The Mail bag brings a request by Errol’s daughter Rory Flynn:
She writes –
— David DeWitt
Nice Mail Bag item from our own Karl Holmberg! Great photos of Rory Flynn & Deirdre Flynn.
Thanks, Karl!
— David DeWitt
Rory Flynn who is a professional photographer and Author decided to have some fun and created a new composite photo of her father Errol Flynn and her son Sean (Rio) Flynn when he was a boy. Result is so sweet she shares it with all of us …
Thanks, Rory!
— David DeWitt
April 30, 1957
Louella 0. Parsons in Hollywood
International News Service
Louella O. Parsons Motion Picture Editor
After six years abroad Errol and Mrs. Flynn (Patrice Wymore) return to Hollywood with baby Arnella.
He’s a real homebody now.
DASHING, happy-go-lucky, colorful Errol Flynn, who lost millions, is poorer today but happier than he’s ever been in his life. And he didn’t hesitate to say that Patrice Wymore (the present Mrs. Flynn) is responsible. Six months ago, Errol owed $900,000. Today, he has paid off $750,000 and sees his way clear to handing over the remainder by December. This is a changed Errol. No longer does that roving eye of his look at every pretty girl who enters a room. In the past, Errol was as wild, unpredictable and full of pranks as anyone I ever interviewed. He always talked with his tongue in cheek, and while I always liked him, I used to have the feeling that some of his nonsense was due to the fact that life was not happy. He asked me to have dinner with him and Patrice at La Rue. You can always depend upon Errol to say something different and to make an interview an occasion, and his first words to me were: “Well, what do you think of her?” pointing to the calm, gracious Patrice. A little embarrassed with such frankness, I countered with, “What do you think of her yourself?” “Well, she’s not my type, but 1 love her,” he laughed. “You know, she saved my life. I’d have run when the going was so tough, but, Pat, without a word of complaint, helped me straighten out my affairs, stuck by me and gave me encouragement. “I never thought I’d ever say I’d be lonely for any woman,” he continued, “but, do you know something? I can’t bear to be separated from her. She gives me a confidence I all but lost during those months of worry.”
The Flynns have been in Europe for six years. They left Hollywood in 1950, and Errol had considerable trouble with William Tell, the picture he was to make in Italy. He says he lost over $200,000 of his own money in it. Errol said, “To show you the kind of girl Pat is, she was expecting our bambina any hour when I got word that I had to be in New York on business. She said, ‘You go right ahead and I’ll wait until you return to have the baby.’ I got back Christmas Eve to find that she’d invited 30 people for Christmas Day egg nogs. On Christmas I rushed her to the hospital where the baby was born within a few hours. We just left all our guests at the party. “I never thought I’d want to settle down to family life,” Errol went on, “but you should see me now. You know how I never wanted domesticity. Whenever it threatened me I’d go away on my boat or take a picture assignment away from home. We now have the greatest family life you ever saw.
“Since I’ve been back in Hollywood,” he said, “we’ve had Pat’s parents from Kansas, her grandmother, and all the children with us My two little girls, Deirdre and Rory, by my marriage to Nora Haymes, spend every week end with us, and our daughter Arnella loves playing with them.” His fourteen-year-old son, Sean, by his marriage to Lili Damita, is the spittin’ image of Errol. Patrice told me Sean spent a little time with them in Europe. “He is so handsome and so intelligent,” she said. “He’s now in Florida with his mother.” A woman who can praise a previous wife’s child is all right for my money. Usually there is a feeling of resentment, but if Pat has any feeling of this sort she’s a great actress. Errol said, “At Universal-International they gave me some of rry ‘face’ back with a great part in Istanbul. I hope to come back and make another picture for them; it’s a nice studio. I’ll return in December.” “Didn’t you almost turn in at Warner Brothers studio by mistake?” I asked him. He started his career at Warners with Captain Blood [the film which made him] one of the top stars in the country.
Errol is older now and wiser. He has taken off some of the weight which so shocked me when I first saw him after his return here. But he’s still and always will be the same charm boy. When domesticity threatened in the past, he’d be off to other shores.
— Tim
USA Release on February 17, 1945
Rory on Op Burma & the Baron:
…
The Operation Burma! Trailer
…
— Tim
On the fourth day of Christmas
Errol gave to us
One golden film.
The Captain Blood premiere..
A club of four-hundred frauleins…
And a visit to Sydney from a very famous singer….!
___
December 28, 1963
Sydney Morning Herald
American Singer Arrives
The American singer Dick Haymes, for years a close friend of Australian-born actor Errol Flynn, arrived in Sydney to see his friend’s birthplace. Haymes said he and Flynn had often talked about Australia, and they had planned to make a visit together before Flynn’s death. Haymes, now 45, arrived at Kingsford Smith Airport by T.A.A. from Perth. He expects to find time to see Sydney beaches during his 28-day appearance at Chequers night club.*
* Chequers was one of the hottest night clubs in the world, the Copacabana of Down Under.
___
First, he sang Errol’s song!
…
Then he married Errol’s Nora!!
Then he went to “Errol’s birthplace”...
— Tim
September 23. 2015
THE NEWS LEADER
THEATER
BRIDGEWATER— Bridgewater College presents Errol Flynn Day in a two-part discussion and film screening program at 3:30 and 7:30 p.m. Sept. 25. During the day at 3:30 p.m., Chad Trevitte shares his “Swashbuckling on Screen” discussion with the audience, followed by a screening of the film, “The Sea Hawk.” Starting at 7:30 p.m., Errol Flynn’s daughter, Rory Flynn, will be the evening’s guest speaker and share her program, “Stories of My Father,” followed by a screening of “Captain Blood.”
Charles Culbertson, director of media relations, and Stanley Galloway, professor of English and director of the film retrospective program, got together to bat around ideas for interesting guests. “Since I knew Rory Flynn,” says Culbertson, “I said, ‘Hey, how about Errol Flynn’s daughter and it kind of took off from there. I met her on- line several years ago. I was selling something on eBay related to her father and she bought it, and I emailed her to ask if she was Errol Flynn’s daughter and when she said yes, I said, ‘I’m not going to sell this to you. You can have it,’ and from that correspondence we just kept up via email. This will be the first time I will actually physically meet her so its exciting to meet the daughter of one of my childhood heroes.”
Rory Flynn prepared the program, “Memories of My Father” to keep her father’s memory alive. “The public Errol Flynn is very well known, but the public doesn’t know very much of him as a father — away from the cameras and the press,” says Culbertson. “He was famous not only as a movie star but as an adventurer, a ladies’ man. His exploits rivaled anything he did on the screen. What he’s not so much famous for is what he was like away from those movie cameras, away from the press, and those are some of things Rory will touch upon when she gives her presentation.” “From what I have read, he was highly intelligent and well read. He could talk on a huge variety of topics. And this was a man who was kicked out of every school he attended as a boy. He taught himself. He was charming and urbane, and he had that ability to charm the birds out of trees. At the same time, he was a man’s man — an adventurer, loved danger, loved sailing the world in his yacht; he sought adventure and experiences he never had — a true adventurer.”
According to Culbertson, this is what the real Errol Flynn was like and that is part of what her daughter will share during the film retrospective. “Flynn himself was such a fascinating character that I thought the human connection with him would be interesting to those people who do remember him, and also it would be a good introduction to our students about a man and an era of filmmaking,” Culbertson says.
This year also marks the 80th anniversary of “Captain Blood” which made Errol Flynn a star.
What:: Errol Flynn Day at Bridgewater College, Flynn’s daughter to be keynote speaker.
What: Errol Flynn Day
When; 3:30 p.m. and 7:30 p.m. Sept. 25 3:30 p.m. Chad Trevitte’s “ Swashbuckling on Screen,” followed by “The Sea Hawk” 7:30 p.m. Rory Flynn’s “Stories of My Father,” followed by “Captain Blood”
Where: Cole Hall, Bridgewater College, Bridgewater Cost
Both events are free and open to the public.
More info www.bridgewater.edu…
PHOTO COURTESY OF CHARLES CULBERTSON. Errol Flynn (right) duels to the death with Basil Rathbone in the 1938 classic “The Adventures of Robin Hood.”
— Tim
September 22, 1946
LOS ANGELES
SPECIAL TO THE MINNEAPOLIS TRIBUNE
Men, Women and Yachts Don’t Mix
Errol Flynn is reported by some quarters to be a direct descendant of Fletcher Christian, the man who started the mutiny on the Bounty. Mrs. Nora Eddington Flynn, his youthful bride, is believed in other quarters to be a direct descendant of Capt. Bligh, the commander of the Bounty. The other quarter in the case of Mrs. Flynn is John Decker, artist, who comes to this conclusion in explaining the “mutiny” on Flynn’s yacht Zaca while cruising the Pacific off Mexico. Decker and three others of the ship’s personnel left the Zaca at Acapulco, Mexico, because, Decker asserts, Nora had taken on some of the characteristics of a bucko mate in the old days when the clippers sailed around the Horn.
AMONG TILE SHIP’S COMPANY WHEN THE ZACA SAILED. This junket was a combination pleasure-science-professional affair. Flynn wanted to get away from Hollywood. He bought the Zaca last October, as a successor to the Sirocco, where there had been many gay parties which, perhaps, Flynn wanted to forget. To make it all serious, he was going to collect marine specimens. There were 17 aboard when the yacht sailed, and a representative group they were, indeed. There was Dr. Theodore Thomson-Flynn, Errol’s father, who is a zoologist and dean of the school of science at Queens college in Belfast, Ireland. And there was Prof. Carl Hubbs of the Scripps Institute of Oceanography at La Jolla, Calif., a noted ichthyologist. Tanks, torch lights, tackle arid enough formaldehyde to pickle half the fish in the ocean. Prof. Hubbs could be dropped blindfold into any part of any sea and tell at once where he was by examining the local fish.
Ted Stauffer, a Swiss composer and erstwhile night club operator in Mexico City, was also aboard. Stauffer took along a camera, planning to make magazine pictures. Howard Hill, the famed toxologist, and Jerry Courmoyay also were present. They planned a color picture of the trip, featuring Hill s archery and the various flora and fauna encountered on the way. Chris Duke and Kurt Hartzog, two Hollywood bit players, were included in this part of the project.
DECKER CAN PAINT. And then there was Decker, really a great painter, who figured on getting a lot of marine life into color. Decker has painted some pretty queer fish in his time and this wouldn’t be a novelty. He hit on a highly-appreciated medium some years ago when he began copying the old masters and putting actors’ faces on them. Two of his most famous in this line are Queen Victoria with the face of W. C. Fields and the famed Blue Boy of Gainsborough with Harpo Marx’ pan. In serious vein, Decker has taken numerous prizes at exhibitions. There were also a professional captain and two working sailors, named Wally Beery (not the actor) and John Vincent. And, in addition, Nora.
NORA GETS HER SEA LEGS. They had been gone nearly a month when the ketch-rigged schooner hove-to at Acapulco, where almost at once it became apparent that there had been a clash of personalities aboard. The main narrative from now on is that of Decker.
THE CRISIS NEARS. It was while they were hanging around Socorro that Decker detected the growth of a quarterdeck manner in Nora. Once, he said, she directed the guests if you could call them guests to pick up their coffee cups after a meal on deck and carry them back to the galley. Another time, life went on, several of the ship’s company were sitting in the saloon and Nora said: ‘Everybody get up on deck.” Anyway, things came to a 5- head right there in Socorro lagoon. Seaman Berry dived into the water “with a spring harpoon gun. He was going after a shark. But instead of harpooning the shark he harpooned his own ankle. The harpoon has a nasty barb and the wound was serious. Dr. Thomson-Flynn and Prof. Hubbs operated on the leg and removed the weapon. However, there seemed to be some danger of infection and Decker finally persuaded Flynn, over Nora’s protests, to proceed to Acapulco, 1,000 miles away and the nearest spot for competent medical aid. So, once in Acapulco, Decker marched ashore with the wounded man, and stayed ashore. Duke and Hartzog, the film players, left with him. He emphasized that his relations with Flynn remained friendly.
FOUR-LETTER WORDS Nora’s comment on all this was that the amateur sailors expected to be treated as guests [rather than working crew.] This was very unsatisfactory, she remarked in a phone conversation with her father.
NORA AND ERROL, ABOARD HIS YACHT. Actor Flynn has always had a yen for the sea. “Women, men and yachts don’t mix,” he said. “Just as soon as Nora got her sea legs she took over command of the boat and started shoving everybody around. I’ve known her ever since she married Flynn but I never really had any conversation with her. The talks I had with Flynn were man talks, and she couldn’t enter into them, so I never really knew her until I went on this boat. “It’s too bad this little mosquito has come between Flynn and me. I can’t really lay my finger on anything important she did. It was a constant pin-pricking process calculated to wear me down. “She greeted me with lhe remark when I went aboard at Santa Monica: ‘You’re not serious about going on this trip? You must be kidding.’ I told her I was serious and I wasn’t kidding and her face fell a mile. “She began at once to make things disagreeable for me, blaming me for everything that went wrong, always yelling around the boat when anything was out of the way: ‘Oh, that’s Decker.’ ” The yacht stopped at Cedros Island, off the coast of Lower California, and then proceeded to the Revilla Gigedo Islands, southeast of the tip of Lower California and pretty well out in the Pacific. The serious fishing began at Socorro Island in that group. Dr. Thomson-Flynn and Prof. Hubbs are dedicated scientists. They have loaded the boat with dredges.
Decker insisted he was right in using four-letter words. Nora has won this time, anyway, if it was her aim to get Decker off the boat. Flynn plans to continue through the canal and to Europe. At present he is trying to assemble a crew of experienced hands for the trip across the Atlantic. All the fuss could be, of course, a vagary such as is often attributed to expectant mothers, who are known to ask for things like strawberries out of season and the like. Nora is expecting another child next March. And, anyway, her influence will soon be gone. She expects to leave the yacht in the West Indies and fly back to Hollywood.
— Tim
