— David DeWitt
The 2021 Global Birthday Toast to Errol 🍸🍷🍹🥃🍾
20
May
One month from today – on June 20, 2021 – the Errol Flynn Blog will host our Second Annual Global Birthday Toast to Errol. All EFB Flynnmates are invited to raise a glass (cup, bottle, or can) to the greatest swashbuckler of all time, Our Man Flynn. As was done very successfully last year, all Fans of Flynn from around the world are invited to join us. And this year there’s no need to stay at home and wear a mask while toasting!
Drinks representative of your location are encouraged. As examples, Errol is known to have imbibed Bundaberg Down Under – Jack Roses in Manhattan – Bloody Marys in Burbank – Whiskey in LA – Vodka in London – Rum and Coca-Colas in the Caribbean, Wines, Beers, and Champagne in Europe, etc etc etc. Drinks need not include alcohol. of course. Errol also drank coffee, and enjoyed tea, often with orange blossom honey. A more detailed list will be provided in coming days. It would be great if our toasts included regional specialties – Margarita’s in Mexico, Gins in the British Empire, Guinness in Ireland – et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Anything that’s good Flynn fun.
Eleven days later, all Fans of Flynn are also invited to toast Olivia. July 1 will be her first birthday on the Other Side. From France every year, Olivia toasted Errol on his birthday, with champagne, of course.
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All are welcome and encouraged to let us know with what you’ll be toasting, and from where. And please encourage all your Flynnmates to join in like Flynn Fans here!
Cheers, Salud, Slainte, A Votre Sante, Prost, Cin Cin, Skal, Gesondhaid, Akale Maluna, Felicidades, 干杯, Ypa, 乾杯, and Oogy Waha!
😄🍹🍷🍸🥃🍾
— Tim
Errol is Irresistible — “Because He Keeps His Mouth Shut” 😃🤐
19
May
May 19, 1950
The Barrier Miner
Broken Hill, New South Wales
— Tim
Bonjour, Irene, Bonjour
18
May
May 17, 1950
Errol, Princess Ghica, Margaret Eddington and Marelle Flynn
— Tim
The Last Man
18
May
In an Avalanche of Adventure
May 18, 1943
Syracuse Herald Journal
FLYNN COLLAPSES ON HOLLYWOOD SET
Actor Errol Flynn was recovering today at Hollywood Hospital after collapsing on a Warner Bros. set.
he was expected to remain in the hospital for at least a week. His physicians, Dr. Carl F. Stevens and Thomas W. Hern, said Flynn suffered “a recurrence of an upper respiratory ailment” which he has had for some time.
Flynn collapsed yesterday while working on To the Last Man. Action will be shot around him until he returns.
…
Northern Pursuit was originally known as To the Last Man and was based on a magazine story. A.I. Bezzerides wrote the first screenplay under the supervision of Jesse L. Lasky. William Faulkner later worked on the script.
According to Tony Thomas:
“During the production of Northern Pursuit, Flynn took ill in May 1943, collapsing on the set and being hospitalized for a week. The studio released information indicating he had a “upper respiratory ailment,” but he was battling tuberculosis.”
— Tim
Mail Bag! Olivia Explains …
16
May
Our own Karl Holmberg sends this delightful interview from 1978 with Olivia de Havilland …
Thanks, Karl…
— David DeWitt
Fists, Bottles and Chairs
16
May
May 17, 1938
Los Angeles Examiner
ERROL FLYNN AIDS AMERICAN IN FIGHT
Havana, May 17. Errol Flynn, Hollywood film actor, received the thanks today of an unidentified American he saved from serious injury during a fight in a night club here last night.
Fists, bottles and chairs were flying when Flynn intervened. The American who was involved escaped with a broken nose. Flynn was not hurt.
He was accompanied by his wife, who refused to take the matter seriously.
…
May 17, 1938
Evening Herald Express
ERROL FLYNN, FRIENDS IN HAVANA CAFE FIGHT
“I think this all so funny”, quoth Lili Damita, stage and screen beauty, who was a spectator while fists and bottles flew in a free-for-all-fight at the Eden Concert Night Club with Errol Flynn taking a prominent part in the fighting.
The fight started last night when one of the members of Flynn’s party got into an argument with a man at a nearby table. A minute later, chairs and bottles began to fly.
Flynn, who often plays rough and tumble parts in the movies, joined in with two or three effective punches at those who got in his way. The only casualty was an unidentified American who received a broken nose and a cut eye. Flynn and the others were unhurt and continued their party.
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The Eden Concert Night Club was regarded as one of the world’s most “spectacular” and “phenomenally popular” night clubs in the world. Located in the center of town between Sloppy Joe’s and the Hotel Plaza, it evolved in 1939 into the also world-renowned Tropicana Club.
— Tim
Mail Bag! Reagan, Flynn and Wayne?
15
May
Our Portugal based friend Audie spotted this and send it along …
Here’s the nearest that John Wayne and Ronald Reagan came to acting in the same feature film. (Sadly, not all that close):
Olivia, Flynn and a future President (as George Custer).
In April, 1940, Warner Bros. set up the semi-Western Santa Fe Trail as a vehicle for Errol Flynn and Olivia de Havilland. The plot followed the exploits of army officers J.E.B. Stuart and George Armstrong Custer after their graduation from West Point.
As per usual, the brothers Warner were free and easy with facts, given that Stuart graduated from the academy in 1854 and Custer matriculated in 1861, and the two men didn’t know one another. The Hollywood rationale? “Come on, already! This is a movie! At least both of them graduated from the Point!”
Duke Wayne, now in the A-list category thanks to Stagecoach and Dark Command, was approached by Warners to play the George Custer role. Wayne, however, turned up his nose at the part, having no desire to play second banana to Flynn (then Warner Bros.’s biggest star), even though the flick was a big-budget epic.
Undaunted, Warners cast contract player Dennis Morgan as Custer, but Denny fell out due to a scheduling conflict. At which point, up-and-comer Ronald Reagan, fresh from his triumph as George Gipp in Knute Rockne, All American, was hurriedly awarded the role.
Mr. Reagan, aware he was a last-minute replacement, later recalled how a frazzled studio tailor rushed into his dressing room to refit a Santa Fe Trail cavalry costume:
It occurred to me then that it would be just as easy someday to throw my clothes in a corner and hang some other actor’s in their place. …
If John Wayne had been less finicky about the parts he accepted, the “other actor” in Santa Fe Trail would have been the Big Cowboy and not Ronald Reagan portraying George A. Custer.
This is as close as the two ever got to acting in the same film: they were both offered the same part.
Postscript: “SFT” was a highly profitable film that boosted Reagan’s career. It fell into the Public Domain when United Artists Television neglected to renew the copyright.
— David DeWitt
One, Two, Three – Kick!
15
May
“Beginning in the late 1930s and booming in the 1940s, conga dancing became wildly popular in the US.” Errol occasionally joined in the Congamania – in Cuba, in Hollywood, and in New York. Here is some evidence, beginning with a news report of a wire from Cuba, where Errol had just been, or was very soon to be, involved in a “free-for-all” Dodge City-like fracas at a famous nightclub in Havana, details of which I will post tomorrow.
May 16, 1938
Harrison Carroll
Evening Herald Express ba
Errol Flynn has wired for reservations at La Conga for the night of May 21.
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The La Conga in Hollywood
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Errol was still kicking more than a year later. Here he is sitting with his sister Rosemary (and Randy Burke) and in a conga line led by Desi Arnaz on tumbadora at the La Conga in Manhattan, on August 5, 1939:
La Conga, Manhattan
The conga craze continued in Hollywood (and around the world) into the Forties. Here’s Desi Arnaz leading a huge line in Too Many Girls (1940) during which he and Lucy fell in love, leading to groundbreaking television history, in the form of I Love Lucy and Desilu Productions, etc. Look for Lucy near the end of this wildly fun conga clip.
— Tim
