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Mail Bag! Errol Flynn and Olas Atlas!

01 Feb

Author Sue Carnes writes to us:

I am right about now writing the part of my new book about the Belmar Hotel that includes stories about Errol Flynn. He was one of the many exciting individuals who spent time on the Bay of High Waves (Olas Altas) in Mazatlan. His special interest was the Belmar where he kept a room, but also a certain establishment called the Stratosphere on Ice Box Hill. That is the hill in the old photograph, and the Belmar is right in the middle of the Bay of High Waves pictured there a little to the right between the trees. Errol’s yacht the Sirocco was often anchored right out front as he made his way to Mazatlan or further South to Acapulco. Errol’s room was No. 35 which could never be rented later. No one could stay there. The room was remodeled and renumbered. Any insight to any of this would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

Sue Carnes

Thanks, Sue!

Author Sue Carnes

— David DeWitt

1 Comment

Posted in Books about Flynn, Flynn and..., Flynn-related, Mail Bag, Main Page, Requests, Sirocco, The Early Errol, Travels

Mail Bag! Errol Flynn: It’s in the Bag?

28 Jan

Tis a bit of a puzzle, as always, with dear ol’ Errol! Shari Lee and her husband Rob write to us:

Hello,

While researching Mr. Flynn I ran across your email address. I’m hoping you can provide some guidance. My husband has what we are sure is a piece of Mr. Flynn’s luggage. We are trying to find someone who can authenticate this for us. We do have pictures. Please let me know if you can help!

This piece of luggage has been to many places, it looks like it has been to japan, hawaii. Scandinavia, egypt, switzerland, france, austria, GB, pennsylvania, Ohio, Yellowstone, Argentina, Columbia, Barbados for sure. The franks and stamps are mostly in foreign language and we can’t interpret. The Japanese stamps are cuneiform. The airline stickers are Matson, Western, NPA, and a Scandinavian line that depicts an early seaplane. The luggage piece checks out as period correct. It appears to be colored hide over wood construction with gun metal brass hardware. It has very nice age patina with scuffs and handling wear and is quite nice looking. The amulet inside is fairly large and we believe is solid copper. If any more photos or info is needed let us know.

All I have is my camera on this phone. My husband researched all of the stickers and he is pretty certain they are authentic to the period. Not re-pop’s. It was acquired from an older person who had it in storage for several decades. Prior to that it was used as a stage prop in a folk group.

Here is what we see:

A label that says 1939 National Air Races, Cleveland, OH September 2,3,4
A destination label that says French Line, S.S. Champlain sailed 23 July 1939 destination Hotel – Ritz.

A destination label that says Cunard Line RMS Queen Mary First Class, deck and room A 23 sailing 6-8-1938, New York to South Hampton c/o Lady Julian (?) Windham, London England.

One with his name is Cooks Nile Service, S.S. Delta, along with another one that says Hastings Barbados Marine Hotel Ste. 22 , with a stamp that says Coral Bay-Marine. He stayed at Eastern Exchange Hotel Port Said Egypt per one label.

There are about 26 stickers and 2 postage stamps affixed to the exterior and numerous franks and custom stamps. The travel stickers are both air and sea. This is a carry-on size piece of luggage.

Thanks, Shari

Thank you, Shari & Ron!

Now, can any of you Flynn Detectives match Errol’s travels to this beautiful vintage travel bag?

— David DeWitt

26 Comments

Posted in Collectibles, Flynn and..., Flynn-related, Mail Bag, Main Page, Travels

Taylor vs. Flynn

25 Jan

PULLING NO PUNCHES: All Time Awesome Aussies

Extracts from: “DVD REVIEW: ACTOR ROD TAYLOR, FORMER BOXER AND LIFESAVER, PULLS NO PUNCHES”

By Simon Caterson January 25, 2018

As an all-purpose Australian leading man of the 1950s through to the ’70s in Hollywood, Rod Taylor was the natural screen successor to Errol Flynn. Flynn has maintained legendary status despite or because of his scandalous private life as well as his sparkling performances on screen, inspiring many biographies and biopics. Meanwhile, the impressive acting career of Taylor, who died in 2015 at the age of 84 after appearing in more than 50 feature films has been neglected.

The DVD/VOD release of Rod Taylor – Pulling No Punches is a welcome corrective as well as being a thoroughly entertaining documentary.

Flynn and Taylor belonged to different generations, though they played a range of not dissimilar big screen roles, from romantic comedy through to Westerns and war films, from pirate epics to contemporary thrillers. Taylor arguably played a wider variety of characters than Flynn, who died at 50.

Flynn’s career was constrained by working within the studio system at Warner Brothers and limited for the most part to working with certain directors and co-stars. By contrast, Taylor’s career, which commenced a few years after Flynn’s death, saw him work with a range of directors including Alfred Hitchcock, John Ford and, in his final performance he played Winston Churchill in Quentin Tarantino’s Inglorious Basterds.

In his prime, Flynn was almost impossibly handsome, while Rod Taylor came across as more of a regular guy. Bright-eyed and with a wide smile held in place by a strong jaw, there is an open faced, slightly rough-hewn look about Taylor – a certain down to earth, can-do quality that he seemed to project. He was a good-looking bloke, on whom, it seems there were no flies.

There are actors who may not win awards or garner critical accolades but they do win the hearts of cinemagoers who just want to enjoy seeing them on the screen. That easy-going, exportable charisma was there in Paul Hogan in his heyday and you can see it in the screen presence of an actor like Hugh Jackman or the Hemsworth brothers, a combination of mildness and athleticism with an apparent absence of pretension, angst or vanity.

In Pulling No Punches, Bryan Brown equates the international acting career of Rod Taylor with a big adventure for an Australian of that era in particular. Like many of the more authentic movie stars, Taylor was not the product of a posh drama school but had done a few different different things and seen a bit of life. So too had Errol Flynn, though Taylor seems to have been more level-headed in handling the pressures of fame.

— Tim

3 Comments

Posted in Flynn and..., Flynn-related, Gentleman Tim, Main Page, New Articles

Mail Bag! Adventures of Robin Hood Mistakes!

21 Dec

The Mail Bag brings us this interesting list of mistakes in Errol’s classic The Adventures of Robin Hood from our fellow Flynnmeister Jan Vander vliet:

Enjoy!

Revealing mistake: When Will Scarlet finds the injured Much in Sherwood Forest about three quarters of the way through the movie, a white vehicle can be seen travelling from right to left in the background.

Revealing mistake: When Robin jumps off the scaffold after being saved from hanging, you can see one of the soldiers spear tips bend under his weight.

Continuity mistake: In the scene where Robin is rescued from hanging, watch the shadows on the church in the background. It keeps going in and out of shadow.

Continuity mistake: After winning his fight with Guy of Gisbourne, Robin races to Marian’s door with his badly bent sword in hand. The moment he enters Marian’s chamber, the sword is perfectly straight again.

Continuity mistake: When Robin is competing in the golden arrow archery contest, Marion’s veil alters between being behind her right shoulder to in front of her shoulder, depending on which camera is shooting her.

Continuity mistake: The horse Robin is on when he is exhorting his men to return to Sherwood and the one he is on when he rides over to the right to slash the portcullis rope could be two different horses as their saddle cloths are different colours.

Continuity mistake: In the final swordfight, Basil Rathbone lunges past Errol Flynn, who dodges him and leaps to the floor below. Rathbone continues on dropping his sword at the base of the steps. In the next cut, however, the sword lies between Rathbone and Flynn – a good eight feet away – allowing Robin Hood to pick it up gallantly and offer it back.

Continuity mistake: The scene where Robin is being chased through Sherwood Forest, early on in the film, is supposed to be taking place at night. But, at several times, blue sky can be seen overhead. This was corrected on the DVD.

Continuity mistake: After escaping from hanging, Robin heads for the castle gate. The first time we see it, the portcullis rope Robin later cuts is hanging away from the castle in a nice loop. In the next shot it is hanging vertically, but reverts to being a loop again for the rest of the scene.

Continuity mistake: At the beginning of the movie when Errol Flynn is escaping from within the castle he starts with five arrows in his quiver. He shoots ten, and when he’s finished he still has five left.

Continuity mistake: Robin, in his escape from the scaffold, pauses on his horse before the portcullis and exhorts his men to return to Sherwood. He then rides over to the right, draws a sword from behind him and slashes through the rope which activates the portcullis and rides the rope to the top of the wall. No sword is seen on the horse when he is exhorting his men.

Continuity mistake: When the soldiers have the man tied to some wine barrels, they begin filling a metal jug, but then they throw a wooden mug over his head.

Continuity mistake: In the scene near the beginning when Robin is in the “great hall” — a spear is thrown at his chair. He arises in time to avoid injury, but the spear goes through the back of the chair. However, the next time you see the chair, there is no hole in it.

Continuity mistake: When Robin escapes from hanging, he jumps from the scaffold onto his horse and rides off, all with his hands tied behind his back. When he jumps, just briefly before the shot changes, you can see his hands break the breakaway bindings and grab the horse’s saddle.

Continuity mistake: In the feast in the forest scene which occurs after Robin Hood and his men capture Sir Guy’s entourage, Robin sits next to Marian and offers her a roasted bird. She refuses the bird, but when the camera cuts back to Robin he has a mutton leg. Next the camera goes back to Marian who looks at Robin who now has the bird agaain.

Thanks, Jan!

— David DeWitt

12 Comments

Posted in Films, Flynn-related, Mail Bag

Mail Bag! Crossed Swords Remembered!

14 Dec

Vincenzo Castaldo writes us about his new book on the filming of Errol Flynn’s Crossed Swords circa 1954. You may remember him from a previous post last year. His book is finished and was the center of attention in the village of Lauro at the Lancellotti Castle where the movie was filmed when Vincenzo (who lives in Lauro) held a public showing of the film, and discussion of his book. It was a grand affair attended by all the dignataries of the town. Vincenzo speaks no English but does well with Google Translate:

Crossed Swords – Stories and anecdotes about the Holy Grail by Errol Flynn (Il Papavero).

(Il Papavero is the book’s Italian Publisher. It may also be purchased online, he says.)

The book, the result of a three-year research conducted by the author mainly between Naples and Rome, unveils the gestation and elaboration of “Crossed Swords” (M. Krims, 1954), a compelling and unknown film from ’52 and ’53 made in Cinecittà , at Real Bosco di Capodimonte in Naples and in the Irpinia villages of Lauro and Marzano with the main interpreters Errol Flynn and Gina Lollobrigida.

The book is divided into four parts. The first offers a historical synthesis of swashbuckling, which found fertile ground first in America and then in Italy since the Thirties, and pays tribute to stars such as Burt Lancaster, Sean Connery, Antonio Banderas and Johnny Depp who, in the wake of the mythical Errol Flynn, have made the caste of the hood famous. The second focuses exclusively on the cinematographic work of Milton Krims, revealing the artistic and technical cast, the plot, the places and the various assumptions about how the troupe has landed in Lower Irpinia.

The third part includes a series of stories, stories and very funny anecdotes retrieved by the author, who interviewed the exclusive diva Gina Lollobrigida, Prince Pietro Lancellotti with his sisters Ginevra and Maria Cristina, who met the main interpreters during the realization of the film in the family castle, and several citizens of the time of Lauro who have lived the period of filming or have participated in the film with more or less important roles.

The fourth and last part includes news and various curiosities about the vicissitudes of the company during the period of the film, the journalistic reviews of the major newspapers of the time and those “found” by four great critics of Italian cinema, including the late father of David Gian Luigi Rondi.

Everything is accompanied by scene photos and amateur shots found by the author.

The book uses the preface by Valerio Caprara (well known film historian and journalist) and the afterword by Alessandro Cecchi Paone. A well respected journalist).