The Full Biography
Errol Flynn. Actor. The Tasmanian who made a sword look like a conversation and then spent a short life proving the conversation could also be a wreck.
This is his story.
The image most people still carry is Robin Hood in Lincoln green, a grin, Olivia de Havilland looking at him as if the arrow had already landed. The year was 1938. What the still cannot show is Errol Leslie Thomson Flynn of Hobart, Tasmania, a young man who had already knocked around New Guinea and the sea, a 1942 statutory-rape trial that ended in acquittal and not in innocence-as-a-personality, and a death in Vancouver at fifty with a body that had done too much of everything.
He was born on June 20, 1909, in Hobart, the son of Marelle Young and Theodore Thomson Flynn, a marine biologist who became a professor and, in time, a public man of science in Belfast. The family had education and not much peace. The boy was expelled from schools. He left Tasmania young, worked in Sydney, sailed, and spent stretches in New Guinea as a copra overseer, a gold prospector, and a storyteller whose stories were already screenplays. In 1933 he appeared in In the Wake of the Bounty, an Australian picture that used him as Fletcher Christian because the face photographed as if it had already been at sea. He went to England, joined the Northampton Repertory, and made Murder at Monte Carlo for Warner Bros.’ British arm. Hollywood, via that face Warner could light, brought him west.
The door was Captain Blood (1935). Michael Curtiz directed. Olivia de Havilland was Arabella. Flynn was a physician sold into slavery who becomes a pirate, a role Robert Donat had been meant to play. He was not a trained fencer first. He was a man who photographed as if the stunt had been his idea. The picture made him Warner’s idea of a man overnight. The Charge of the Light Brigade (1936), again with de Havilland and Curtiz, used him as a cavalry officer in a colonial adventure the 21st century reads differently than 1936 did. The Prince and the Pauper (1937). Then The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938), in Technicolor, with de Havilland as Marian, Basil Rathbone as Sir Guy, Claude Rains as Prince John, and Erich Wolfgang Korngold’s score. He strides into Nottingham with a stag across his shoulders. It is still the movie people mean when they mean swashbuckler. Curtiz directed him, fought him, and got the picture. They made a dozen films together. The fights were real. So were the frames.
Warner kept the formula and then stretched it. Dodge City (1939), Virginia City (1940), and Santa Fe Trail (1940) put the grin in a Western hat. The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex (1939) put him opposite Bette Davis, a pairing that was all temperature and no ease. The Sea Hawk (1940) is the other sea picture that lasts: an Elizabethan privateer, Flora Robson as the queen, Korngold again, a patriot adventure the war in Europe had already begun to recast. They Died with Their Boots On (1941) made him George Armstrong Custer in a cavalry epic that ends at the Little Bighorn the way a studio wanted it to end. Gentleman Jim (1942), as the boxer James J. Corbett, is the picture the fencers skip and the actors keep — a light-footed biopic, Raoul Walsh directing, a man who could box in a frame the way he had fenced in another. He was, for a stretch of those seven years, the most complete male action star the studio system had: sea, saddle, ring, Lincoln green. The Sisters (1938), with Bette Davis, asked him to be a husband instead of a blade. Four’s a Crowd (1938) asked him to be a screwball lead. Dive Bomber (1941), in Technicolor, put him in a Navy medical picture opposite Fred MacMurray, a studio’s idea of service. He was not only the green tights. He was a contract player who took the calendar Warner handed him and made the calendar look like a choice. The fencing masters on the lot — Fred Cavens, and the men who doubled the hard falls — did the grammar. The grin did the rest.
De Havilland was the partner the stills sold as destiny. They made eight pictures together. They were colleagues, not a marriage. The grin is his file. The career she built after she left Warner is hers. He married three times: Lili Damita in 1935, a French actress, a marriage that produced Sean and ended in 1942; Nora Eddington in 1943, two daughters, Deirdre and Rory, a divorce in 1949; Patrice Wymore in 1950, a Warner musical contract player, a daughter, Arnella, a marriage that held on paper until his death. The children have had to share a grin the size of a studio.
In 1942 two underage girls, Betty Hansen and Peggy Satterlee, accused him of statutory rape. The trial in Los Angeles was a national sport. Jerry Giesler defended him. He was acquitted on both counts. The phrase “in like Flynn” is the folk memory, which is a cruelty and a boast the culture has never sorted. A complete life does not turn an acquittal into a halo and does not retry him from a desk. It says: the charge was made, the jury said no, the life did not become careful.
The war he did not fight in the way the studio’s heroes did followed him like a second trial. Recurrent malaria, a heart already arguing, a 4-F the tough guys in the columns used against him. He made Objective, Burma! (1945), a Walsh combat picture the British press attacked for leaving the British out of a British theater, and other war films — Desperate Journey, Edge of Darkness — the studio used as a substitute for a uniform he could not pass a physical to wear. The pictures got smaller after the war. Cry Wolf (1947), with Stanwyck, asked him to be a gothic lead. Silver River (1948) put him in a western Walsh could not save from the drinking. Adventures of Don Juan (1948) is a last costume flourish, Viveca Lindfors, a man who can still wear the tights and is already tired in the eyes. He went to Europe. He tried independent productions. He wrote My Wicked, Wicked Ways, a memoir that is a performance, dictated near the end and published after he was gone. He drank. He sailed the Zaca. He tried Castro’s Cuba as a journalist and as the face of Cuban Rebel Girls (1959), another performance. On October 14, 1959, he died in Vancouver, of a myocardial infarction, at fifty, in the apartment of the doctor who had been treating him. The coroner said the body was older. That is the last year in a sentence.
I felt like a fugitive from the law of averages.Errol Flynn
The turn is the 4-F and the pictures that got smaller, and the refusal — or the inability — to become careful after a jury had already said no. He played men who laughed in the hall. He lived as if the hall were the only plan.
Six things most people never knew
- Hobart, not Hollywood, is the first port. Tasmania. A British-colonial childhood, then New Guinea and the water.
- The sea and New Guinea came before the green tights. He was already a storyteller. Warner gave the story a lighting plot.
- De Havilland was the partner the stills sold as destiny. Eight pictures. Colleagues, not a marriage. The grin is his. The rest of her file is hers.
- The 1942 trial is weather, not a colorful footnote. Acquitted. The nickname stuck. The life did not become a Sunday school.
- The war 4-F followed him like a second trial. The heroes he played enlisted in the audience’s mind. The man did not pass the physical.
- He died at fifty with a coroner’s age that was higher. Vancouver, 1959. The sword pictures are longer than the man.
His children, including Sean Flynn — who disappeared in Cambodia in 1970 as a photojournalist, on assignment, and has never been recovered — inherited a myth that does not know how to be a father. Rory has written the house. Friends from the Warner lot describe a man who could be generous in a bar and gone in the morning. The grin was a tool. It was also, often, the only plan.
The later years
Home, after Warner had already begun to file him as a problem, was a yacht more often than a soundstage. The Zaca, a two-masted schooner, was the address he preferred: the Mediterranean, the Caribbean, a crew, a bar, a man who had been Robin Hood treating the water as the one set he still controlled. He had bought a place in Jamaica, at Navy Island near Port Antonio, and spent stretches there that the Hollywood press treated as exile and that he treated as a life. He kept animals. He kept a bar. He kept a calendar that was not Warner’s. Patrice was, for long stretches, the wife who waited and then did not. The drinking was not a colorful vice in a biography. It was the daily weather. So was the morphine a doctor had, at times, put in the file. The body kept a different set of books from the grin.
He did not vanish from a camera. He chose, or accepted, the remaining pictures the way a tired star accepts a guest list he did not write. That Forsyte Woman (1949), at MGM, put him in a Galsworthy costume opposite Greer Garson. Kim (1950), from Kipling, used him as a British spy in India, a picture that is a boy’s book and a paycheck. Against All Flags (1952), with Maureen O’Hara, is a last pirate weather that is almost a quotation of Captain Blood. The Master of Ballantrae (1953), from Stevenson, was shot in England. He went to Italy and made pictures the American columns filed as decline. Then, briefly, a different temperature: The Sun Also Rises (1957), as Mike Campbell, Hemingway’s bankrupt drunk, a supporting turn the serious critics noticed because the wreck and the part had met. Too Much, Too Soon (1958) put him in a John Barrymore biopic as John Barrymore, a piece of casting that is also a diagnosis. Cuban Rebel Girls, with Beverly Aadland, who was a teenager, is the last feature, a Castro-adjacent adventure that is not a monument. It is a document of a man who would not become careful.
The memoir is the other last job. He dictated My Wicked, Wicked Ways to Earl Conrad in the final stretch; it was published in 1959, after Vancouver. It is a performance of confession, not a confession. It sold. It is still the book people mean when they mean him in prose. He had already published Beam Ends (1937) and Showdown (1946), books the lot treated as hobbies and that are, in fact, a man trying a second instrument. He did not get a long apology tour or a long redemption. He got a schooner, a string of smaller frames, a heart that quit in a Canadian city that was not the castle, and a coroner who said fifty looked older. The years of the name after that are TCM, a nickname that should make a careful reader stop, and eight pictures with de Havilland that still play as if the arrow had already landed. Warner still owns the grin. The family still owns the wreck.
On October 14, 1959, in Vancouver, the heart attack ended the file. He had gone north on a business trip about a house and a picture. He was fifty. Patrice was still the wife on the certificate. Aadland was in the public weather. Sean was already a teenager who would become a war photographer and then a disappearance. The funeral talk was the grin. The medical talk was the liver, the heart, the malaria, the years. Both are the life. He had already, in Blood and Robin Hood and The Sea Hawk, written the public man. The private man is a sailor who outlived his usefulness to a studio and did not outlive his appetites.
After he was gone
Robin Hood still looks like him. Every sword picture after 1938 still steals the grin. De Havilland outlived him by sixty years and still had to answer questions about the grin. The trial is in the biographies whether the fan sites print it or not. Sean’s disappearance is a second unfinished sentence the family has had to live next to. The Zaca changed hands. The Jamaica place changed hands. TCM is the remaining employer.
He came out of Hobart, sailed into a studio, put on Lincoln green, stood trial, kept drinking, wrote the boast, and died at fifty in a city that was not the castle. If you only remember the arrow, you have the still. If you remember Tasmania, the 1942 courtroom, and Vancouver, you have him.
Portrait: Unknown (studio photographer) · Public domain (PD-US-no notice) · via Wikimedia Commons