Soooooooooooooooooo Errol Flynn was my very first celebrity crush - when I was 6 I used to play The Adventures of Robin Hood on a loop in my head and recite it word to word to myself when I couldn’t fall asleep at night. I was a really cool and relatable kid. I know.
So I was in New Jersey this month (DONT ask why) and I found a biography about Errol called “Errol Flynn: The Untold Story” (copyright 1980) in a used bookstore and I was so excited. All I knew about him really was that he was a hot Robin, he was from Australia, and he had a bit of a scandalous history. But now I’m reading this book and the things I’m learning are absolutely insane. Keep in mind, after looking up the book, I learned that it is a somewhat controversial biography that takes a lot of liberties when it comes to facts. The biggest claim the book makes is that Errol Flynn was a Nazi Spy with close ties to proven Gestapo agents. The author even goes so far as to state that Errol’s photos and videos taken of Pearl Harbor pre-attack (that are used in the film Dive Bomber) were used by the Japanese government to strategize how they would bomb Pearl Harbor, implying that Errol deliberately filmed those to get that information to the Japanese government to aid them.
There’s also insane stories of him torturing animals, assaulting women, having sex with anything that breathed, and taking advantage of most of the people he came in contact with. He had a job biting (yes BITING) testicles off of sheep, he would frequently travel to Mexico so he could have affairs with young men (oh, yes, the book also claims he was a closet bisexual), and in his free time he enjoyed sailing and risking his life to take videos of whales having sex. At one point his parents accuse him of being the literal child of the DEVIL, and the author claims that the ghost of Errol visited him in a dream and told him of his adventures in hell. You just can’t make this stuff up.
Look, I don’t know if the stuff about him being a straight up Nazi spy is completely true, but if there’s enough evidence based on your life choices and the people you associate yourself with that it could cause people to think “hmmm, maybe he could be a Nazi” then that’s probably a sign that you’re not really a good human being. So yeah, now I might hesitate a bit more before I eagerly tell people that he was my first celebrity crush, but I also think it’s kind of a testament to how magnetic he was on screen. I don’t know if morally that’s wrong to acknowledge, maybe it is, probably it is, but I think it’s okay to recognize that someone could be a terrible person and still be good at their job and leave a lasting effect on the industry they worked in.
Since I’ve made it this far in the book I obviously have to finish it. Plus it’s hard to put down, even though it’s organized kind of weird. Something crazy happens every other page. I just read a chapter that vaguely claims that Errol and Howard Hughes had a one night stand - I’m not joking. Since I’ve only ever seen Errol in The Adventures of Robin Hood, I figured I needed to watch some of his films so I could match them up to the stories in the book. Captain Blood seemed like the best place to start.
Yeah it was good!
Soooooooooooooooooo Errol Flynn was my very first celebrity crush - when I was 6 I used to play The Adventures of Robin Hood on a loop in my head and recite it word to word to myself when I couldn’t fall asleep at night. I was a really cool and relatable kid. I know.
So I was in New Jersey this month (DONT ask why) and I found a biography about Errol called “Errol Flynn: The Untold Story” (copyright 1980) in a used bookstore and I was so excited. All I knew about him really was that he was a hot Robin, he was from Australia, and he had a bit of a scandalous history. But now I’m reading this book and the things I’m learning are absolutely insane. Keep in mind, after looking up the book, I learned that it is a somewhat controversial biography that takes a lot of liberties when it comes to facts. The biggest claim the book makes is that Errol Flynn was a Nazi Spy with close ties to proven Gestapo agents. The author even goes so far as to state that Errol’s photos and videos taken of Pearl Harbor pre-attack (that are used in the film Dive Bomber) were used by the Japanese government to strategize how they would bomb Pearl Harbor, implying that Errol deliberately filmed those to get that information to the Japanese government to aid them.
There’s also insane stories of him torturing animals, assaulting women, having sex with anything that breathed, and taking advantage of most of the people he came in contact with. He had a job biting (yes BITING) testicles off of sheep, he would frequently travel to Mexico so he could have affairs with young men (oh, yes, the book also claims he was a closet bisexual), and in his free time he enjoyed sailing and risking his life to take videos of whales having sex. At one point his parents accuse him of being the literal child of the DEVIL, and the author claims that the ghost of Errol visited him in a dream and told him of his adventures in hell. You just can’t make this stuff up.
Look, I don’t know if the stuff about him being a straight up Nazi spy is completely true, but if there’s enough evidence based on your life choices and the people you associate yourself with that it could cause people to think “hmmm, maybe he could be a Nazi” then that’s probably a sign that you’re not really a good human being. So yeah, now I might hesitate a bit more before I eagerly tell people that he was my first celebrity crush, but I also think it’s kind of a testament to how magnetic he was on screen. I don’t know if morally that’s wrong to acknowledge, maybe it is, probably it is, but I think it’s okay to recognize that someone could be a terrible person and still be good at their job and leave a lasting effect on the industry they worked in.
Since I’ve made it this far in the book I obviously have to finish it. Plus it’s hard to put down, even though it’s organized kind of weird. Something crazy happens every other page. I just read a chapter that vaguely claims that Errol and Howard Hughes had a one night stand - I’m not joking. Since I’ve only ever seen Errol in The Adventures of Robin Hood, I figured I needed to watch some of his films so I could match them up to the stories in the book. Captain Blood seemed like the best place to start.
Yeah it was good!
