Thanks, Karl Holmberg …
— David DeWitt
Archive for the ‘Main Page’ Category
Just the Facts
23
Nov
November 20, 1942
Minneapolis Star Journal
FBI Jails Boy in Extortion
13-Year-Old Asked $10,000 of Flynn
LOS ANGELES UPI
A $10,000 extortion plot against actor Errol Flynn was attributed to a 13-year-old San Bernardino schoolboy last night by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The FBI said young Billy Seamster had sent a note to the actor, now awaiting trial on statutory charges, demanding the money on pain of death. The lad was arrested, said agent Richard B. Hood, in San Bernardino where he had directed the money to be sent. Hood said the note, received by Flynn Nov. 11 at his Beverly Hills home, read: “If you value your life and career, send a small package containing $10,000 in currency to the Otto Malt Shop. Your phone has been tapped. Don’t call police. You will be killed if you don’t comply.” It was signed “Jack Gilstrom.” The lad was released to his parents while the United States attorney’s office studies possible further action.
— Tim
Boots was Made for Watching — “Errol Flynn in His Greatest Role”
21
Nov
November 21, 1941
New York Times
The Warners have been generous to a fault in paying their respects to General George Armstrong Custer. Certainly the man who is more famed for his celebrated last stand against the Sioux and allied tribes at Little Big Horn than for any of his several other exploits receives his due as a courageous soldier, and then some, in “They Died With Their Boots On,” which thundered into the Strand yesterday. Dismiss factual inaccuracies liberally sprinkled throughout the film’s more than two-hour length and you have an adventure tale of frontier days which for sheer scope, if not dramatic impact, it would be hard to equal.
Wave upon wave of cavalry charges packed with breath-taking thrills have been handled in masterly fashion by director Raoul Walsh, and they alone are worth the price of admission. Mr. Walsh, it is obvious, spared neither men, horses nor Errol Flynn’s General Custer in kicking up the dust of battle. But the director was not so fortunate in handling the personal drama and as a consequence “They Died With Their Boots On” has little verve between campaigns. With all the action of the Civil War sequences, it is not surprising that the intervening account of the General’s domestic life and his battle against political intrigue, which lacks genuine dramatic sustenance, should become a little wearying. After all, two hours and seventeen minutes requires a powerful lot of sustained drama. Mr. Walsh would have had a more compact and compelling entertainment had he whittled a half hour or so out of the script. But he more than makes up for this with his action shots.
From what the records show, “They Died With Their Boots On” is the screen’s first full-fledged attempt at spanning Custer’s remarkable career from his hazing as a West Point plebe, his almost story-bookish rise from second lieutenant of cavalry at the first Battle of Bull Run in 1861 to his appointment two years later as brigadier general of volunteers and commander of the Michigan brigade, which performed so brilliantly at Gettysburg. However fanciful the film’s account of his early Army career and the events in between his assignment as lieutenant colonel, Regular Army, of the Seventh Cavalry, may be, it nevertheless provides a broad view of a complex personality.
In the massacre at the Little Big Horn in 1876 the film credits Custer with knowingly sacrificing his small forces to prevent the warring Indians from swooping down upon General Terry’s unsuspecting regiment, a viewpoint in variance with certain historical accounts of the tragedy. Errol Flynn, who approximates the general in physical characteristics, is excellent as the dashing, adventuresome cavalryman. Olivia de Havilland is altogether captivating as his adoring wife. Others in the long cast who acquit themselves with credit are John Litel as General Phil Sheridan, Sidney Greenstreet as General Winfield Scott and Stanley Ridges as the fictitious Major Taipe who engineers Custer’s court-martial. George P. Huntley Jr. gives a magnificent performance as Custer’s fellow-officer and buddie.
THEY DIED WITH THEIR BOOTS ON; screen play by Wally Klein and Aeneas MacKenzie; directed by Raoul Walsh for Warner Brothers.George Armstrong Custer . . . . . Errol Flynn – Elizabeth Becon (Beth Custer) . . . . . Olivia deHavilland – Fitzhugh Lee . . . . . Regis Toomey- Major Romulus Taipe . . . . . Stanley Ridges – Ned Sharp . . . . . Arthur Kennedy – General Scott . . . . . Sidney Greenstreet – William Sharp . . . . . Walter Hampden – General Phil Sheridan . . . . . John Litel – Lieut. Butler . . . . . George P. Huntley Jr. – Crazy Horse . . . . . Anthony Quinn – California Joe . . . . . Charley Grapewin – Sergeant Doolittle . . . . . Joe Sawyer – Captain Webb . . . . . Frank Wilcox – Captain McCook . . . . . Selmer Jackson – Senator Smith . . . . . Minor Watson – Lieut. Frazier . . . . . DeWolf Hopper
A version of this article appears in print on Nov. 21, 1941 of the National edition with the headline: At the Strand.
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— Tim
Beatrice Hudson Ammidown
13
Nov
While researching Errol like I do every day, I found a small snippet from a newspaper of September 1940 in which Errol is linked to Beatrice Ammidown, pocket venus. I started to further research her. She was a society model born in 1915 from New York. She married Henry P Ammidown in 1934. They had a daughter in 1938. In 1939 she started a relationship with Errol. She finalized the divorce in 1940. They were “out” in January 1940 and the press thought she was going to be soon his wife. By September 1940 still together after a break. Nothing after that. She married a rich Greek shipping mogul in 1942.
— Selene Hutchison-Zuffi
“Cupid” Hill – The World’s Greatest Archer
13
Nov
Howard Hill
Born November 13. 1899
Howard Hill was an expert bowman, long regarded “The World’s Greatest Archer”. He established the record for winning the most bow-and-arrow field tournaments in succession, a total of 196 competitions. He also wrote several leading books on the topic. Additionally, he was a tremendous athlete, most notably in football and baseball.
Among his many achievements in archery, Howard Hill in 1928 set a new world record for the farthest recorded flight shot with a bow and arrow, at 391 yards. That same year, he won his 196th field archery competition in a row. Hill, though, was not only one of the most decorated archers in the modern era of target shooting, hunting, and flight archery competitions, he was also a celebrated writer and producer. During his career, he produced 23 films about archery for Warner Bros. He also produced 10 different films of his own and was a technical adviser in many more motion pictures, providing his expertise in the field.
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Forward to Howard’s book, WILD ADVENTURE
Written by Errol
When you meet Howard Hill you know darn well you have met him before, but you can not remember where or when.
Let me solve your problem. If, like myself, you sometimes find yourself hanging on a bar rail and staring over the head of the bar-tender, behind those character-destroying bottles of Four Posies or Old Step Mother, you will spot Hill. There you will see a reproduction of a painting, the cultural contribution of some beer cartel like Somebody and Rusch, depicting Custer’s Last Stand. That American aborigine, that Indian on the piebald pony is Hill. Yes, the guy giving out with the bloodcurdling war whoop, drawing a bead on the heroic general (if a bead can be drawn with a bow and arrow Hill is the one who can do it) is our boy. This is no quaint flight of fancy; It has to be Hill. God knows, I have stared at both Hill and his weapon often enough, chilled to the marrow.
When Hill goes after any living creature with his bow for whatever reason, whether for food, motion pictures or sport, he has the same intensity, the same piercing black eyes, the same unmistakable snarl, leering with the triumph of the Indian about to wade up to his navel in the gore of the Paleface, He may be stalking only a rabbit, but it is still Hill.
He calls himself a Cre, I think, and is inordinately proud of it, But he is a real Indian, make no mistake, as this Paleface knows. Confronted by Hill bearing down upon me over the bar on that pinto pony charging over countless hordes of Four Posies, I have always felt a keen sympathy for the unlucky Custer.
It is only our long and enduring friendship (based upon a mutual love for hunting and the Great Outdoors) that has induced me to write this foreword to his book, a thing I would do for no one else. As yet, being on a different continent from him at the moment, I have not had a gander at Howard’s book, but I am sure it is a work calculated to bring out the best kind of savagery in American youth. The book is a cinch to stir many a nervous pulse as Hill has stirred mine in the past. It has to be filled with wild adventure. In it naturally, he will not tell you of the time we were out hunting mountain lions, and having just lassoed one, he had the frenzied brute screeching and turning somersaults at the end of a rope snubbed around a tree. Suddenly Howard yelled, “Here, hold this, and I did, only to find out that I had hold of the tail of the enraged cat instead of the rope. Nor, I suppose, will this savage recount another incident that occurred while we were hunting wild boar on Sana Cruz Island when he left me hanging on the side of a cliff several hundred feet above the rocky sea-shore. While he sat in safety fifty yards away, eating boiled eggs and going into sporadic gales of laughter, he watched me suffer the terrors of chronic vertigo, too petrified to move an inch. Yes, Hill is an Indian.
Although no Indian myself, and having no claim to being perhaps even an exceptional hunter, yet I do have much in common with Hill. The wailing note of the loon floating across a placid lake, the distant high pitched cry of the timber wolf, the roar of the jaguar and the blood-curling cough of the charging wild boar, call to some deep inner response within us both that is not acquainted with modern civilization.
“Cupid” Hill, as I have called Howard ever since we first met while making the picture Robin Hood, has done things with a bow and arrow that few have essayed with the rifle and I for one am going to read his book with great nostalgia, for some of the truly wonderful moments of my life have been spent tagging at Howard’s heels on our hunting trips in many strange corners of the world.
Errol Flynn
Rome, italy
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Errol-Related Filmography
The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938)
– Technical adviser and archery instructor
The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938)
– Captain of Archers (credited)
– Elwyn the Welshman (uncredited)
Sword Fishing (October 21, 1939)
– Short Documentary – Himself
Shark Hunting (November 9, 1940)
– Short Documentary – Himself
They Died with Their Boots On (1941)
– Stunts (uncredited)
San Antonio (1945)
– Henchman (uncredited)
Deep Sea Fishing (1952)
– Short documentary – Himself
Cruise of the Zaca
(Released December 6, 1952)
– Short Documentary
– Filmed 1946-47
— Tim
Amelia Oliphant
07
Nov
Here are a few discoveries about Miss Amelia Oliphant which appear in Errol MWWW.
Me and Bonnie Paraschos found a few interesting facts.
Olivia de Havilland played a role named Amelia in 1940 “my love came back”.
The River Queen was used in the movie Gone with the Wind (under a new name) and Oliphant means “olive branch” and is a Normand lastname.
We think Amelia is Olivia.
❤ open to discussion obviously
— Selene Hutchison-Zuffi
B for Baron?
06
Nov
New York Daily News, November 6, 1942
By Frederick C. Othman
Los Angeles, Nov. 5 (U.R).
Peggy Larue Satterle, 16-year-old night club charmer, testified today that film actor Errol Flynn stopped at a physician’s office “to get some vitamin B pills, or something,” before he took her aboard his yacht for the cruise on which he is accused of raping her twice. She and Flynn were having dinner at Chasen’s, she said, before boarding the Sirocco, Flynn’s yacht, for a weekend cruise to Catalina Island. She said Flynn telephoned his doctor while they were dining and that on the way to the yacht harbor he stopped at the doctor’s office. “He got some vitamin B pills, or something,” she said, to the high amusement of the courtroom crowd.
— Tim
Centennial Tribute to Maureen O’Hara
24
Oct
Maureen O’Hara: August 17, 1920 – October 24, 2015
Queen of Technicolor – Queen of Swashbucklers
“Never did I see a more dreamlike creature. That flaming red hair, glorious Irish complexion, and beautiful bearing,” said Errol.
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— Tim
