn

8946 Appian Way on Lookout Mountain in the Hollywood Hills

To the Miramar Hotel in Santa Monica

“Where they greeted “Colonel” Gus Arnheim, and danced to his very danceable music.”
[Look at Lookout Lil’ being used to portray “Sweet Georgia Brown in this Gus Arheim music video! What a coincidence!]

— Tim

 

Le Hollywood Honeymoon

23 Jun

June 21, 1935

Harrison Carroll
Evening Herald Express

Honeymooners Lily Damita and Errol Flynn showed up at the Trocadero only a few hours after their marriage in Yuma and got a royal reception from the stay-up-laters.

*******
“Cafe Trocadero was an upscale nightclub that opened on the Sunset Strip in 1934 and immediately became the place where Hollywood stars went to be seen. Photographs of the stars out on the town at the Troc one night might appear in The Hollywood Reporter the next day, as both Cafe Trocadero and THR were owned by William R. Wilkerson. A black tie French-inspired supper club, at 8610 Sunset Boulevard in the posh Sunset Plaza section of the Strip, it was one of the most famous nightclubs in the world.”

— Tim

 

Captain Cary

19 Jun

June 19, 1935

Lloyd Pantages
I Cover Hollywood
Los Angeles Examiner

Cary Grant is being tested for the lead in Captain Blood at Warners. If he gets it, it will be the second time he has been loaned from his home lot, Paramount, since his advent into the cinema. His only other loan was to Twentieth Century for Born to be Bad. Incidently, Captain Blood was originally slated for Robert Donat until the English courts decided that his contract with Warners was invalid and that he should remain in England with another company.

— Tim

 

Damita Flim Flams Flynn

18 Jun

Marriage Makes News Around the Globe

U.S.A.

June 17, 1935
Evening Herald Express
Flim Flam with Sidney Skolsky

Lili Damita and Errol Flynn have made plans to elope to Yuma this week.

June 19, 1935
Evening Herald Express
Lili Damita, Errol Flynn Flying to Yuma to Wed

It took a handsome Irish actor, Errol Flynn, to lead the elusive Lili Damita, vivacious French film actress to the altar.

At least the couple took off at a Los Angeles airport in a black and yellow “monoplane of romance” and headed in the general direction of Yuma, Ariz., with the announcement that they would be married at a civil ceremony there.

“I’ve been engaged four times, but this is my first marriage,” the actress said. “But our honeymoon will have to wait. Errol has to take some film tests and so do I.”

The plane was piloted by Ted Brown. Bud Ernst, friend of the couple, who had planned to take Lyda Roberti to Yuma also for a double wedding, accompanied them, although his fiance had to stay behind. An unromantic studio called her to work and sent her out on location.*

AUSTRALIA

ROMANIA

* Ernst & Roberti & took the flight and tied the knot a few days later:

1.bp.blogspot.com…

— Tim

 

‘Stage Door Jimmy’

16 Jun

A Jimmy Starr Quiz

According to Hollywood writer Jimmy Starr – aka ‘Stage Door Jimmy’ – he personally witnessed that Errol particularly liked which category of women:

. Heiresses

. Actresses

. Waitresses

. Singers

. Orientals

. Tennis players

. Burlesque dancers

— Tim

 

Who May Olivia have Meant by This?

08 Jun

June 9, 1936

Harrison Carroll
Evening Herald Express

Now, who may Olivia de Havilland mean by this?

In an interview yesterday the youthful Warners star that she ‘could fall in love’ with one of the leading men she has had in pictures.

She insisted it was all theoretical, but Hollywood immediately began to count the lads over the fingers.

They consist of 5. The first was Dick Powell in A Midsummer’s Night Dream. The rest have been James Cagney in The Irish in Us, Joe E. Brown in Alibi Ike, Errol Flynn in Captain Blood and The Charge of the Light Brigade, and Frederic March in Anthony Adverse.

Even if she is just theorizing, Hollywood would like to know which is Olivia’s ‘type.’

***

Lysanda & Hermia

Danny & Lucille

Frank & Dolly

Peter & Arabella

Geoffrey & Elsa

Anthony & Angela

— Tim

 

A Memory of D-Day

06 Jun

I’d Like to Volunteer, Sir’

Just before parachuting into Nazi-occupied Europe, Fayette Richardson asked himself an existential question: “My God Most Powerful, what am I doing here?”

The thought had to be on the minds of myriad soldiers on June 6, 1944. It was D-Day, the launch of a long-awaited campaign by the U.S. and British armies to free the nations of Western Europe that Hitler had conquered.

Mounted from airfields and ports in Great Britain, it was the largest amphibious assault in history. Code-named Operation Overlord, it dramatically changed the course of World War II.

Seventy-five years later, the ranks have thinned of those who braved machine gun fire on French beaches that were marked on their maps with American names — Utah and Omaha. Richardson died in 2010. But fortunately for us and for future generations, he and other veterans kept diaries, wrote memoirs or recorded their recollections.

As a boy in Machias, N.Y., Richardson was fascinated by airplanes and war movies. At 17, he enlisted but didn’t qualify for pilot training. Instead, he was asked to join a parachute regiment’s Pathfinder team: those who jump first and guide those who follow. It was strictly voluntary, his commanding officer said.

“I think of Errol Flynn and how he and David Niven volunteered to do things in ‘Dawn Patrol,’ ” Richardson recalled. He told his commanding officer: “I’d like to volunteer, sir.”

www-chicagotribune-com.cdn.ampproject.org…

— Tim

 

Some Singer

05 Jun

June 4, 1938

Jimmy Starr
Evening Herald Express

Although not rated as singing stars, Errol Flynn, Cary Grant, Gary Cooper, Warren Baxter, Frank Morgan, will, if the occasion demands, tear off a cinematic tune or two.

— Tim

 

Tennis for Not Just Anyone

04 Jun

June 1, 1935

Film Daily

Ralph Wilk
A Little from Lots

Carl Laemmle Jr., David O. Selznick, Pandro Berman, Frederick Marsh, King Vidor, Ralph Bellamy, Sam Jaffee, Paul Lukas, Elliot Nugent, Warren Hymer, Solly Baisano, Gilbert Roland, Wells Root, Ainsworth Morgan, Mickey Rooney, Oliver H.P. Garrett, Gene Thackeray, Albert J. Cohen, Merritt Hurlburd, Edith Fitzgerald, Mrs. E.A. Dupont, Mrs. George Fitzmaurice, Mr. and Mrs. Karl Struss, Charles Farrell, Paul de Ricou, Larry Bachman, Ted von Eltz, Charles Butterworth, Martin Cornica, Errol Flynn, John Krimsky are among the players in the tenth annual motion picture tennis tournament. Frank X. Shields, noted international player, is in the men’s and mixed doubles, but not in singles.

***

Tennis great Frank Shields, 1933

His granddaughter, Brooke Shields, famously filmed much of Blue Lagoon near Errol’s estate on the North Shore of Jamaica, 1980

— Tim

 

A Really Big Show

02 Jun

Errol Shows in Hollywood – Featuring Errol, Lili, Ed & Louella

***

May 30, 1938

Ed Sullivan
Hollywood Citizens News

Errol Flynn gets in June 4.

***

June 2, 1938

Louela O. Parsons
Los Angeles Examiner

Lili and Errol Flynn, no longer “among the missing,” planed on yesterday morning from Chicago.

— Tim