A man not unlike the inspiration for this site…
The passing of a Flynn film alumnus who scored the rousing music for the film Kim among others…
Previn also made this recording:
“Previn Conducts Korngold: The Sea Hawk”
Suites from film scores. Andre Previn, London Symphony Orchestra. DG 289 471 347-2.
And finally, there is a charming little story involving Flynn and Previn on the Kim set that I can’t recall nor find referenced in the books at hand… perhaps someone else will come through?
— Karl
MIAMI FILM FESTIVAL 2019
ERROL FLYNN’S GHOST: HOLLYWOOD IN HAVANA
FLORIDA PREMIERE
SHOWTIMES:
@ The MDC Tower Theater: Wednesday March 6th @ 6:30 PM towertheatermiami.com…
@ The Silverspot Cinema: Sunday March 10th @ 1:00 PM downtownmiami.silverspot.net…
DIRECTED BY Gaspar González
Country: USA
Language: English, Spanish
Subtitles: English
Running Time: 50min
Film Year: 2018
Category: Documentary Achievement Award
Cuba’s pre-revolution obsession with Hollywood cinema in the first half of the 20th century led Havana to create some of the most majestic movie palaces of their time in the Americas, where millions of Cubans spent their evenings gazing at the silver screen stars of yesteryear. One of those stars, Errol Flynn, Hollywood’s most famous swashbuckler, traveled to Cuba in late 1958 to overcome his stage a Hollywood comeback, but instead found himself in the middle of a real-life adventure more improbable than the plot of any film he ever made: recklessly endorsing the rhetoric of Fidel Castro and the soon-to-come revolution. Flynn self-produced a disastrous B-movie, Cuban Rebel Girls, and died soon afterwards.
Miami filmmaker Gaspar González finds in Flynn’s demise a fitting parallel to the end of Hollywood glamor in the Havana movie palaces. Although many of the great Havana movie houses are still standing, they are haunted by their long-gone heydays. With a detailed and careful eye, González reflects on the remnants of a film culture that so deeply affected and defined a nation’s collective memory.
SHOWTIMES:
CREDITS
Director: Gaspar González
Producer: Gaspar González
Screenwriter: Gaspar González
Executive Producer: Gaspar González
Production Company: Hammer and Nail Productions
Music: Mickey de Grand IV
Cinematographer: Richard Patterson
Editor: Jorge Rubiera
Cast: Scott Eyman, Megan Feeney, Christina Lane, Nat Chediak
— Tim
It was just announced that Star Wars Episode IX, will be released in December. Though the “final chapter of the Star Wars saga”, Errol’s inspiration on the series has been profound, from the very start, as confirmed by the quotes below.
Lucas and Spielberg
“If one man defines the era of swashbuckling Hollywood action that George Lucas and Steven Spielberg (used as a model) it’s Errol Flynn.”
Harrison Ford/Hans Solo
“Ford’s Han Solo is a watershed creation … a conscious throwback —you can see Errol Flynn’s lightness there …”
Billy Dee Williams/Lando Calrissian
“I patterned Lando after actors I saw when I was a boy, like Errol Flynn and all those swashbucklers. I always liked those bigger-than-life characters.”
“Lando is fun-loving, kind of roguish. He was a swashbuckling character, kind of an Errol Flynn. I wanted to make the character bigger than life.”
Samuel K. Jackson/Mace Windu
“Errol Flynn films he watched as a boy informed his role in Star Wars.”
“What I love about ‘Star Wars’ is that it’s your basic Errol Flynn movie, but it’s science fiction,”
“For me, it was the ’70’s Errol Flynn movie. And as a kid I’d always wanted to be … that swash-buckling pirate, you know — jumping over stuff and getting busy that way. And all of a sudden we got some space buccaneers.”
Alden Ehrenreich/Hans Solo in Solo: A Star Wars Story
“Ehreneich channels a young Errol Flynn as this galaxy’s favorite rogue.”
Carrie Fisher
“Not only all this, but we find Olivia de Havilland as Maid Marian, sporting that imperious hauteur and even Princess Leia’s hairdo long before they were fashionable.”
Light-Saber Duels
Errol Flynn’s charming scoundrel may be closer in character to Han Solo than Luke Skywalker, but his acrobatic swordplay – especially the famous fight with Basil Rathbone – became a crucial touchstone for the latter’s saber choreography. Bob Anderson was a fencing choreographer and double for both Flynn (in the 50s) and for Star Wars.
John Williams
The composer of this matinee favourite was one Erich Wolfgang Korngold, from whom John Williams derived a brassy, fanfare-rich approach to orchestration and even a theme or two – Korngold’s score for King’s Row (1942) was used as a temp track while Lucas was cutting Star Wars together.
— Tim
KORNGOLD AND HIS WORLD @ The Bard Music Festival/Summerscape, 2019.
Weekend One: August 9–11
Korngold and Vienna
Weekend Two: August 16–18
Korngold in America
…
The Bard Music Festival/Summerscape is “a highlight of the musical year” (Wall Street Journal) and “the most intellectually ambitious of America’s summer music festivals.” (London Literary Times)
The subject of this season is a composer who straddled the worlds of fin-de-siècle Vienna and the Golden Age of Hollywood. “Korngold and His World” comprises an illuminating series of chamber, vocal, operatic, and orchestral concerts – as well as pre-concert talks, commentaries, and panel discussions – devoted to the life and times of Erich Wolfgang Korngold (1897-1957).
…
Perhaps the greatest musical prodigy since Mozart, before turning twelve Korngold had already been proclaimed a genius by both Gustav Mahler and Richard Strauss, while his concert and operatic works were routinely premiered and championed by the likes of Bruno Walter, Artur Schnabel, Jascha Heifetz, and Lotte Lehmann. Combining voluptuous chromaticism, soaring melodies, opulent orchestration, operatic leitmotifs, and a nostalgia for the Romanticism of his youth, Korngold’s distinctive compositional voice would revolutionize film music, winning him two Academy Awards along the way. His music was performed for European royalty and at both of Reagan’s inaugurations, while his influence continues to permeate the soundtracks of more recent films, like Star Wars, E.T., and Raiders of the Lost Ark. In light of this, he is surely “one of the most influential composers of the 20th century.”
…
Korngold’s first full-length score was for Michael Curtiz’s Captain Blood (1935), which not only established the template for the sound-era Hollywood swashbuckler but also marked Errol Flynn’s emergence as a major star.
www-broadwayworld-com.cdn.ampproject.org…
A TASTE OF SEA HAWK
— Tim
The mailbag rings news that Jim Turriello’s book The Quest for the Oscar is now out in Hardback. And, he notes, his idea for a museum dedicated to Oscar films and related material such as costumes and props is basically being built now dedicted to all films produced by Hollywood. His main concern was, is, and always will be their policy about awarding deceased actors Oscar recognition. The Academy said it would be immposdible to fund such a Museum. Jim’s idea was to award actor an honorary Oscar on the tv show and display it the next day in the Museum avoiding their concern that the family might sell off the Oscar to a collector. He was surprised to hear actress Laura Dern announce the construction of a big new movie museum!
— David DeWitt
“One Eyed Willie’s ship, The Inferno, was 105 feet long and took 2-1/2 months to construct. It was modeled after Errol Flynn’s ship in The Sea Hawk (1940).”
— Tim
Dear fellow Flynn fans,
our Hollywood hero had more than one way to connect with people.
There was his charm and then there was his left jab. Funny enough this fisticuffs were meant in an almost friendly way. He picked well documented fights with John Huston, Dan Topping, Duncan Martin, Jack Easton and Olympian tough man & native Indian Jim Thorpe. During filming “They died with their boots on” Errol poked the former football player and all star athlete in the back at the Brown Derby bar and challenged him to hit him with his best shot. Thorpe, who supposedly was able to lift up & bring down a sledge hammer with on hand, did just that. He ducked a right and put his polar bear paw to Flynn`s chin. General Custer was down, but not out and ordered a round. Another friendship had just been sealed with a fist.
Here`s the blow by blow: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Te8U2K70qYs
Enjoy,
— shangheinz
What do Errol and the following Hollywood heavyweights have in common with Glenn Close?
Amy Adams – Annette Benning – Johnny Depp – Robert Downey Jr. – Harrison Ford – Liam Neeson – Edward Norton – Joaquin Phoenix – Lana Turner – Sigourney Weaver
“ERROL FLYNN: He was the Tom Cruise of the 1930s, a global superstar whose natural charisma and box-office power put him at the tippytop of Hollywood — and he never won an Oscar. Unlike Cruise, Flynn was never even nominated, not for “Captain Blood,” “The Charge of the Light Brigade” or 1938’s still-dazzling “The Adventures of Robin Hood.”
www-newsday-com.cdn.ampproject.org…
Will Errol ever receive any meaningful tribute from the Academy? Why no lifetime achievement awards for actors of his immortal caliber? Halls of Fame around the globe regularly commemorate posthumous greats. Why doesn’t the Academy? Or do they?
— Tim
