“Most of them had fled famine-ravaged Ireland in the 1840s and found, in the US Army, a secure meal-ticket and adventure, first in the Civil War – where the Irish fought on both sides – and later in the Indian Wars, as America spread westward across the Great Plains.”
“Errol Flynn played the swashbuckling Custer in the buckskin jacket, a jacket that in real life, we now know, had been made for him by 35-year-old Sergeant Jeremiah Finley from Co Tipperary, one of the Seventh Cavalry’s regimental tailors. Finley died on Last Stand Hill.”
“The Robin Hood archetype is a classic of both literature and cinema, with Errol Flynn’s depiction being one of the golden age of Hollywood’s most iconic heroes. The concept is simple: a roguish hero who’s an expert with the bow and arrow steals from the rich to give to the poor. Who could resist a handsome archer who’s ardently dedicated to the woman he loves and the concept of redistribution of wealth?”
“…Not only is he charming, but he’s impeccably chivalrous, a great supporter of the beleaguered underdog, an enemy of undemocratic power, and a hopeless romantic. … [t]he most potent embodiment of that heroic archetype you’ve ever seen …”
“Strange but true: in the 1930s Atlantic bluefin tuna (also known as tunny) started to follow the herring shoals into the North Sea, and Yorkshire became the hub of an American-style big-game fishery. Professional hunter Lorenzo Mitchell-Henry set the record for a rod-caught fish in British waters when he landed a 386kg monster in 1933, and Scarborough was soon home to the Tunny Club of Great Britain. Visiting millionaires and movie stars – including John Wayne, Errol Flynn and David Niven – chartered local boats and vied with each other to smash the record.”
Aka “Hearst’s Hunting Lodge”, though W.R. did not personally permit any hunting. “A day’s ride on horseback” from “La Cuesta Encantada” (Hearst’s Castle in San Simeon), to what since 1940 has been Army property on “Fort Hunter Liggett”.
Hearst took only select guests to The Hacienda, usually only top-strata Hollywood, newspaper and political figures. Errol was one of them. These special guests could either fly or ride on horseback from San Simeon – for rodeos, barbecues and dances, et al – often staying overnight in the Hacienda’s “Tower Rooms”. These same Tower Rooms are now available to the public at very reasonable prices, as are more spartan “Garden Rooms” and “Cowboy Rooms” at even lower prices.
Of the eight films co-starring Errol Flynn and Olivia de Havilland, this romantic epic is one of the least seen, mainly due to complaints about the mistreatment of horses in the thrilling climactic charge inspired by Alfred Tennyson’s poem. In their second film together, Flynn is a British officer in India engaged to de Havilland only to learn she is in love with his brother (Patric Knowles). Departing liberally from history, the film suggests that the love triangle, as well as an act of betrayal by an Indian sultan, are inspiration for the famous charge that took place in 1854. The picture was also inspired by the success of Paramount’s The Lives of a Bengal Lancer (1935), which forced the production to add The Crimean War scenes at the end in order to avoid charges that they were just aping the earlier film. The picture was shot on a grand scale, with the construction of an entire British garrison in the California desert where the cast worked in severe weather conditions during the massive battle scenes. The use of trip wires led to the deaths of 25 horses, causing a fistfight between the passionate horseman Flynn and director Michael Curtiz. The result of the deaths kept Warner Bros. from reissuing the film and brought about stricter control from the U.S. government over animal use in filmmaking. (d. Michael Curtiz, 115m, 35mm)
LOS ANGELES — Mel Brooks is just two months shy of his 92nd birthday and he still carves out time for movie nights with his pal Carl Reiner. The two just recently got together to watch a restoration of the 1938 Errol Flynn and Olivia de Havilland classic “The Adventures of Robin Hood.”
This week, Brooks will be on hand to kick off the ninth annual TCM Classic Film Festival at the TCL Chinese Theater Thursday night in Hollywood with a special screening of the first film he ever directed: “The Producers.”
Dashing actor Errol Flynn came to the 238-acre Ratto Ranch for the 1936 filming of “Charge of the Light Brigade.” Flynn also rode a horse alongside a moving steam train near the Stanislaus-Tuolumne County border for the 1939 film, “Dodge City.”
Ratto Ranch was a setting for several famous Western films and TV shows, including “The Charge of the Light Brigade” starring Errol Flynn in 1936, “For Whom the Bell Tolls” with Gary Cooper and Ingrid Bergman in 1943, “High Noon” starring Cooper and Grace Kelly in 1952, and the TV series “Little House on the Prairie” in the 1970s-80s.
