The Star Machine

by Jeanine Basinger

  In December 1942, he showed his guts when he performed a specialty song-and-dance number in Thank Your Lucky Stars (a Warners all-star war effort release of 1943). In an attempt to make fun of himself and disarm others, he sang the lyrics of a specially written song, “That’s What You Jolly Well Get.” The number was set in a London pub, and Flynn was a Cockney who was singing exaggerated claims about his heroism in the war. His buddies in the pub ironically sing, “Urrah! ’E won the war!” Flynn is charming, singing and dancing with great energy and looking jaunty and happy. The number didn’t do much to help his cause, however. He began to drink even more heavily and later wrote in his autobiography of his experiments with drugs and his generally dissolute life. Although Flynn remained a star until his death, the postwar period marked the beginning of the end of his popularity. The combination of his trial and his war roles caused him to lose favor, not only with the public but in his own eyes. He said, “In the back of all this there was a fellow inside myself who would say to me, ‘You are an impostor, Flynn. In real life you don’t do any of the things you do on the screen. You are no more capable of that kind of action in real life than a choirboy.’ Maybe that is why, in my private life, I went ahead consciously or unconsciously, to live such a life of reality, rather than just portraying it all the time.”

  Warners decided that it was imperative to salvage Flynn’s box office clout by immediately giving him a change of pace. As if to erase the wartime gripes about Flynn’s sit-at-home status, Warners reintroduced the romantic comedy version of Flynn right away in 1946. The studio’s hope was that everyone was sick of the war and would happily welcome back the Flynn they had loved in the 1930s. Always cautious with money, however, Warners didn’t turn to a big-budget costume action film, but to a small black-and-white comedy. The film that was designed—and it was designed—for Flynn was Never Say Goodbye, a feebleminded attempt to make a 1930s screwball comedy. Flynn’s co-star was to be the remarkably beautiful Eleanor Parker, a newcomer on her way up, who in the old tradition could be supported by the big-name male star. It was the last gasp of the star machine for Errol Flynn.

  Flynn always could play comedy well; his skill in that area had been an important part of his swashbuckling success. Comedy was always just beneath the surface of almost every role he played. But there’s more than just comedy for Flynn in Never Say Goodbye. There’s comedy about Flynn. He’s turned into a joke—a charming enough joke, but still a joke. It was a bad omen that Warners felt comfortable playing for laughs about Flynn’s negative publicity and well-established offscreen sexual exploits. His character is a womanizing artist who draws “the Gaylie Girl” (a reference to the Vargas or Petty Girl calendar drawings of big-bosomed, long-legged fantasy women). Flynn drinks. He flirts. He cons. He sweeps women of all ages right off their feet. He’s naughty (although nice). When he sends his little daughter a gift, she breathlessly says, “It’s from Robin Hood!” More than once his character is referred to in this manner, a ruthless exploitation of his former glory.

  Errol Flynn never had to dance around a sillier role. He’s forced to dress up like Santa Claus and Humphrey Bogart—a star forced to impersonate a star!—and Bogie’s voice is superimposed over his own to complete the impersonation. Throughout, he’s trying to woo his former wife back and, of course, in the end, he does get her, but his main task is just to survive the movie without looking too foolish. Never Say Goodbye is the handwriting on Flynn’s wall. Warner Bros. was obviously dealing with a problem: What should they do with Errol Flynn now that his offscreen reputation has been tarnished by both his lack of war service and his sexual exploits?

  By 1948, when Flynn appeared in Silver River, a Raoul Walsh western with Ann Sheridan as his co-star, his offscreen life was becoming apparent on his face. He’s still handsome, but not très perfect the way he was, not youthful and slim or energetic. He’s slightly puffy around the eyes, and the start of jowls can be observed. His face is broader, his eyes deader, his body thicker. He’s not yet fat, nor unglamorous. But he’s not the Errol Flynn of The Adventures of Robin Hood.

  By 1950, after fifteen years on top, Flynn’s career was adrift. In 1951, he made a film (Hello, God) which received no United States release, an unthinkable event for a studio star. In 1952 and 1953, he made four movies that were pale imitations of his former successes: The Adventures of Captain Fabian, a riff on Captain Blood; Mara Maru, a modern story about sunken treasure; Against All Flags, his last effective swashbuckler, with pirates, Maureen O’Hara, and lots of sly references to Flynn’s persona; and The Master of Ballantrae, based on Robert Louis Stevenson’s historical novel set in Scotland. By the mid-1950s, however, Flynn looked worn and dissipated, and his hard lifestyle was obviously robbing him of a movie star’s most precious assets—good looks and physical grace.

  Flynn stopped living in Hollywood around 1952 and would eventually leave Warners, saying bitterly, “My eighteen-year-long affair with Warner Bros. came to an end … Most people who work for a company for so long a time get some recognition. My recognition, in 1952, when I was ending my service with Warners, came in the form of a letter accusing me of a breach of contract, holding up the company, and general bad behavior … They were trying to get rid of their star roster … by trying to force the stars to break their contracts.” He also granted a somewhat sad magazine interview, in which he mused, “I get the feeling that life is slipping by me … the time is passing and I am not living fully.” The time was passing, but he was living too fully.

  Disillusioned and discouraged, Flynn decided to take his career into his own hands. He hired a new manager (Barry Mahon), created Errol Flynn Pictures, and sailed to Europe, where his popularity had remained steady. His first venture, Crossed Swords, co-starred him with Gina Lollobrigida. It was released in 1954 and greeted as an obvious—but unsuccessful—attempt to revive the joy and pizzazz of the 1930s Flynn swashbucklers. Undiscouraged, and happy with his new career control, Flynn was inspired to undertake an epic film that would re-create the story of the legendary Swiss hero William Tell.

  Flynn saw the project as the opportunity to prove he was more than a good-looking movie star. He decided to shoot his movie in CinemaScope (a new and “hot” process in 1954), and he hired Jack Cardiff, a highly respected cinematographer, to both shoot and direct. Cardiff, who had photographed beautiful color films such as The Red Shoes (1948) and Black Narcissus (1947), would be making his directorial debut. Along with himself in the title role, Flynn cast his old friend Bruce Cabot as the villain, and Italian actors Aldo Fabrizi and Antonella Lualdi to co-star. To finance the ambitious project, Flynn proved his commitment by putting up half the budget ($430,000) with his own money. He secured a second $210,000 from an Italian backer named Count Fossataro (a name right out of a Roger Corman medieval horror film). For the remaining funding, Flynn, whose reputation as a charmer wasn’t just publicity hype, talked the Italian government into providing $145,000. With cast, crew, and funding in place, Errol Flynn embarked happily on William Tell with great optimism.

  For a few weeks, everything went well, and thirty minutes of the movie were put in the can. Then the bottom dropped out. Flynn was informed all the money was gone—spent—kaput. Fossataro’s checks started bouncing sky high. There was no way to continue unless more money could be found immediately. Flynn, in a state of shock, undertook the search for additional financing, and as he moved forward, bad news started coming in. First, Flynn’s business manager, Al Blum, who had just died of cancer, had spent all Flynn’s money on one last glorious binge. (“Tell Errol I’m sorry,” were Blum’s dying words.) Next, the IRS informed Flynn he owed over $800,000 in back taxes. This was followed by betrayal from his old friend Cabot, who, impatient to be paid, sued for his salary and had Flynn’s car and his wife’s clothing confiscated as collateral. As these events hit him within days of one another, Flynn collapsed, ill with jaundice, and while he recovered, all the cameras, film stock, and equipment were seized by the local bailiffs.


  Flynn ultimately began the melancholy task of trying to save William Tell. He tried to gain funding from Warner Bros., from old friends, from other investors, but everything failed. Not only was the movie without funding, but Flynn himself was strapped for daily living expenses. He needed cash. Ever resourceful, he went on a quiz show entitled The Big Surprise and—big surprise!—won $30,000 by proving he truly was an expert seaman by answering nautical questions. (He also raised money to live on by renting his yacht, the Zaca, to Mary Pickford and Buddy Rogers.)

  Flynn finally realized that William Tell was never to be. According to his friends, the failure of this project did something to Flynn that he never fully got over. It was worse than the rape trial in that it connected directly to his sense of himself as an artist. It also represented betrayal by friends and backers he had trusted; he felt like a fool. The result of his attempt to come into his own as a filmmaker ended up as thirty minutes of a movie that exists somewhere—no one knows where—an uncompleted half hour of Flynn that no one has ever seen, his financial undoing, the “lost William Tell.”

  Hovering near bankruptcy and desperate for cash, Flynn accepted an offer from producer Herbert Wilcox to appear in two movies opposite the popular British film star Anna Neagle. Wilcox, who was married to Neagle, offered Flynn the sum of $25,000, and Flynn was happy to take it. The two films were Lilacs in the Spring (retitled Let’s Make Up in the United States) in 1954 and King’s Rhapsody in 1955.

  In Lilacs, Flynn and Neagle have both seen better days and certainly better projects. Yet they suit up and gamely carry out their tasks like the professionals they are. Neagle, playing a musical comedy star, chugs to cross a cavernous dance floor, steering a bored-looking partner through a grim tango that’s more concerned with destination than passion. Later, she thumps out a lead-footed Charleston on top of a marble table. For his part, Flynn—still looking good but thicker in face and waistline—exits and enters the frame as if he’s breezing through on his way somewhere else, a “hello, I must be going” kind of appearance. He’s the White Rabbit, and she’s the Grand Lady, yet they do what a film star’s gotta do—the job. They have one golden scene in which they perform a little soft-shoe, a music hall song-and-dance to “Lily of Laguna,” itself a product that had seen better days. Flynn and Neagle give it all the charm and style and personality that made them both stars. While she glows and radiates like a young girl, Flynn cocks his hat, stuffs his hands in his pockets, and proves that despite everything that’s happened to him, he still knows how to have fun on film.*

  Flynn’s career was on an upturn when he undertook a quality role in The Sun Also Rises (with Ava Gardner), playing a mature version of his original jaunty and charming persona.

  Lilacs in the Spring did reasonably well in England, but King’s Rhapsody, a Ruritanian romance based on one of Ivor Novello’s last plays, was greeted with yawns.

  The Flynn luck held, however. So he looked older than he was, and like a soggy alcoholic? Great. He could play soggy old alcoholics. By turning to what amounted to supporting roles that exploited his reputation, he found critical acclaim and positive audience reaction in three final prestige movies: The Sun Also Rises in 1957, in which he plays the alcoholic Mike Campbell; a glorious turn as his old friend John Barrymore in Too Much, Too Soon, based on Diana Barrymore’s autobiography (1958); and also in 1958, the role of a disillusioned British deserter in John Huston’s film of The Roots of Heaven. In all three films, he’s more or less playing a drunk. Sadly, he looks the part. Yet he played well, with a touching, rueful honesty, and it seemed as if he might be making a new beginning and be able to restructure his star presence to accept age, taking on strong supporting roles that no longer required his youthful energy. Patrice Wymore said that Flynn welcomed these new roles openly. “He was tired of being the swashbuckler with a beautiful woman on one arm and a saber in the other and a charging steed underneath … He really wanted to be accepted as a serious actor … that would have pleased him so much: to have been recognized as a serious actor.” It looked as if it might happen, as his fans stayed with him and new ones began to appreciate him. Flynn started to become a cult figure, and when he revealed himself frankly and openly in his witty, self-written autobiography, My Wicked, Wicked Ways, in 1957, he was celebrated for his candor and graceful prose. A future of character roles—even a writing career—seemed to lie ahead.

  Errol Flynn at the end, in an unretouched photo.

  Alas, it was not to be. Errol Flynn, the glamour boy of the 1930s, the delightful, delicious swashbuckling hero of grace, style, and wit, made only one more movie. It was the 1959 film from Exploit Films that has become a cult joke, Cuban Rebel Girls. For those who love Errol Flynn, it’s better not to see it. It’s not just the thin hair, the sagging chin, the rather bulbous nose, the wrinkled neck, and the straggly mustache. It’s his eyes. Once sparkling, full of life and mischief, with little golden flecks that gave off light, his eyes look not only dead, but sad. Really, really sad.

  In his autobiography, he had tried to look back and, while still maintaining his cheerful air, understand what had happened to him. He made an attempt to evaluate his career. “Someone discovered I could look dashing pointing a sword, and bound that sword to my wrist for two decades … I don’t know whether I can convey how deep the yearning is of an actor who has been stereotyped, who has that sword and horse wound around him, to prove to himself and to others he is an actor … I wonder if you can imagine what it might mean to one who believes that given the chance at good and great roles, he might be able to act … but never to be given the chance. Only to be given those surefire box office attractions—entertainment pictures that often didn’t even entertain—action, action, action.”

  In the end, Errol Flynn paid the piper, died young, but never let his audience down by playing his life as anything but a lark. If his role was Errol Flynn, then he was jolly well going to be Errol Flynn. He tried to give the public the Errol Flynn he believed they believed he was. In a radio interview given shortly before he died, Flynn summed up: “I’ve had a hell of a lot of fun, and I’ve enjoyed it … every minute of it.” Let’s hope so. Flynn died on October 14, 1959, at the age of fifty. The doctor who examined him said he had the body of a seventy-year-old man.

  * Legends are legends. This location also has been identified as the Top Hat Malt Shop, or Top’s Cafe, the Safety Drug store soft-drink counter, or Schwab’s Drugstore. Turner scholar Lou Valentino believes it to have been Top’s Cafe, which was located at 6750 Sunset Boulevard, and he is usually right. Although the “Lana Legend” later shifted it to the more famous Schwab’s, that establishment was more than two miles from Hollywood High. It’s unlikely Turner could “run across the street” between classes there. Lana herself said she couldn’t remember for sure what the name of the place was, but that whatever she was drinking, “it had to be a nickel drink” because she couldn’t have afforded anything else.

  † It was said she went to convent school and was a cheerleader in junior high. The reason the family had migrated to Los Angeles was not poverty, but her mother’s “chest trouble.”

  * Turner did return to musicals after she became a big star, making Mr. Imperium (1951), The Merry Widow remake in 1952, and Latin Lovers, all before she left MGM. She also sang and danced on TV, on The Dinah Shore Show, The Milton Berle Show, and others. Clips exist of Turner re-creating Judy Garland’s famous “Madame Krematon” number (1946 Ziegfeld Follies) on Ed Sullivan’s February 14, 1954, Toast of the Town. Turner is surrounded by her “chorus boys”—Steve Forrest, Edmund Purdom, Richard Anderson, and John Ericson—and performs the number carefully but creditably as part of a Sullivan show tribute to the thirtieth anniversary of MGM. When Turner toured with Bob Hope for his 1963 Christmas visit to overseas military bases, she brought down the house when she partnered Hope in a spirited bossa nova number (later televised). On-screen, her singing was dubbed—by Trudy Erwin in Mr. Imperium and Merry Widow, and by Diana Coupl
and in Betrayed (1954).

  * Turner understood what was happening to her. Later she said, “When we started shooting, I had a small part. But as we went along, I kept getting more rewrites. Suddenly, it was my film. All the dramatic parts were put in for me. I was thrilled.”

  * Turner turned twenty on February 8, 1940. She eloped with Shaw on February 14.

  * Reminiscing in a 1997 article, Hunt told how Turner earnestly asked her, “How do you know when you’re really in … love? How can you tell it’s real?”

  * Her famous co-star, Robert Taylor, said of her, “I couldn’t take my eyes off her, and there were times during Johnny Eager when I thought I’d explode … She was the type of woman for whom a guy would risk five years in jail for rape. I don’t think she knew how to talk without being sexy. When she said ‘Good morning,’ I melted.”

  * This issue would have been on the newsstands by December 20, 1946.