Home> Facts and Trivia > Stars > Errol Flynn
Errol Flynn Facts
| Sign | Gemini |
| Born |
Jun 20, 1909 Hobart, Australia |
| Died |
Oct 14, 1959 Vancouver, Canada |
| Age | Died at 50 |
| Total Facts | 68 |
A British citizen, since Australian citizenship did not exist until the creation of the Commonwealth in 1949.
A chain smoker, in the last year of his life, he underwent hospital tests to see whether he had throat cancer.
A recent Australian documentary on his life and career, narrated by Christopher Lee, included a film clip of Flynn being interviewed on his being nominated for the Academy Award for his critically acclaimed performance in The Sun Also Rises (1957). We are then told that the nomination "disappeared".
According to his autobiography, Errol Flynn's mother, Marelle Young, was a descendant of Midshipman Edward ("Ned") Young, a Bounty mutineer who went to Pitcairn with Fletcher Christian. Young had four children with Toofaiti, Nancy, George, Robert and William, and three more with Christian's widow Mauatua, Edward, Polly and Dorothea. His descendants still live on Pitcairn, Norfolk and in New Zealand.
Although Australian, his genealogy shows both British and Irish descent.
Although only 50, he succumbed to a massive heart attack at the apartment of Dr. Grant Gould in Vancouver while he was there to sell his yacht (The Zaca) to an old friend, George Caldough. The yacht was his "pride and joy", but due to financial difficulties, he was forced to sell it and had primarily lived on it during his final years. The autopsy showed he had the body of a 75-year-old man.
Became seriously ill with liver failure in the mid-1950s.
Best remembered by the public for his starring in swash-buckling adventure films.
Chosen by Empire magazine as one of the 100 Sexiest Stars in film history (#86). [1995]
Declaring to his second wife that he wanted to experience everything in life, he began dabbling in opium in the late 1940s and quickly became a full-fledged addict. His opium addiction and the effects of the alcohol that ravaged his body over the years contributed to his premature death in 1959 at only age 50.
Dream project was a biopic about the notorious Australian-Irish outlaw Ned Kelly, which nearly got produced by Warner Brothers in the mid 1940s.
Errol Flynn described his mother's family as "seafaring folk" and this appears to be where his life-long passion for boats and the sea originated.
Errol Flynn was portrayed by Jude Law in Martin Scorsese's 2004 film The Aviator starring Leonardo DiCaprio.
Errol Flynn's father, Theodore Thomson Flynn, was a lecturer (1909) and later professor (1911) of biology at the University of Tasmania (UTAS).
Errol Flynn's first book, Beam Ends, an autobiographical account of his sailing trips around Australia, was published in 1937.
Father of Deirdre Flynn and Rory Flynn.
Father with Nora Eddington of Deirdre (born January 10, 1945) and Rory (born March 12, 1947).
Father, with Patrice Wymore of Arnella (25 December 1953 - 21 September 1998)
Father, with Lili Damita of photojournalist Sean Flynn (1941 - 1970).
Flynn was married three times: to actress Lili Damita from 1935 until 1942 (one son, Sean Flynn, born 1941, reported missing in Cambodia in 1970 and presumed dead); to Nora Eddington from 1943 until 1949 (two daughters, Deirdre born 1945 and Rory born 1947); and to actress Patrice Wymore from 1950 until his death (one daughter, Arnella Roma, 1953–98).
From his mother Flynn was descended from an illegitimate daughter from an unknown mother of Sir Richard Neville, 6th Earl of Salisbury and 16th Earl Consort of Warwick, 181th Knight of the Garter, and through him from Edward III Plantagenet, King of England.
Grandfather of Luke Flynn.
Had a vasectomy in 1955.
He and Olivia de Havilland acted together in 9 movies: The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938), Captain Blood (1935), The Charge of the Light Brigade (1936), Dodge City (1939), Four's a Crowd (1938), Essex and Elizabeth (1939), Santa Fe Trail (1940), Thank Your Lucky Stars (1943) and They Died with Their Boots On (1941)
He and director Michael Curtiz made some of their best pictures together, but he despised Curtiz (which was mutual) and the two fought constantly whenever they worked together. Ironically, his first wife Lili Damita was previously briefly married to Curtiz.
He met his second wife while she was working at a snack counter in a courthouse during one of his rape trials.
He was a friend of Hermann Erben - monkey expert, drug dealer, Hitler impersonator and German agent who spent voluntarily three years in a Japanese internment camp in Shanghai.
He was considered for Leslie Howard's role in Gone with the Wind (1939). He was also allegedly considered for the role of Rhett Butler, but Bette Davis (who was to play Scarlett O'Hara) vetoed the idea.
He was granted a 4-F deferment during World War II due to his weak heart, exacerbated by bouts of malaria and tuberculosis. During the filming of Gentleman Jim (1942) Flynn suffered a mild heart attack.
He was the great-great-great-great-grandson of HMS Bounty mutineer Edward "Ned" Young. Flynn portrayed Fletcher Christian in the film In the Wake of the Bounty (1933). He was also the 23rd great-grandson of Robert De Vere. In addition, he is the 15th cousin twice removed of Olivia de Havilland, who played Maid Marian, his love interest, in The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938).
He was voted the 26th Greatest Movie Star of all time by Entertainment Weekly.
He was voted the 55th Greatest Movie Star of all time by Entertainment Weekly.
His father was head of Zoology at the University of Tasmania.
His father, Theodore Flynn, taught biology at Queens College, Belfast.
His mother had Polynesian ancestry, from Tahiti, through her four great-grandmothers--the mutineers of HMS Bounty sailed from Tahiti to Pitcairn Island, taking some Tahitian women with them. As of 2005, there were an estimated 55 descendants of the mutineers still living on Pitcairn.
His performance as Robin Hood in The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938) is ranked #16 on Premiere Magazine's 100 Greatest Movie Characters of All Time.
His son Sean Flynn appeared in a few films but didn't particularly like being an actor. He switched careers and was a freelance photojournalist during the Vietnam War. He disappeared with another journalist as they followed the US Army invasion into Cambodia and both were thought to have been captured and executed by Khmer Rouge guerrillas. He is the subject of the 1981 The Clash song, "Sean Flynn."
In The Case of the Curious Bride (1935), one of his earliest films, his role consisted of lying on a marble slab as a corpse. There was also a flashback sequence towards the end of the film showing how Flynn was killed. The film in question has appeared at least twice on Turner Classic Movies during Errol Flynn festivals despite his very limited (certainly less than two minutes) screen time.
In 1980, author Charles Higham published a controversial biography, "Errol Flynn: The Untold Story," in which he alleged that Flynn was a fascist sympathizer who spied for the Nazis before and during World War II. In Disney's film The Rocketeer (1991), the major villain, Neville Sinclair, was a 1930s Hollywood actor who spied for the Nazis, an obvious reference to Higham's allegations about Flynn. The book also alleged he was bisexual and had affairs with Tyrone Power, Howard Hughes and Truman Capote. Subsequent biographies - notably Tony Thomas' "Errol Flynn: The Spy Who Never Was" (1990) - have denounced Higham's claims as fabrications. Flynn's political beliefs appear to have been left-wing. He was a strong supporter of the Spanish Republic and a fervent opponent of ultra-conservative Gen. Francisco Franco in the Spanish Civil War, and was a supporter of Fidel Castro's revolution in Cuba, even hosting a documentary titled The Truth Abou
In his book, "My Wicked Wicked Ways", Flynn recounted that as a young man in Papua, New Guinea, he had many adventurous jobs as a gold prospector, slave recruiter, a diamond smuggler, and a manager of coconut and tobacco plantations, just to name a few. He also spent a short time as a cadet patrol officer until it was discovered that he had misrepresented himself. Unfortunately, his time in New Guinea came with a price. While there, Flynn contracted malaria, which would plague him for the rest of his life. It has been a matter of dispute as to whether all his stories of adventure were true, but many have concluded that even if only 25% percent were true, he certainly had an amazing life.
In his final years he suffered from Buerger's disease, acute inflammation and thrombosis (clotting) of arteries and veins of the legs, hands and feet as a result of his excessive cigarette smoking.
In the early days of establishing his Hollywood career, he passed himself off as Irish in the belief that few people knew of Australia. He was born, educated and began work in Australia, later drifting between Papua New Guinea and Sydney (rumoured to have been a fighter for PNG) before stumbling on to acting. The Australian film In the Wake of the Bounty (1933) captured some attention for him in the States and so, owing enormous debts to the Australian Taxation Office, he moved to America. He said to the ATO, "I'm willing to forget if you are".
In the last two years of his life Flynn caused a scandal by touring the world with his teenage mistress Beverly Aadland working as his secretary.
In the last year of his life he turned down an offer to star in a major swashbuckling series for US television, in which Flynn would play the same kind of character he had played in Captain Blood (1935), with younger stand-ins performing his stunts. "I knew it would be crap," he explained.
Independent writer/director Patrick Stark is creating a dramatic feature about the last days of Flynn's life in Vancouver, British Columbia.
Interred at Forest Lawn, Glendale, California, in the Garden of Everlasting Peace.
It has been said that his 1959 autobiography, "My Wicked Wicked Ways," was originally to be called "In Like Me."
It was during a "Parkinson" (1971) interview that his good friend David Niven revealed that during the filming of The Charge of the Light Brigade (1936), Flynn was busy on a horse during a break applying makeup with one hand whilst holding a mirror in the other. An extra seeing this assumed (like most of the people around) that he was gay, and decided to "pock" the horse up the behind with his lance - the horse bucked, throwing Flynn to the ground. He got to his feet and asked who had done that, the extra volunteered, thinking that this would only add to his embarrassment. However, Flynn dragged him from the horse and gave him a sound beating. They were the best of friends after that.
Mentioned in the Jimmy Buffett song, "Pencil Thin Mustache".
Mentioned in the song "Blood on the Rooftops" by Genesis.