Taking their cue from the success of The Adventures of Robin Hood, Warner Bros. are digging in making preparations for a sequel to be ready for release next spring. Title is Sir Robin of Locksley,, an original by Norman Reilly Raine and Seton I. MIller. Erich Korngold already is at work on the score. Errol Flynn and Olivia de Havilland are slated for the leads. Virtually all concerned in the scheduled follow-up contributed to The Adventures of Robin Hood.
Ronald Reagan: He is an actor who is interested in the welfare of actors and in their position in the industry. He has advanced from a supporting player to a leading man. He is always to know what pictures are being made at his studio, and when hears of any he likes, he makes a bid for it. He is very pleased that he is no longer told they wanted Errol Flynn for a certain picture, but that they are going to give it to him.
Errol Flynn will lay aside his rapier and don boxing gloves for his next picture, The Perfect Specimen, for in this story he will portray a gent who is handy with his dukes. Furthermore, he is going modern in more ways than one. He is to have a smart-cracking leady lady in the person of Joan Blondell. Joan, however, should not be classified as a leading lady, but as a co-star. Incidentally, the Flynn physique can now be bared for the entertainment of feminine fans. The age of chivalry and its uniforms will be tossed out completely.
A strictly modern supporting cast is lined up for The Perfect Specimen. Beverly Roberts will appear in the second feminine lead, and Dick Foran will be on hand in another featured role, while comedy is to be provided by Edward Everett Horton.
Michael Curtiz will direct, and the picture will star almost immediately. It is amazing how fast production is being resumed, now that the producers have reached an agreement with the Screen Actor’s Guild.
The most highly coveted of ornamental plants, the delicate, exotic and graceful orchid represents love, luxury, beauty and strength. In ancient Greece, orchids were associated with virility. There are numerous kinds of orchids but the black orchid is regarded the most intriguing and powerful of all. The Greek word “orchis” means “testicle” and is a symbol of virility. Ancient Greeks believed that they could control a baby’s gender by eating orchid roots. If they wished a son, the father would eat a large and new orchid tuber. If they wished a daughter, the mother would eat a small tuber. This belief, and other perceived magical sexual and spiritual powers of orchids, helped them remain popular into modern times.
Perfect for Virile Errol’s Hollywood Hot House, described below!
May 10, 1938
Harrison Carroll
Evening Herald Express
When Errol Flynn gets back from his Bahamas trip in about three weeks, Hollywood will get a floral novelty. He is bringing several hundred cuttings of a black orchid, found when he and Lili Damita were exploring the southern tip of Cat Cay Island.
His agent got an enthusiastic wire today ordering the ‘for sale’ sign off real estate the star owns on the tip of Laurel Canyon and instructing him to start building a modernistic hot house in which to grow the exotic blooms. Flynn plans to raise them for the Hollywood market.
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Fascinating footage of Cat Cay Island circa when Errol first sailed there, shortly after he purchased Sirocco:
As this is written Flynn is still a holdout on returning to the studio. Warners wanted him badly for Sister Act, but Errol was delayed two and a half weeks in getting away from Miami and, so far, he is refusing to give up his vacation. Quite a turn of fortume for the Irish actor who, two short years ago, was glad to play a corpse in the Case of the Curious Bride.
Extracted and adapted from Swordplay & Swashbucklers: Hollywood Ships & Shores in Miniature
Before the advent of CGI, many swashbuckler films used models of ship and shore, along with full-size ships built on sound stages, to both recreate environments no longer available and also to save money. To some degree the early miniatures may seem quaint today, as compared to CGI, although in my opinion bad CGI is worse–more jarring to the eye–by far than an obvious model.
These old sets and scenes evoke nostalgia for the entire spectacle of old Hollywood swashbucklers: the cinemas with their great screens and clicking film projectors, the lasting impressions left by thundering broadsides and clashing swords, and above all the image of pirate ships in tropical waters. Here are a few:
Above, the Albatross, commanded by Capt. Geoffrey Thorpe (Errol Flynn) arrives in a secluded cove on the Isthmus of Panama in order to raid the silver trains. The film scenes set in the Old World are in black and white, while those in the Americas are in sepia.
Only the film title is actually based on the novel by Rafael Sabatini, which tells the story of an English gentleman who turns Barbary corsair in an act of revenge. The 1940 film is a not even thinly-veiled wartime propaganda piece, albeit an enjoyable one. English sea dogs are renamed in the script as patriotic sea hawks suppressed by treasonous machinations until the doughty hero (Errol Flynn) reveals the treachery and England arms the sea hawks against Nazi Germany Imperial Spain. For more information try The Sea Hawk, edited by Rudy Behlmer. It’s a fun read for anyone interested in the script and the film’s history.
Next, we have the models of Port Royal and the French flagship used in the finale. This image is not of an actual scene from the 1935 Captain Blood starring Errol Flynn, Olivia de Havilland, and Basil Rathbone, but of the set prior to shooting.
Of course, the real Port Royal looked nothing like this. It was actually crammed with English-style brick buildings of two and even three floors, unlike this Southern California Spanish colonial revival-influenced town. But it’s sets like these in Hollywood swashbucklers that have influenced our notions of what the seventeenth century Caribbean looked like. In fact, the region at the time had a wide variety or environments and architecture.
Above we have the battle in Port Royal harbor during the finale of Captain Blood: the Arabella on the left versus the French flagship on the right. N. B. Royal sails (the smallest on the ship on the right, the fourth sail from the bottom) were not used in this era. Their use here is an anachronism. In fact, only exceedingly rarely was the topgallant sail (the third sail from the bottom, used on “tall ships” on the fore and main masts) seen on the mizzenmast or sprit-mast on the bowsprit. I know of only two seventeenth century instances, each noted as being highly unusual. One was Kidd’s Adventure Galley in the very late seventeenth century, the other was a Spanish ship in 1673.
Over-large pirate ship and treasure ship of the “Great Mogul” in Against All Flags. The ships are engaged under full sail, a practice generally not seen in reality except in the case of a running fight, but quite common in Hollywood because it looks good. Here, both ships would have stripped to “fighting sail” for a variety of reasons, including simplified ship-handling in action. The film stars Errol Flynn, as Brian Hawke, in one of his last swashbucklers, followed finally by The Master of Ballantrae in 1953 and Crossed Swords in 1954.
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Scenes from The Sea Hawk using above-described ship models, miniatures, and techniques:
April 26, 1938
Elizabeth Yeaman
Hollywood Citizen News
Warners are remaining absolutely mum on the subject of Errol Flynn, whose picture, Robin Hood, was enthusiastically greeted at a preview last night. Flynn, so far as known, is still aboard his yacht in waters off the Bahama Islands. Frank Heacock, a member of the publicity department who is with Flynn, has communicated several times with the studio, but apparently Heacock cannot get Flynn to say yes or no about returning for Sister Act.
It may be that Flynn thinks his absence speaks for itself. However, with the picture ready to start and the rest of the cast all lined up, a delay in production will be an expensive matter. If Flynn should return promptly, he probably would be forgiven and put right into the picture. But in view of the silence and his absence, naturally the studio is moving to protect itself against delay.
As a result, Jeffrey Lynn has been given extensive tests for the past few days, for the role that Flynn was set to play in Sister Act. Lynn is 27, and those who saw him on the local road show of “Brother Rat” will remember him as a member of that company. Warners were immediately interested in him and sought his release from George Abbott. He was brought into the studio last January, and has been going through a grooming process. His first movie role of any size was When Were You Born?, which has not been released. And he had the role of romantic interest opposite Kay Francis in In Every Woman’s Life.
If Lynn suddenly steps into the lead opposite the Lane sisters in Sister Act, it will be a very sudden leap up the ladder of opportunity.
Haven’t seen it anywhere, but methinketh the name “Jeffrey Lynn” was likely created to sound like “Errol Flynn”. His real name was Ragnar Godfrey Lind.
In the year of 1692 the quiet little village of Port Royal, Jamaica, was startled by a loud rumble, followed by a violent earthquake that slid the entire town into the ocean. On days when the water is clear, sightseerers hire a small boat to visit the site of the tragedy and to view the remains of a city underwater.
There are superstitious natives in that region who claim they can still hear the bells ringing in the sunken church. Intriqued by the fame of the bells, adventure-some Errol Flynn, Warner star, who is cruising with his new yacht in that section, informs me that he is going to make a deep-sea dive in an effort to recover the bells. If successful, the ancient chimes will be brought to Hollywood for exhibition.
May 11, 1937
