— Don Jan

Bung ho, old boy!

— Don Jan

— Don Jan

— Don Jan

Worth watching indeed!

— Don Jan

— Don Jan

— Don Jan

• He was a charming and magnetic man, but so tormented. I don’t know about what, but tormented.
  • Olivia DeHavilland, actress

• He was all the heroes in one magnificent, sexy, animal package. I just wish we had someone around today half as good as Flynn.
  • Jack L. Warner, studio boss

• He was one of the most poetic men I have ever met, and he could describe trees and flowers and the wonders of the ocean in the most beautiful language.
  • Earl Conrad, journalist with Flynn’s autobiography

• Errol had the capacity to make everything an adventure – Even a quiet stroll through a simple country lane came alive either through a quick remembrance or a philosophical thought or a simple observation of the ecological patterns of the earth trees and flowers and their support system. His was a mind relentlessly searching.
  • Patrice Flynn, wife

• He was a bit of a sadistic devil, was Errol, but it was done with such charm and sense of mischief that he was always forgiven.
  • Stewart Granger

• He was one of the wild characters of the world, but he also had a strange, quiet side. He camouflaged himself completely. In all the years I knew him, I never knew what really lay underneath, and I doubt if many people did.
  • Ann Sheridan, actress

• He had the charm of a mischievous small boy, humorous and impossible to dislike.
  • Arthur Hiller, director

• I loved him anyway and he was, as everyone suspected, an endearing rascal.
  • First wife Lili Damita

• He was an enchanting creature. I had more fun with Errol than everybody else put together…It was never ending fun.
  • David Niven, friend and actor

• The only time he wasn’t living was when he was asleep, and even then I think he dreamt well.
  • Second wife Nora Haymes

• I think Errol was a good actor, and there are not many who can do what he did. Not every actor can be a swashbuckler.
  • Vincent Sherman

• Tonight I have lost my husband.
  • Lili Damita felt she would lose her young husband after his success as “Captain Blood.” She revealed this to a young writer and later to director Delmer Daves at a party after the premiere of the film.

— Don Jan

• Any man who has $10,000 left when he dies is a failure.

• Guys, I don’t sing and I don’t dance. I don’t know how I can entertain you.

• I allow myself to be known as a colorful fragment in a drab world.

• I do what I like.

• I’m thinking of giving up acting and devoting myself to full-time litigation.

• I don’t care if she doesn’t know how to cook – so long as she doesn’t know a good lawyer.

• I felt rich when I had accumulated twenty-five dollars.

• I felt like an impostor, taking all that money for reciting ten or twelve lines of nonsense a day.

• If there’s anyone listening to whom I owe money, I’m prepared to forget it if you are.

• I got more of a kick out of writing than I do out of making pictures.

• I get the feeling that life is slipping by me – the time is passing and I am not living fully.

• I had now made about 45 pictures, but what had I become? I knew all too well: a phallic symbol. All over the world I was, as a name and personality, equated with sex.

• I suppose most of us act all our lives. We have a facade, a front. We imagine ourselves to be what we’re not, don’t we?

• It isn’t what they say about you, it’s what they whisper.

• It was pleasant to be carefree and irresponsible – but these days, there doesn’t seem to be any geography left in which to be carefree and irresponsible.

• I’ve lived twice and I’ve had a marvelous life.

• I’ve made six or seven good films – the others, not so good.

• My father was never anti-anything in our house.

• My job is to defy the normal.

• My problem lies in reconciling my gross habits with my net income.

• The public has always expected me to be a playboy, and a decent chap never lets his public down.

• They’ve great respect for the dead in Hollywood, but none for the living.

• You once liked the blissful mobility, but then you wonder, who’s the real you? And who’s the chap on the screen? You know, I catch myself acting out my life like a goddamn script.

• Women won’t let me stay single and I won’t let me stay married.

• I hadn’t the least idea of what I was doing, except that I was supposed to be an actor.
  • After working three weeks on In the Wake of the Bounty, his first film.

• I like my whisky old and my women young.
  • Said often, half-jokingly

• My dream of happiness: A quiet spot by the Jamaican seashore looking out at the activity in the ocean, hearing the wind sob with the beauty and the tragedy of everything. Looking out over nine miles of ocean, hearing some happy laughter near-by. Sitting under an almond tree, with the leaf spread over me like an umbrella.
  • Speaking about Port Antonio, Jamaica where he had hoped to retire.

• “I’ve had a hell of a lot of fun, and I’ve enjoyed it, every minute of it.”
  • From a 1958 CBC radio interview with Tony Thomas.

• “No, I like this half of life best and I want to live it to the hilt.”
  • Alexis Smith, co-star, asking Errol if he wanted to live to be an old man.

— Don Jan

I read the English newspaper The Daily Mail from yesterday, October 17th, with an intriguing article about Elizabeth Taylor. Errol Flynn is mentioned and below is the text (out of a new book about ET) dedicated to their short relationship, ardent romance or whatever you may call it!

Errol Flynn, Hollywood´s consumate philanderer, was also an early notch in Taylor´s bedpost! The book claims, Taylor joined the director Michael  Curtiz at a film screening at Flynn´s Hollywood home, only to find – when the lights went on at the end – Curtiz had disappeared and she was alone with the actor. She was still 15 and they allegedly ended up in bed after he got tipsy on pink champagne which would hardly have been surprising given Flynn´s scandalous reputation. He famously had a bedroom where the bed sat on an elevated platform like a throne while the walls and ceiling were covered in mirrors. Their affair lasted but two weeks – despite Flynn claiming he wanted to marry her.

— Don Jan