Los Angeles Examiner – Louella Parsons, October 4, 1938
Errol Flynn heard yesterday for the first time that he had pneumonia when he was so critically ill last week. So remarkable was his recovery that he is expected to go home today, and Lili Damita will sail Thursday on the Queen Mary. Errol’s doctors have ordered him to rest for two weeks, after which he is to report to Warner studio for Dodge City.
Don’t say “That’s where we came in,” for Hal Wallis really tried to borrow Ronald Coleman and Cary Grant for the remittance man who goes western. But when neither English accent was available, he went back to the original idea of putting Flynn in the role, postponing The Sea Hawk until early next year. Michael Curtiz, the director, who always favored Flynn, was rejoicing yesterday, for both Flynn and Olivia de Havilland were in Robin Hood Curtiz’ biggest hit.
Dodge City could-have-been cowboys, Coleman and Cary:
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Los Angeles Evening Herald Express – Harrison Carroll
October 5, 1938
Errol Flynn went from the hospital to Edmund Goulding’s house at Palm Springs. He wanted to take a trip to Mexico City, but doctors vetoed it.
Los Angeles Evening Herald Express – Jimmy Starr
October 10, 1938
Lili Damita shushed those Paris divorce rumors by nixing her trip to Gay Paree with the Jack Warners and flying back to hubby Errol Flynn in Palm Springs.
Flynn and Custer, a perfect match – brilliant, discipline-proof, dashing, and destined for greatness.
THEY DIED WITH THEIR BOOTS ON
(Benton Harbor News-Palladium, December 29, 1941.)
Monroe- The premier of the motion picture “They Died With Their Boots On” depicting the career of General George Armstrong Custer, was shown here Sunday. Seven members of the Custer family residing here attended the performance. Brigadier-General Custer, slain in the Battle of the Little Big Horn, attended school and married here.
ERROL FLYNN PLAYS GEORGE CUSTER
(Benton Harbor News-Palladium, January 10, 1942)
Custer’s last stand is an epic of the old west, but the rest of Custer’s life is a Michigan story. As shown in They Died With Their Boots On, the new Errol Flynn, Olivia de Havilland film opening Sunday at the Liberty, George Armstrong Custer’s adventures were intimately concerned with his native state.
He made a name for himself in the Civil War at the Battle of Gettysburg depicted in the film by leading a series of charges by gallant Michigan regiments. Thrown back time and time again, they kept up the fight under his inspirational leadership and finally turned the tide of battle.
After the Civil War ended, Custer like so many brilliant young officers of the Union Army, was retired. A peacetime Army had no use for the vast number of officers developed by the war. Young General Custer settled down with his wife in their native Monroe, Michigan, to live a life of peace.
It was from the same Monroe that Custer had gone before the Civil War to become the most discipline-proof cadet that West Point had seen in years.
According to the film, the most famous song of Custer’s Seventh Regiment, the Gary Owen, was taught to the General in Monroe by an English soldier who was a Union veteran. When the regiment rode forth in battle on the Little Big Horn, the song Custer learned in Monroe, sped them on their way.
George Custer was only 37 when he died. Life in Monroe had bored him. In order to get back into active Army service, he accepted colonel’s rank. He was sent to the most dangerous territory in America, Sioux Country. The Indians called him “Long Hair.” The tribute they paid him in his last stand shows the esteem in which he was held, even by his enemies. Every man killed in the battle was scalped – except Custer.
GENERAL CUSTER AFYER 45 YEARS
(Detroit Free Press, June 27, 1921)
It has been remarked that George Armstrong Custer’s chief contribution to the history of his country was his personality. Such a statement looks like a truism, but in his case it was more peculiarly true than in most. An operose, impetuous spirit, his tepidity, his dash, his verve, has passed into legend while there are still people living in these states who thrill to the memory of the day when Custer fell, who remember the clash of opinion that arose before his gallant blood had cooled.
The forty-five years that have passed since June 25, 1876, have not settled the argument. Was Custer’s death with his three brothers, his nephew, and all of the old fighting Seventh Michigan Cavalry , due to mis-wisdom, an untutored impetuosity, or were the trap and the barbarous slaying inevitable? How much of the mistake can be placed on the two commanders under him, Benteen and Reno, and was the natural indignation of the country justified? The exact facts are obscure, for we are unwilling to accept the only evidence which came from an Indian.
The significant thing now is that Custer’s story is not allowed to die – it is too romantic, too fraught with the perilous spirit of the frontier days which have rapidly dimmed and receded. The story has been woven into pageants, it has been vividly acted before the camera in its own historic setting. Today, out in Hardin, Montana, it is being commemorated again, re-enacted with Indians, some of whom are from the fierce tribe of Sitting Bull. Tamed now and submissive, forgetting the hot rage of the warrior, they are acting for the pleasure of the conqueror and perhaps for the lost glory of their tribe, scenes which were part of the destructive tide that swept them from their last entrenchments in the badlands of the prairie.
What history will do with Custer a hundred years, hence it is impossible to judge; it is probably that no matter what the historian of the future makes of his case he will be handed along in the legends which gave the thrill to cold facts as the perfect cavalry type, the temerarious General of Horse. The nation will remember him as Edward Clark Potter has pictured him when in that significant moment during a lull in the Battle of the Little Big Horn, he spurred forward from the line, and hat in hand, his golden curls flowing from a head thrown back, he stood for a moment surveying enemy lines. His striking uniform, his youth, his daring, combined to make him a glorious, a charmed figure.
The nation will remember him too, however much they may doubt his judgment, as the general who immensely brave, immensely daring, overpowered twenty to one, stayed with his men and died fighting in place. They will honor him as the Sioux honored him, Sitting Bull’s warriors who killed him but held his body inviolate because he was a warrior of whose prowess they stood in awe.
Eight years ago when adventuresome Errol Flynn, now Warner’s new film rave, represented the British Government at New Guinea, one of his many odd duties was to act as physician and surgeon.
When a native named Joe Speedie appeared at headquarters with a gangrenous toe as a result of having been bitten by a poisonous fish,it was “Dr” Flynn who performed the necessary amputation of the infected toe. The emergency operation saved Joe’s life.
Last week, “Dr” Flynn received a belated fee for his surgical gesture, a valuable gold-headed cane. Joe explained in the accompanying letter that he had seen Errol in Captain Blood and was most happy to have located his benefactor of long ago. And Errol’s quite proud of his ‘fee.’
Jimmy Starr
Los Angeles Evening Herald Express
Published July 27, 1936
Filmland learned for the first time today the romantic history of the diamond that Errol Flynn, dark-headed Irish actor, put upon the finger of Lili Damita, who is now his bride.
It was five years ago that Flynn came into possession.
A young adventurer, he was working as a British agent in New Guinea to help preserve peace among the native tribes. One day, he made a gold strike in the jungle.
Trekking back to civilization, Flynn sold his discovery for $10,000 in gold. He decided to leave New Guinea, but couldn’t carry his new found riches. So he put the money into rough-cut diamonds.
It was one of these diamonds that the young actor, soon to play the starring role in the Warner film, Captain Blood, had made into the engagement ring his bride now wears.
Harrison Carroll
Evening Herald Express
Errol, Lili, and Man’s Best Friend, on the very-appropriately named Lookout Mountain – with a glimpse it appears at Diva Damita’s new diamond:
“Errol Flynn’s been tipping the waiter for Jackie Gately, the prize show girl.”
“American glamour girl Jackie Gately was a burlesque dancer who worked both in the US and Europe. At the age of 17, she was picked as the most attractive girl at the Paradise Restaurant on Broadway in 1938. After that she spent a season dancing in European night clubs, chaperoned by her mother. She appeared in a ‘soundie’ titled The Blushing Bride released in 1942, doing a sort of striptease as the bride gets ready for her nuptial bed, removing her wedding gown, but at the end she is still wearing her undergarments. In 1942, her short career as a glamour girl ended when she married.”
Jack Benny and Errol Flynn
will head troupe to ‘entertain
soldiers in Japan and Korea,
the Hollywood Co-ordinating-
Committee of the United Services
Organisation announced yesterday’
Errol Flynn, a charming rogue who never has pretended to be anything else, wants to debunk all those reports that he has reformed. Since his return to Hollywood, after more than four years abroad, the columns have been filled with items about the new Errol Flynn. It’s true that he is shelling out a reported $900,000 for back alimony and back taxes. It’s also true that he’s been in town for several weeks without engaging in any of the famous one-punch Sunset Strip brawls for which he was famed a decade ago. But a reformed Flynn? Never. “It’s all a lie, a malicious slander started, I suspect, by Bruce Cabot,” Errol reassures. “Don’t believe a word of it.
HE’S MORE DISCREET
“The only difference between the so-called new Flynn and the old Flynn is that the new Flynn is the same as ever only more discreet. And please spell that with three E’s. Nothing else has changed.” It hasn’t either. A visit to the set of NBC’s Screen Directors Playhouse television films finds the same Flynn who used to give Jack L. Warner ulcers. He’s still sipping straight vodka out of a water glass between takes; charming every girl on the set from the leading lady to the wardrobe seamstresses and surprisingly his ex-mother-in-law. Mrs. Jack Eddington, mother of Nora Eddington Flynn Haymes, had this to say about her ex-son-in-law: “He’s such a wonderful man, please write something nice about him.” To which Flynn interrupted: “If he does, it’ll ruin me. There are only a few of us characters left.”
How does it feel to be back home after four and a half years? “To tell you the truth,’ he answered “I was served with so many summons the first day I thought I had only been away a week.” Now that Errol is settling all back bills, he’s here to stay, Flynn, besides being the last of the Rabelaisian characters in Hollywood, is also a realist. He knew that he had to pay up in order to work.
PLAYS FAMOUS ROGUE
In the television film, “The Sword of Villon,” he plays the famous rogue poet, Francois Villon who was a sort of medieval Errol Flynn. From there, he goes to Universal-International to play modern day intrigue in “Istanbul,” then back to England for a television series and then Hollywood for good. Offers are coming in fast be cause Flynn, for all his peccadilloes, sells tickets at the boxoffice. In the television film, leading lady Hillary Brooke tells Villon: “You’re a rogue.” To which Flynn answers: “I give you no argument there.” “How’s that for typecasting?” he smiles between takes.
