— Tim
Archive for the ‘Gentleman Tim’ Category
Sailing on Zaca!
12
Dec
Ahoy All Good Flynnmates
Yesterday morning I had the zensational pleasure of swilling my first cup of “Zaca Tea”. Sent to me by a good friend and preeminent Flynnian scholar, I zealously recommend to all this elegant, inspiring and energizing blend of “super-teas”.
Here’s my very first Zaca, sailing over the Florida Intracoastal. Flynn himself cruised these very waters on various voyages through South Florida. One of his favorite places to hide from Lili & JW was in an oceanfront front home,two miles ahead (south) of this location, across from the Cloisters of Boca Raton.
— Tim
The Flick That Made Flynn
06
Dec
Errol’s Elephants
06
Dec
Star Wars Took Charge of Errol’s Elephants
We all know the Star Wars movies are a feast for the eyeballs, but when you think about it, they are also a special treat for the ears, too. According to Mentalfloss, legendary sound designer Ben Burtt got his star on Star Wars fresh out of the University of Southern California’s film school and “was tasked with coming up with a completely new and organic soundscape for the movie.”
Burtt created Chewbacca’s iconic voice by blending the vocalizations of a bear, a lion, a walrus and a badger. The beloved pint-sized droid R2-D2’s endearing chirps were made using loops on a synthesizer matched with beeps and boops modelled after baby coos performed by Burtt. The infamous deep breathing of the evil Darth Vader was created by putting a microphone inside the regulator on a scuba tank.
But our favourite iconic sound, the swooshing shriek of the film’s TIE fighter engines, are — brace yourselves for a shock — the sound of an elephant call mixed with the sounds of a car driving on wet pavement. According to the blog Unidentified Sound Object, Lucas had seen a documentary about the Battle of Stalingrad and told Burtt the sound of the Nazi rockets would make a great laser-gun noise.
That’s when Burtt stumbled on recordings of some stampeding elephants from an old Errol Flynn movie, which he mixed with recordings of cars speeding through puddles in a rainstorm. He slipped the sound in for a screening at the last moment, and everyone went wild. “I’d really put it in because I had no other alternative, but it got great reviews, so naturally it became the sound of the TIE fighters,” the sound legend said.
— Tim
The Sirocco Calls In
05
Dec
Morning Bulletin, Rockhampton, Qld. June 18, 1930
OFF TO NEW GUINEA.
____________
FOUR ADVENTURERS.
_______
The Sirocco Calls In.
_______
ONE TIME CRACK YACHT.
Long, narrow-waisted, black-hulled,with towering stick scowing above the wharf decking, but bearing little signs of the buffeting she has received on her voyage, the Sirocco, late of Royal Sydney Yacht Club, now bound for New Guinea and the beche de mer and trochus shell, nine days up from Sydney, lies at the old town wharf.
Fifty years old, but as staunch as the day she slipped into the water for the first time at the Circular Quay slips, the Sirocco will know a different atmosphere now from the one she has been accustomed to so long. Her youthful crew know where they are going. First there is Captain Errol Flynn, late Cambridge undergrad, now planter on a lonely island 40 miles from mysterious Madang, the island of the “White Kanakas,” where he dispenses high and low justice to his 40 odd natives and bears his share of the white man’s burden.
“This is our navigator,” said Captain Errol Flynn, from under his blankets when a “Bulletin” man stepped aboard. “You’ll have to excuse me. Just a touch of malaria. But meet the crew.” Mr. T. Adams, another young Englishman, is the navigator. Close clipped moustache, accent, and physique brand him unmistakably the product of University. Mr. C. Burt, another member of the crew, is also an Englishman, and Australia is represented by Mr. Rex Long-Innes, son of Judge Long-Innes, who is going forth with the others to seek his fortune in the South Seas.
When they talked it was mostly about their argosy.
‘”She’s old, but she’s good,” says the skipper, with pride in his voice, and he told the “Bulletin” man how she logged 14 for three hours in a howling south-easter that piled them up in Coff’s Harbour with a foot of water in the cabin.
“Forty-four feet over all, with a Swedish oil engine, we’re not worrying about the weather,” they add. Already they have had their share of adventure on the trip. They made their names and took their baptismswhen they crossed the bars in northern New South Wales in howling gales. They went ashore in Great Sandy Straits, and had more than their share of rough weather but builders builded well 50 years ago, and lean-waisted as she is the Sirocco has ten tons of lead under her keel.
In the cabin, where the captain lies with malaria, where the “crew” sit round in shorts, and where two business-like rifles are fast in clips above the bunks, one might have thought yesterday that the Sirocco had reached to sea to seek their fortunes.
— Tim
After Party Ghost List
20
Nov
Ghost List for the After Party: A to Z
Hedy, Bev and Niv’ all are said to have said that Errol’s powerful spirit remained here after his death, or at least occasionally returned. The Hamblems and Nelsons believed so, too – along with other presences at Errol’s favorite old haunt, Mulholland Farm. Paranormal activities have abounded on the Zaca, too, it’s been said.
So, whether you believe in ghosts, or not, let’s explore the legends. Don’t be afraid of no ghosts.…. That’s the spirit.
If they exist at all, were they somehow connected to Errol, or perhaps to James Lankershim, the land’s former owner, or someone else entirely???
What are your thoughts?
Here are some things that were reported at Mulholland after Errol’s death:
Apparitions All through the House
Breaking of Glass
Cheap Perfume in Upstairs Room, and Elsewhere
Cynical Presence
Dark Presence
Doors Locked from Inside Empty Rooms
Entire House Shook When Errol Died
Errol in a Tuxedo, Celebrating New Years
Haunted Casino
Man in the Mirror
Powerful Sexual Energy
Spectral Naked Lady
Spooky Den
Top of the Stairs
Unexplainable Noises
Ghost Ship?
… Zaca, too, it’s been said
Clinking of Glasses
Errol Pacing the Deck
Laughter of Women
Dancers on Deck
Silhouettes of Partiers On Board
Sounds of Music
Uproars of Laughter
— Tim
Q.T. on the QM.
24
Oct
Thanks to the astonishing detective work of our Captain, Sir David DeWitt, we know exactly where Errol stayed on his famous and somewhat fateful cruise to see the Spanish Civil War aboard the RMS Queen Mary in the Spring of 1937.
Here, along with an original photo of Errol on the bow, are some photos taken aboard the QM earlier this week:
Flynn off to Spain, via Lili & Paris. Image from Josef Fegerl’s Errol Flynn, Dr. Herman F. Erben – A Frienship of Two Adventerers 1933-1940
A Flynn Fan from Florida
Flynn’s Room M012, formerly M38 (Interior Photos to be Posted at a Later Date)
Where Errol Drank & Entertained
Where He Bought His Cigs & Sundries
Where He Dined
A Flynn Fan from Germany, Doing a Titanic Kate Winslow Tribute to Errol She Said!
— Tim
IN WITH FLYNN – THE FLYNN CROWD
15
Sep
ERROL HAD AN ASTRONOMICALLY LARGE, VARIED AND WIDESPREAD NUMBER OF FAMILY, FRIENDS, COLLEAGUES, ASSOCIATES & AFFILIATIONS.
THIS POST IS TO HELP CREATE A COMPREHENSIVE RECORD OF PEOPLE AND GROUPS OF PEOPLE WHO HAD A ROLE IN ERROL’S EXTRAORDINARY LIFE – FROM A to Z – In Repeated Cycles – from Aadland to Zimbalist and Beyond!
I’ll start posting alphabetically, with hope and encouragement that all of you will join in by posting other names & photos of The Flynn Crowd!
— Tim
Errol Strikes Gold in New Guinea – By the Light of His Hurricane Lamps
29
Apr
When Errol moved to Salamaua, Papua New Guinea, he “plunged” himself into reading great works of literature – through “Russian novelists, Greek philosophers, French writers” he nightly “skipped, waded, muddled” and “sometimes swam well”, by the light of his hurricane lamps, fondling these books as if [he] were running his hands through a lovely woman’s hair”. “An inner need for learning sprang up in [him]” “to connect with the ideas of the world” – a need that proved pivotal in his life. This was where and how Errol found gold in New Guinea, as he put it.
Here’s Errol’s own description of that transformative time & experience:
And here’s pre-WWII Salamaua, where Errol lived:
Errol’s Jungle Reading List included:
Aristotle
Honore de Balzac
George Baudelaire (Correction: that should obviously be Charles Baudelaire!)
Victor Hugo
Guy de Maupassant
Plato
Edmond Rostand – Errol particularly liked the “beauty of style” of Rostand, who he read with the help of a French dictionary, and said had the “greatest influence upon [him]”. He specifically cited L’Aiglon, the story of Napoleon II. I imagine he also read Rostand’s Cyrano de Bergerac. Here’s some images of the books as Errol may have seen them:
Robert Louis Stevenson
H. G. Wells
Here are some 1930 images of The Outline of History, as Errol may have seen it:
— Tim
