“Though he was Australian-born, Errol Flynn was one of the United States’ most popular commodities during World War II.
Flynn made a name for himself swashbuckling across the silver screen in such classics of the 1930a as 1935’s “Captain Blood” and 1938’s “Adventures of Robin Hood,” but during the early 1940s few Hollywood stars made more of a splash in war pictures than Flynn. Films like 1941’s “Dive Bomber” and 1942’s “Desperate Journey” cemented him as one of Hollywood’s greatest stay-at-home warriors.
One of Flynn’s most overlooked pictures “Northern Pursuit” comes from the same era and is set against a World War II backdrop as he stars as Steve Wagner, a former corporal in the Royal Canadian Mounted Police that goes undercover to root out a covert Nazi scheme.
The film, which Turner Classic Movie channel is scheduled to play at 7 p.m. (CT) Tuesday was Flynn’s first movie after being acquitted of two statutory rape charges in 1942. Though Flynn’s was never as popular after the trial as he was before, he still knew how to carry adventure movies and romance pictures alike.
“Northern Pursuit” is a solid thriller, directed by the capable Raoul Walsh, who also directed Flynn in the Gen. George Armstrong Custer biopic “They Died With Their Boots On” in 1941.
Walsh amps up the tension and leaves the viewer questioning whether Flynn is a turncoat or not through much of the movie which co-stars Julie Bishop, Helmut Dantine, John Ridgely, and Gene Lockhart.
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“Port Antonio has had a long and rich history of being the home of some of Hollywood’s biggest celebrities and is always a first-choice destination for movie producers. The great Hollywood legend, Errol Flynn, and his actress wife, Patrice Wymore-Flynn, lived in the resort town for most of their adult lives, bringing along many of their movie star friends for extended visits.”
Follow Errol’s 88-years-old wooden yawl race from Newport to Ensenada! yb.tl/N2E2019#…
Racing starts at 11 a.m. Friday (tomorrow) near the Balboa Pier.
Here’s Errol in 1937 at the helm of Cheerio II, which he briefly called The Bachelor.
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A couple of seasoned sea travelers will slice through the Pacific Ocean from Newport Beach to Baja California on Friday (tomorrow) as the 72nd annual Newport to Ensenada International Yacht Race gets underway.
Not only is Cheerio II, an 88-year-old wooden yawl, the oldest boat in the race, its skipper has been around the water even longer than it has.
Cheerio’s skipper is Dick McNish, a 91-year-old Santa Barbara native who has guided the 46-foot boat in 20 Newport to Ensenada races.
McNish bought Cheerio II in 1980 and extensively restored it in 1994 and ’95. One of its former owners was Hollywood swashbuckler Errol Flynn.
Extracted and adapted from Swordplay & Swashbucklers: Hollywood Ships & Shores in Miniature
Before the advent of CGI, many swashbuckler films used models of ship and shore, along with full-size ships built on sound stages, to both recreate environments no longer available and also to save money. To some degree the early miniatures may seem quaint today, as compared to CGI, although in my opinion bad CGI is worse–more jarring to the eye–by far than an obvious model.
These old sets and scenes evoke nostalgia for the entire spectacle of old Hollywood swashbucklers: the cinemas with their great screens and clicking film projectors, the lasting impressions left by thundering broadsides and clashing swords, and above all the image of pirate ships in tropical waters. Here are a few:
Above, the Albatross, commanded by Capt. Geoffrey Thorpe (Errol Flynn) arrives in a secluded cove on the Isthmus of Panama in order to raid the silver trains. The film scenes set in the Old World are in black and white, while those in the Americas are in sepia.
Only the film title is actually based on the novel by Rafael Sabatini, which tells the story of an English gentleman who turns Barbary corsair in an act of revenge. The 1940 film is a not even thinly-veiled wartime propaganda piece, albeit an enjoyable one. English sea dogs are renamed in the script as patriotic sea hawks suppressed by treasonous machinations until the doughty hero (Errol Flynn) reveals the treachery and England arms the sea hawks against Nazi Germany Imperial Spain. For more information try The Sea Hawk, edited by Rudy Behlmer. It’s a fun read for anyone interested in the script and the film’s history.
Next, we have the models of Port Royal and the French flagship used in the finale. This image is not of an actual scene from the 1935 Captain Blood starring Errol Flynn, Olivia de Havilland, and Basil Rathbone, but of the set prior to shooting.
Of course, the real Port Royal looked nothing like this. It was actually crammed with English-style brick buildings of two and even three floors, unlike this Southern California Spanish colonial revival-influenced town. But it’s sets like these in Hollywood swashbucklers that have influenced our notions of what the seventeenth century Caribbean looked like. In fact, the region at the time had a wide variety or environments and architecture.
Above we have the battle in Port Royal harbor during the finale of Captain Blood: the Arabella on the left versus the French flagship on the right. N. B. Royal sails (the smallest on the ship on the right, the fourth sail from the bottom) were not used in this era. Their use here is an anachronism. In fact, only exceedingly rarely was the topgallant sail (the third sail from the bottom, used on “tall ships” on the fore and main masts) seen on the mizzenmast or sprit-mast on the bowsprit. I know of only two seventeenth century instances, each noted as being highly unusual. One was Kidd’s Adventure Galley in the very late seventeenth century, the other was a Spanish ship in 1673.
Over-large pirate ship and treasure ship of the “Great Mogul” in Against All Flags. The ships are engaged under full sail, a practice generally not seen in reality except in the case of a running fight, but quite common in Hollywood because it looks good. Here, both ships would have stripped to “fighting sail” for a variety of reasons, including simplified ship-handling in action. The film stars Errol Flynn, as Brian Hawke, in one of his last swashbucklers, followed finally by The Master of Ballantrae in 1953 and Crossed Swords in 1954.
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Scenes from The Sea Hawk using above-described ship models, miniatures, and techniques:
April 26, 1938
Elizabeth Yeaman
Hollywood Citizen News
Warners are remaining absolutely mum on the subject of Errol Flynn, whose picture, Robin Hood, was enthusiastically greeted at a preview last night. Flynn, so far as known, is still aboard his yacht in waters off the Bahama Islands. Frank Heacock, a member of the publicity department who is with Flynn, has communicated several times with the studio, but apparently Heacock cannot get Flynn to say yes or no about returning for Sister Act.
It may be that Flynn thinks his absence speaks for itself. However, with the picture ready to start and the rest of the cast all lined up, a delay in production will be an expensive matter. If Flynn should return promptly, he probably would be forgiven and put right into the picture. But in view of the silence and his absence, naturally the studio is moving to protect itself against delay.
As a result, Jeffrey Lynn has been given extensive tests for the past few days, for the role that Flynn was set to play in Sister Act. Lynn is 27, and those who saw him on the local road show of “Brother Rat” will remember him as a member of that company. Warners were immediately interested in him and sought his release from George Abbott. He was brought into the studio last January, and has been going through a grooming process. His first movie role of any size was When Were You Born?, which has not been released. And he had the role of romantic interest opposite Kay Francis in In Every Woman’s Life.
If Lynn suddenly steps into the lead opposite the Lane sisters in Sister Act, it will be a very sudden leap up the ladder of opportunity.
Haven’t seen it anywhere, but methinketh the name “Jeffrey Lynn” was likely created to sound like “Errol Flynn”. His real name was Ragnar Godfrey Lind.
In the year of 1692 the quiet little village of Port Royal, Jamaica, was startled by a loud rumble, followed by a violent earthquake that slid the entire town into the ocean. On days when the water is clear, sightseerers hire a small boat to visit the site of the tragedy and to view the remains of a city underwater.
There are superstitious natives in that region who claim they can still hear the bells ringing in the sunken church. Intriqued by the fame of the bells, adventure-some Errol Flynn, Warner star, who is cruising with his new yacht in that section, informs me that he is going to make a deep-sea dive in an effort to recover the bells. If successful, the ancient chimes will be brought to Hollywood for exhibition.
From Belfast, Olivia de Havilland writes that her trip has been taken up partly by commissions for her Hollywood friends. In the village of Shanonbridge, she looked up George Brent’s old nurse who, at 79, is still earning her living as a dress-maker. The star’s visit almost caused a riot in the community.
In Belfast, Olivia spent a day with Errol Flynn’s parents. His father, a professor of biology at Queen’s university, still isn’t sold on Flynn’s acting career.
He told Olivia he wishes that Errol would give up the cinema, return to Ireland, and take up a more serious vocation.
Warners would be satisfied if he’d even get off his yacht and return to Hollywood.
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Following the filming of The Adventures of Robin Hood, before its release on May 14, 1938:
Meanwhile, back across the pond, with Warners in hot pursuit:
