by Jackie Ganiy
As if two mansions overflowing with lewdness weren’t enough, Errol took this act to the sea as well. He owned a 118’ gaff-rigged schooner, christened Zaca, in which he offered deviant celebrity “sailors” a selection of free love and free booze to go with their free harbor cruise. After all, we’re talking international waters here. No pesky moral laws to spoil the fun. “I like my whisky old and my women young!” he often declared.
Eventually, in 1942, all this nonsense caught up with Flynn in the form of a trial for statutory rape, brought by two fifteen-year-old girls who swore in court that he had seduced them into giving up their virginity. This was a man who could have nailed just about any actress in Hollywood, and did, yet stood accused of chasing after two street urchins, and forcing himself on them. It sounded far-fetched to the public, as well as Flynn’s friends, some of whom formed a group known as “The American Boys Club for the Defense of Errol Flynn”. Peggy Satterlee testified that Flynn had taken her aboard his yacht, and while gazing at the evening sky, whispered seductively into her ear, “That moon would look more beautiful through a porthole.” Pandemonium ensued in the courtroom. Flynn just grinned, like a cheshire cat, through the whole thing. He was acquitted of all charges. A phrase was invented to describe his uncanny ability to escape consequence. He was “in like Flynn.”
Far from ending Flynn’s career, the publicity only enhanced his image as an unimaginable hunk. Things might have turned out differently for him if he had been reined in a little. But Flynn felt vindicated in his lifestyle, and he picked up right where he left off. One of the most famous stories describes the night the body of fellow drinking comrade, John Barrymore, was stolen from the morgue. Legend has it that Raoul Walsh and Flynn were sloshed at a local bar, The Cock and Bull, lamenting that they could not have one last drink with their dead friend. Raoul got an idea (cue light bulb above head). He excused himself and left Flynn to continue drowning his sorrows alone. Several hours later, Flynn staggered into his living room, flicked the lights on, and sauntered over to his bar to pour himself a drink, because he wasn’t drunk enough, apparently. He walked past John Barrymore, stiff as a board, propped up in an easy chair near the bar, a drink jammed into his cold, dead hand. Flynn nodded to the corpse, and proceeded to grab a bottle of whisky. He stopped, whipped around, cried out, and let the whisky bottle fall from his hand. Raoul and two accomplices howled with laugher from the next room, where they had been hiding. This story has become an urban legend, and has been retold many times. Flynn himself recounted it in his autobiography, My Wicked, Wicked Ways, but then, he said a lot of things. Whether or not it actually happened seems to be irrelevant at this point. It’s too good a story to die.
Flynn liked to drink. Seriously. He liked to drink a lot. He used to carry two fifths of vodka on the set with him, and get himself plastered between takes. When the studio banned him from bringing booze to the set, he injected oranges with alcohol, and ate his way to intoxication instead. Today we call this alcoholism. Back then, when Flynn did it, it was called interesting. More interesting were the rumors of his taking male lovers as well as female, a charge that has been hotly denied by those who knew Flynn. Biographer David Bret, who wrote a poison pen book about Flynn, insisted that he swung both ways. Two of his supposed conquests were Ross Alexander and Tyrone Power. Bret wrote that Power fell passionately in love with Flynn, but for the cavalier Flynn, it was all physical. Well, of course it was.
By the 1950s, Errol’s wicked, wicked ways began to catch up with him. He became bloated and old before his time. In 1952, he won critical acclaim for his portrayal of a suave drunk in The Sun Also Rises (I wonder why), and he gave a truly magnificent performance as John Barrymore in 1957‘s Too Much Too Soon. He grew a bit more serious in his middle years, traveling to Cuba, and taking up Castro’s cause, who was then just a freedom fighter, rather than the evil communist scourge that he would later be painted. By the time he penned My Wicked, Wicked Ways, Flynn was depressed, and suffering from numerous physical ailments, including malaria, chronic back pain (hence the morphine and heroin use), lingering tuberculosis, and STDs. The autobiography was a bestseller, and is still considered one of the most entertaining works of its genre.
He was married to Patricia Wymore when, in 1959, he met a fifteen-year-old ingénue named Beverly Aadland. The two were in talks with director Stanley Kubrick to star together in his film version of Vladimir Nabokov’s controversial novel about man/child love, Lolita (how appropriate). He suffered a massive heart attack while visiting Vancouver. He was too ill for the flight back to America, and was taken to a friend’s apartment, where in true Flynn style, he threw a party. A good time was had by all, and he died before the ice had melted in the drinks, in a bedroom where he had gone to rest. No one would have expected anything less.
Strange stories seemed to follow Errol, even after death. Glen McDonald, the coroner present for Flynn’s autopsy, told a tale that has to be the most bizarre urban legend yet. According to Glen, the official cause of death was (deep breath): myocardial infarction, coronary thrombosis, fatty degeneration of the liver (surprise), portal cirrhosis of the liver, and diverticulosis of the colon. The pathologist noticed several warts at the tip of Flynn’s member, from years of venereal disease, and in some twisted kind of penis envy, insisted he needed them as a teaching aid, or something. Glen said absolutely not, but while he was out of the room, said pathologist went snip-snip, and when Glen returned, Flynn’s penis was bare, and the warts stewed in a jar of formaldehyde. Furious, Glen told the pathologist to “PUT THEM BACK!” and so he did....with scotch tape...I kid you not. Errol would have laughed his ass off.
In his autobiography, there is a hint that betrays a touch of annoyance with his sex-crazed, party boy image. “What makes any one think I am less concerned with the verities of life than anyone else? Was it all a prank that I went to loyalist Spain, that I sided with Castro, that I have plumbed the sea depths and traveled the world? Who could live with himself believing he was a symbol of sex and nothing more?”
It's ok, Errol. We loved you just the way you were...penis warts and all.
Errol Flynn autopsy photo
Flynn’s coffin on Los Angeles Union Station platform, 1959.
Chris Farley
A huge man—grossly overweight—hams up an exaggerated display of hitching up his pants, as he crouches in front of two teenagers sitting on a couch. He wears thick glasses, a green tie, checkered sports jacket, and the mannerisms of a man teetering on the edge. “My name is Matt Foley, and I am a motivational speaker. I am 35 years old, I am divorced and I live in a van down by the river!” Such were the immortal words, spoken on Saturday Night Live, by one of the most gifted comedians of recent times, Chris Farley.
Farley was an unlikely celebrity. He was more like that overweight kid at school, who was never picked for basketball, so he turned to comedy to compensate. He also turned to other things. He was born into an Irish Catholic family in Madison, Wisconsin. He attended the private Catholic high school, Edgewood High School Of The Sacred Heart, where he used binge drinking as a way to overcome his shyness, and to fit in. His best friend was a football jock—tall, athletic, handsome—everything Chris wanted to be but wasn’t. In his own words, “I got blind drunk every weekend.” This tactic worked, for a while. He found that people responded to his silly antics and clownish behavior while drunk, and he became well-liked by the “in” crowd, if not actually a part of them. One friend remembered sitting in the library with Chris and some other kids. Chris had spent the hour cracking everyone up, and then he got up and left for class. One kid watched him go, then said, “He’s going to be on Saturday Night Live.” Everyone nodded. Definitely.
When he went away to college at Marquette University, he was away from his parents and any type of restraints, and his weekend partying became his nightly partying. He added marijuana to his routine, and got stoned every chance he could. After graduating from college, he worked briefly with his father, a VP at
the Scotch Oil Company in Madison. He was the boss’s screwup kid, showing up late, or not at all, and often coming to work high.
Chris was aimless and insecure about his future, but he knew that he had a gift for making people laugh. He left Madison for Chicago, and joined the famous improv theater group, Second City. He just walked up onto the stage, auditioned, and was hired. That’s how good he was. Second City was legendary in the comedy world, having spawned most of the original cast of Saturday Night Live, including Chris’s idol, John Belushi. Chris more than looked up to Belushi, he wanted to be Belushi. During a motivational speech, just before he died, he said of his obsession with John, “I read an article about him in Wired magazine. A lot of people read Wired and thought, “Man, that poor guy. I never wanna do drugs again!” But I was like Yeah! If that’s what it takes, I’ll do it ‘cause I wanted to be like him in every way, like all those guys from the show. I thought that’s what you had to do.”
Chris might have been a junkie, but it never seemed to hurt his work. He quickly became one of the most popular Second City acts, which is why Lorne Michaels picked him to join SNL as a permanent cast member in 1990. For a comedian, this was the equivalent of God picking Moses to be a prophet. Chris was thrilled. He was following in the footsteps of his idol. He must have thought he was living a dream. He quickly took his place among the “not ready for prime time players,” and set about delighting audiences for the next four seasons in a style that had not existed since Belushi’s physical comedy of the '70s. His legendary skits included an obese Chippendale dancer, strutting his blubber along side the chiseled physique of Patrick Swayze; the aforementioned Matt Foley, homeless motivational speaker; a cafeteria lunch lady; and Bennett Brauer, crude Weekend Update commentator, who often got side tracked from the subject at hand by stories of his own personal hygiene. Self-effacing as always, Chris quipped, “They’ll come to see the fat boy fall down.”
Chris became good friends with fellow cast members David Spade and Adam Sandler. Sandler was like the skinny, smart-aleck little punk to Farley’s drunk best friend. The two were well-known for their offscreen antics, which included prank random phone calls from the SNL offices, wherein Farley would fart into the receiver, while Sandler spoke in an old lady voice. They would also ride around in a limo together, mooning traffic as the whim struck them. Ah, to be young, wasted, and famous in New York.
Farley’s substance abuse was so out of control that first year on SNL that the producers forced him to go to rehab. For a while, it looked like this might actually have worked. Chris stayed sober for the next three years. Then things got rough on SNL, and he slid back into his old ways.
Chris’s addictions and self-esteem demons began to take control of his life. This was the chubby, awkward kid who always kept a rosary nearby, went to mass every Sunday, and just wanted to be loved. If he had to act ridiculous or make fun of himself to do it, that’s what he did. If he had to get high to get his courage up, that’s what he did. In the beginning, he was able to keep it together, but as the years wore on, and the pressure began to build along with his SNL fame, he began to lose it.
Finally, in 1995, he and Sandler were fired from SNL. In addition to the pranks and frat-boy behavior, management had grown tired of Chris’s increasingly erratic behavior. Chris was in good company, however, as nearly the entire cast from that season either left or was fired.
Chris decided to branch out into films, now that he had lots of time on his hands. He and David Spade starred in two successful films together, the hilarious Tommy Boy and Black Sheep. He also made Beverly Hills Ninja and Almost Heroes, his last (and worst) film. By Almost Heroes, in 1997, he was having a hard time keeping his addictions from impacting his work, causing numerous shooting delays and cost overruns.
Chris spent the last two years of his life in and out of rehab—seventeen times. He and Amy Winehouse would have hit it off nicely. Periods of sobriety came and went, and he would be right back in it again, funny fat wasted guy everyone invites to parties. He longed for a deep, personal connection with a woman, but didn’t think any would have him, so he hired prostitutes instead. He took them out to eat, dance, enjoy shows, and referred to them as girlfriends. Chris called the outpatient rehab programs a joke, and said he beat drug tests by carrying around someone else’s urine all the time. “I was crying all the time because I could not stop. I could not imagine a life of sobriety because drugs and alcohol were the only thing that was my friend. I knew I was in trouble.”
In March of '97, while at an SNL cast reunion in Aspen, his profuse sweating, strange behavior, and obvious weight gain (he topped the scales at nearly 300 lbs) got everyone’s attention. Chevy Chase, in a helpful, fatherly fashion, took Farley aside and told him, “Look, you’re not John Belushi. And when you overdose, or kill yourself, you’re not going to have the same acclaim that John did. You’ll be a blip in The New York Times obituary page and that will be it. Is that what you want?” Well, no, of course that’s not what he wanted, but he was an addict, and simply unable to muster the kind of inner strength it takes to overcome that. In July, after appearing completely blitzed at a Planet Hollywood opening in Indianapolis, he told a fellow actor who tried to calm him down that he intended to “Live fast and die young.” Did he really mean that?
The last week of Chris’s life would have put Nero to shame. He’d moved to Chicago, and was living in the prestigious Hancock Building. In December of ’97, he decided to tear through nearly every single bar and holiday drug party he could find. He began this quest on December 14, with a round of binge eating, binge drinking, and binge everything else at his favorite club, Karma. He engaged in a post-Second City reunion pub crawl on December 15. On December 16, he spent the day with a prostitute named Autumn, drinking vodka, smoking pot and trying to score drugs. In the early morning hours of December 17, he hit a local upscale bar with his brother and assistant, and left with two prostitutes. He hit another party in Lincoln Park at 6 AM that same morning, where he met a stripper named Heidi. According to Heidi, he spent hours ingesting massive quantities of coke, heroin and booze before he came back to her apartment, where more drugs were consumed.
At 11 PM, they moved their two-person party to his apartment. Chris was so far gone at that point that he couldn’t even get it up. Heidi was growing impatient, and asked to be paid, not only for her time, but for all the drugs she fronted him. Chris, possibly in a pathetic attempt to keep her there so that he wouldn’t have to be alone, claimed his friend had actually hired her, and that it was he who was suppose to pay her. Fed up, she decided to leave. Chris tried to follow her, but collapsed about ten feet from the door. “Don’t leave,” he pleaded. So, not exactly being the hooker with the heart of gold, she left Chris there, struggling for breath, but not before the enterprising young businesswoman decided to snap a photo. For her scrapbook, no doubt. This was at around 3 AM on December 18.
Chris was found at 2 PM that afternoon by his brother, who had been unable to reach him by phone. Chris had not slept in four days. He was on his back, pretty much where Heidi left him, stiff and blue. He died alone, hours earlier. He was thirty-three, just like John Belushi. Toxicology reports gave the cause of death as acute cocaine and morphine intoxication, just like John Belushi. He wanted to be like John so badly, and he succeeded in the worst way.
When fellow cast member Phil Hartman bid farewell to SNL on his final show in 1994, the entire cast lined up like the Von Trapp children, and sang the song from The Sound of Music. Chris was the last one to add his goodbye. Instead of doing his bit and leaving the stage like the rest, Chris started out as the irrepressible Matt Foley, but transitions into a little boy who pretends he’s sleepy, and sits down on the steps, yawning and rubbing his eyes. Phil sits down next to him and puts his arm around him. “You know, I can’t think of a better way to end my eight years on this show than this,” he says, as Chris snuggles his head tenderly into Phil’s shirt. Together they sing the final line in the song, waving go
odbye, as the lights dim in the studio, until only a single circular spotlight remains on their faces. “Goodbye. Goodbye. Goodbye.” The camera slowly pans closer, and the spotlight goes out.
Both would be dead within three years. Phil would be murdered by his wife, and Chris would burn out. Fate has a strange way of pointing to itself sometimes.
Barbara La Marr
The striking fourteen-year-old girl stood before the judge, trembling a little. He took one long look at the stunning beauty, who looked five years more matured than she actually was, and declared her “much too beautiful and young to be on her own in Los Angeles.” Found dancing in a burlesque show, Reatha was given the choice between a court-appointed guardian, or going home to her parents. Writer and actress Adela Rogers St. Johns just happened to be in the room that day, witnessing the start of a byline that would forever precede the girl. She brought Reatha Watson back to her office at the LA Examiner, introducing her to the editor, Jack Campbell. A seasoned newspaperman, Jack knew a great byline when he saw one, and published a two-page spread on Reatha the following day, introducing her as “The girl too beautiful”. It was not the first dance for the press and Reatha, but from then on, she’d have her pick of partners and music.