What do we know about the Rickshaw accident? I read his version. Jeffrey Meyer (he had a lot wrong in his book) he spoke of a punch.
Do we have anyone recollection of Errol’s scar? Earl Conrad mention seeing it in his Memories.
I would love some elucidation in merit.
— Selene Hutchison-Zuffi
March 13, 1936
Harrison Carroll
Evening Herald Express
The most dramatic movie premier of 1936 took place not in Hollywood or in New York, but in Belfast Ireland when Captain Blood opened there the other day with Errol Flynn’s father and mother in attendance. They hadn’t seen him since 1932 and, suddenly, there he was on the screen, their turned into a movie star.
Reporting the incident, the Belfast papers also carried an interview with R. L. Simpson, who adventured with Flynn to New Guinea. He told a story about the actor that not even the studio knew.
Seems that a motion picture troupe hired Flynn to take them in a 20-ton schooner up the unexplored Sepik River, a stream infested with crocadiles and transversing jungles crawling with hostile natives. Sure enough, the troupe was ambushed and five of the police escorts were struck by poisoned arrows. Flynn and the crew were able to repel the attack with rifle fire and to get the troupe back to civilization.
…
Superb video featuring multifarious primitive tribes and exotic cultures Flynn may have crossed paths with, if not crossed swords with, in Papua New Guinea – headhunters and cannibals included:
— Tim
His name is Errol Flynn and into his twenty-six years he has crowded enough experience to satisfy a dozen men. While other actors played at life in stock company repertoire, he has been living it, with dauntless gaiety. Prospecting for gold in New Guinea,being ambushed by natives,negotiating peace between savage tribes, captaining a pearl-diving crew and a copra-trading ship, receiving plaudits as an Olympic athlete – all these activities have just been preparation for the greatest adventure of all, Hollywood.
Adventurer by instinct, he is now actor by accident, he says. However, having “happened into the movies” because of their call to his dramatic sense, and because he “hadn’t yet done them,” he finds them such a challenge that he feels he must make good, in order to prove himself to himself.
Lean and brown, gay and glamorous, no more engaging personality could be found to portray the reckless Captain Peter Blood in the Sabatini tale which records the exploits of a young Irish doctor, who is sold into slavery and turns pirate.
Flynn inherited his craving for excitement from his active ancestors. He is fighting his duels in “Captain Blood” with his historic family sword, which was presented to Lord Terrence Flynn by a loyal follower of the Duke of Monmouth in 1686, the period in which the film is set.
As a boy, Errol made sporadic attempts, invariably failures, to live up to the dignity of his scholarly surroundings. His father was a professor of biology at Cambridge. When Errol wasn’t reading adventure stories, or playing games, he cast fleeting glances at his books, in English and French schools.
Fame as a boxer, which he won at nineteen at the Amsterdam Olympics, failed to satisfy his budding, restless vitality. Probably swaggering a bit in his strong, young manhood, he went to New Guinea where, as British Agent, he was sent out to make peace between native tribes. Learning their dialiects was not difficult, because they have few words and no tenses.
“I would point to objects and try to copy their grunts or shrill exclamations. After a time we would get together, more or less. Maybe,” his smile flashed, “that was where I got my training as an actor. I should be in pantomime, what?”
Silver Screen Magazine, January 1936
— Tim
Queen Alexandra Hospital
Hobart, Tasmania – 1908
Errol was born in Battery Point at the Queen Alexandra Hospital on June 20, 1909.
www-mansionglobal-com.cdn.ampproject.org…
— Tim
Kudos to King Karl for keeping us current on all the King of Swashbuckler news fit to print!
— Tim
“GOOD OLD-FASHIONED ENTERTAINMENT”
“A FUN FILM, CONSTRUCTED IN A SMART WAY”
“A DELIGHTFUL (FOUR-STAR) RAPID-FIRE ROMP”
— Tim
A Tepid Tribute? A Wishy-Washy Swashbuckler? A Faux-Flynn Flim Flam? A B-movie Bomb?
— Tim
