MAY 1933 – “Can’t an honest man make port without being stolen from!”
After being conned in Macao by Ting Ling O’Connor, Errol was robbed of his secret stash of diamonds. It was a big affair back in Hong Kong.
— Tim
On the packet from Hong Kong to Macao, in May of 1933, Errol fell head over heels for a stunning Eurasian beauty named Ting Ling O’Connor.
The young women with Errol in the photo below may be Ting Ling, or his inspiration for the Ting Ling story. It certainly appears Flynn is tingling. Ting Ling, too.
Errol and Ting Ling headed straight for the notorious “Street of Happiness” – Rua de Felicidade – then the city’s main red light district. Since the mid-1800s, during the late Qing Dynasty, the area was packed with hundreds of brothels and opium dens, in addition to fan-tan parlors. Ting Ling seemed to know her way around the Street of Happiness quite well. It was the wickedest street in “the wickedest city in the Orient.”
Errol thought he had found “the love of [his] life”, … until he woke up the next morning and found that Ting Ling had snuck out of town. Worse, he learned she was a prostitute who played suckers for their money, apparently in cahoots with various casinos and gangsters. In fact, her name wasn’t Ting Ling O’Connor at all, he also learned. She used a series of aliases, her last before Flynn being Yok An Lee.
Errol was badly hurt (emotionally and financially) by Ting Ling’s betrayal, calling it “one of the worst heart drops that had ever happened to [him]”.
So it was back to Hong Kong for Erben and Flynn.
— Tim
Errol files his Declaration of Intention to become an American Citizen
“A Declaration of Intention is the act of an alien, who goes before a court of record, and in a forma manner declares that it is, bona fide, his intention to become a citizen of the United States, and to renounce forever all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign prince, potentate, state, or sovereignty, whereof he may at the time be a citizen or subject. Act of Congress of April 14, 18O2, s. 1.”
Errol became a naturalized American citizen on August 14, 1942.
— Tim
When I first picked up a copy of “My Wicked, Wicked Ways”, I was not that familiar with who Errol Flynn was as I did not remember having seen “Adv. of Robin Hood”, but I remembered the one about the guy who cleans up a town as one of my favorites from childhood. “Dodge City” may not be on every one’s list as a classic western, but it is definitely one of the top three favorite westerns on my list. ( Along with “The Searchers” & the original “The Magnificent Seven”).
Errol always felt he was miscast in westerns, but Wade Hatton is one of those characters that fit with the types of heroes he portrayed. He also said his westerns feature a scene where it is explained how he came to be out West. In “Dodge City” it is one of the best scenes when Dusty played by Alan Hale explains to Col. Dodge how Wade came to be out West.
Sean in his “spaghetti western” “Sette Magnifiche Pistole” (“Seven Magnificent Guns” aka “Seven Guns for Timothy”) plays a tenderfoot and intellectual man of peace, who has inherited a gold mine sought after by villain, Rodrigo Rodriguez (played by popular Spanish actor, Fernando Sancho) who will stop at nothing to force Sean to deed him the mine. The foreman of Sean’s mine enlists the aid of four former soldiers who served under him to train Sean to be a rough and tough hombre and go up against Rodriguez. At first Sean is reluctant, but when his pet dog is killed after a raid by Rodriguez on Sean’s ranch he gets with the program. Standing by her man as Sean’s love interest is Italian beauty, Ida Galli. Also on hand is Spanish actor, Daniel Martin who was a staple in these Euro Westerns as one of the seven guns along with the five mentioned above.
“Dodge City” is available on DVD and if you do not have this film in your collection you can not call yourself a fan of Errol Flynn. “Seven Guns for Timothy” is the only film of Sean’s available in English on legitimate DVD in the U.S. It is available as one of many euro westerns in the collection, “10,000 Ways to Die: The Spaghetti Western Collection”.–A. R.
— ILIKEFLYNN
Happy Valley is where one could find Errol most every day in Hong Kong. “But those horrible little ponies wouldn’t behave,” as he put it in My Wicked, Wicked Ways. Originally opened in 1850 primarily for the British ex patriates, is today one of the premier horse race courses in the world.
When he wasn’t betting the ponies, it was a wicked good bet he was in the Hong Kong’s legendary red light district, where it was he and his companions that likely wouldn’t behave. In 1930, Hong Kong had 200 legal brothels with over 7,000 licensed prostitutes. Prostitution was outlawed, however, shortly after Errol’s visit. (Just a coincidence.) Below are Siu Sheung Fei and Fa Yuk Lan of the Tsui Lok Brothel in Hong Kong.
— Tim
Errol collapsed during filming of a boxing scene in Gentleman Jim as the result of a heart attack
and was taken to Good Samaritan Hospital in Los Angeles.
— Tim