Hollywood's Hellfire Club: The Misadventures of John Barrymore, W.C. Fields, Errol Flynn and the Bundy Drive Boys

by Gregory William Mank

  John Barrymore was the first Bundy Drive Boy to perish in their “terminal passion play” via his own horrific Calvary. John Decker wished he had been crucified on either side of his friend Jack, like the two thieves. After the funeral, W.C. Fields and Gene Fowler arrived at Bundy Drive, where Fowler wanted to pick up the deathbed sketch. He would display it near the Richard III sword that Barrymore had given him and the broken cuckoo clock reading 10:20. A surprise awaited them. On a large canvas of Sadakichi Hartmann, Decker had added Golgotha — showing John Barrymore, in loincloth, crucified between two naked women.

  One was Elaine, and the other was her mother.

  Barrymore’s bequests were primarily spiritual and artistic — financially he was bankrupt. On August 24, 1942, there was a Federal court auction of John Barrymore’s “effects.” S.H. Curtis bought the letter written by Abraham Lincoln to Louise Drew, Jack’s aunt, for $325. Frank Peris, agent for the San Diego Museum of Fine Arts, obtained the famed John Singer Sargent crayon portrait of Barrymore for $250.

  Edgar Bergen bought most of the paintings by Barrymore, as well as the actor’s silent film collection and two of his shrunken heads. As for the Bundy Drive Boys, Anthony Quinn paid $250 for Barrymore’s burnished Richard III armor, John Carradine $225 for a silver service, and John Decker bought a number of Barrymore’s drawings. Lionel Barrymore bid $160 for the Paul Manship bust of his brother. This still didn’t settle all the outstanding debts, and personal clothing and items would go on the block the following year.

  1942 was a tragic year, with the world at war and all its ensuing horrors. It had been an especially ominous, scandalous year for the Bundy Drive Boys, and for a time there seemed a curse was on them following Barrymore’s death: • November 2, 1942 saw Errol Flynn reporting to court for a preliminary hearing on his alleged attack on two teenage girls.

  • Sadakichi Hartmann, in the California desert, was ostracized from the Banning community due to his German/Japanese ancestry, including prejudice from the Indians who lived on the reservation. (He was now insisting, incidentally, that he was Indian.)

  • Gene Fowler, beginning his book on Barrymore, suffered extreme heart trouble.

  • Diana Barrymore began an affair with her leading man Brian Donlevy on the set of Universal’s Nightmare, nine weeks after her marriage to Bramwell Fletcher.

  • Elaine Barrymore couldn’t find an acting job.

  The death of John Barrymore was the tragic centerpiece of a harrowing year. As for the Bundy Drive Boys, the Barrymore idolatry only increased after his demise. No figure affected them so powerfully and profoundly; as many Christians offer up their suffering in the spirit of Christ at Calvary, so did the “Boys” later embrace their own failings, as if partaking in some sacrament in honor of Saint Jack. Little wonder Errol Flynn created the legend of Barrymore’s stolen cadaver — it was the closest he could credibly come to providing John Barrymore an Easter Sunday resurrection.

  Barrymore disciples during his life, they would be his zealots in death, and self-destruction was a major rubric of their worship.

  In his will, Barrymore had requested, “I desire that my body shall be cremated and placed in the family vault at Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.” Lionel, as a will executor and with his Catholic sensibilities, had vetoed cremation and opted for burial. In 1954 Lionel died, having stoically labored to the last at MGM, and was buried in the crypt above John at Calvary’s Main mausoleum, and beside his wife Irene Fenwick.

  Dolores Costello, remembered by her first husband as “too beautiful for words but not for arguments,” died March 1, 1979, almost 37 years after the death of John. She had lived on an avocado ranch in Fallbrook, California, where a flood had destroyed much of the Barrymore memorabilia she’d taken from Bella Vista. However, some treasures remained, and she passed them on to John Drew Barrymore.

  Wild-eyed, bearded, looking every bit the Hollywood warlock, John Drew Barry-more, AKA “Johnny” Barrymore (and whom we’ll refer to as John II) had long ago seen his own career explode in a cloud of alcoholism, spousal abuse and drug busts. “Johnny had a problem,” says Phil Rhodes. “He thought he was rejected by his father. But his father didn’t come around because he was afraid Dolores would have put him in an asylum.”

  Decker painting of Sadakichi and the crucified Jack Barrymore. surrounded by whores

  John Blyth Barrymore, son of John Drew and actress Cara Williams and step-brother of Drew, who now calls himself John Barrymore III and whom his father called Jake, posted an amazing “true story” on the Barrymore family website titled “Invasion of the Body Snatchers.” John III wrote that he and his father began enjoying “a greatly improved standard of living” as they pirated Barrymore treasures from Dolores’ estate. The Georgian Knights’ candelabra, the 13th-century hand-executed Book of Hours, the Louis XV furniture, the religious icons… passed on to John II, who began to sell much of it. “After several years of abject poverty,” wrote John III, “we were now comfortably ensconced in adjacent one-bedroom apartments at 8440 Sunset Boulevard — now the site of the trendy Hotel Mondrian.”

  One “Barrymorebelia” buyer was named “Red Dog” — “a notorious Hollywood reprobate,” as John III described him. Red Dog loved rare books and reading them aloud to anyone who’d listen. It was Red Dog’s spirited delivery of Robert Service’s poem The Cremation of Sam McGee that got John II weeping, and committed to granting his father’s final request.

  “Jake,” said John II to John III, “we’ve got to get my daddy up.”

  The caper began. John II got John III to join the crusade, and his lawyer Bruce Pedy. The exhumation demanded dispensation from the Catholic Church (which now allowed cremation) and the Health Department, and signatures from all living heirs. Pedy handled the church document, and John III admitted to forging the family signatures in lieu of dealing “with my insane Barrymore relatives.”

  So John Drew Barrymore, John Blyth Barrymore, Bruce Pedy and (as John III wrote) “a one-eyed Carpathian pirate named John Desko” all came to call at Calvary Cemetery. Dolores was buried there now, outside in Section D with her parents; her marker, along with her name and years, bears the inscription “Mum-Mum.”

  At the mausoleum, John II and company waited while Calvary’s Mexican gravediggers had their lunch. They all ascended to the Main Mausoleum’s second floor, opened the crypt, and removed the marble plaque upon which Lionel had personally carved “Good Night, Sweet Prince.” (The marble plaque with its quote still remains at Calvary.) The smell from the opened grave was overpowering. The stinking solid bronze casket, despite its glass lining, had presumably cracked and the corpse was still decomposing after 38 years. The leakage had sealed the casket to the marble slab and the gravediggers couldn’t budge it.

  “Out of the way!” shouted a drunk John II.

  It had always been a Barrymore custom to give a red apple on an opening night performance. This was after all, as John III noted, “an opening,” and John II had brought apples, which he now handed to the gravediggers. Then he personally grabbed the coffin, placed his feet against the wall of the tomb and “yanked.” The coffin surrendered, the gang hefted it onto a hand truck and wheeled it out to a waiting brown Ford van. “The body fluids were leaking out all the way,” wrote John III.

  John II and his mourners made a beeline to Odd Fellows Cemetery, locale of the closest crematory, and selected a book-shaped urn. Before the immolation, John II decided he wanted to take a look at the father of whom he had so little memory. The Odd Fellows pleaded with him not to do so, but John II gave them apples, remained insistent, and they finally obliged, although John III passed up the viewing — “the smell had been more than enough for me.” He went outside. John Drew left the crematory pale and crying.

  “Thank God I’m drunk,” wept John II to his son. “I’ll never remember it.”

  Although John III hadn’t seen the cadaver, Bruce Pedy had, and John III included the nightmarish description in his “Invasion of the Bod
y Snatchers”:

  It seemed that even in so horrific a state, John Barrymore was still the Great Profile.

  Chapter Sixteen

  1943: In Like Flynn, Courtroom Melodramas, Jane Russell’s Brassiere, Ghosts from the Past, Dream-Turned-Nightmare “Am I Supposed to Eat This — or Did I?”

  The year was so wild, so raucous, that it seemed a Bundy Drive Boys pagan celebration to commemorate John Barrymore’s death.

  Three of the gang had court trials, one of them among the most famous (and sordid) in U.S. judicial history. One achieved his most glorious dream-come-true, only to pay for it, personally and professionally, for the rest of his life. And for one of the men, perhaps the most painful anguish of his life awaited him, and one for which Barrymore himself might have been personally sympathetic.

  January 9, 1943: The year in Hollywood began with a bang — Errol Flynn’s statutory rape trial began.

  The two underage girls were 16-year-old brunette Peggy Satterlee (“night club performer,” noted the Los Angeles Examiner) and 17-year-old blonde Betty Hansen (“movie struck Nebraska waitress”). Flynn, according to Peggy’s lawyers, had “criminally ravished” her (twice) on his yacht the Sirocco. As for Betty, Errol allegedly “lured her to an upstairs bedroom and raped her” (once) at the mansion of “wealthy sportsman” Fred McEvoy, 345 St. Pierre Road, Bel Air.

  It appeared clear that the L.A. District attorney’s office was on a crusading rampage at this time — Flynn, Lionel Atwill and Charlie Chaplin all faced sensational sex trials during the WWII years. It also appears the D.A. was desperate for witnesses against Flynn: Peggy Satterlee was a necrophile and Betty Hansen was already in legal trouble for having performed an act of oral sex.

  The famed Jerry Geisler was Flynn’s defense lawyer. If convicted, Errol Flynn faced up to 50 years in prison.

  January 14: Betty Hansen, who wanted to be an actress, and dramatically glared at Flynn from the witness box, showed up dressed in schoolgirl attire. Asked about being disrobed by Errol Flynn, she admitted, “I didn’t have no objections” — the courtroom spectators roared with laughter at her grammar and coyness. Betty insisted, however, that she thought Flynn was only putting her to bed because she didn’t feel well. She also said she’d only sat in his lap because she had felt ill (and, in fact, had vomited) and he’d suggested she sit down. Wanna-be actress Betty also provided her personal critique of Errol Flynn the actor.

  “Not so good,” she replied, when Geisler asked if she had liked his acting. “He don’t act like a gentleman, I will tell you!”

  The spectators laughed long and loud again, and Geisler had Betty’s canard stricken from the record.

  January 15: It was circus day in court. The Los Angeles Evening Herald-Express would report: “A melodramatic attempt of Lynn Boyer, golden-haired party girl witness, to jump from a window on the eighth floor of the Hall of Justice today abruptly interrupted the Errol Flynn attack trial.” The report cited her “screaming, hysterical tantrum” and her howl “I’ll jump … I’ll jump!” as she ran for the open window. Judge Leslie Still called a brief recess. “Although she has beautiful golden hair,” wrote the Evening Herald-Express of Lynn, “she has appeared daily in a black wig and has also worn dark glasses. She has removed the wig each day after entering the courtroom.”

  Meanwhile, two jurors were charged with perjury, Lynn Boyer cried on the stand and tore her handkerchief to shreds, and the highlight of January 15 came when Jerry Geisler cross-examined Betty Hansen:“Didn’t you testify before the county grand jury that you committed an act of perversion?”

  “Yes.”

  Do you know that this constitutes a crime in California?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you hope not to be prosecuted for this act?”

  “Yes, I do.”

  Geisler had set up Peggy for the kill — she had a scandalous past, had played up to Flynn to try to get into the movies, and was testifying against the star to escape other possible prosecution. For all her “I-hate-you!” glares at Flynn, Betty gave testimony that only added to his legend and lore, including that he kept his shoes on during sex:Geisler: Miss Hansen, the act itself lasted how long, please?

  Hansen: About fifty minutes.

  Geisler: About fifty minutes?

  Hansen: Yes, that’s right.

  Geisler: And during that entire time, he was on top of you?

  Hansen: That is right.

  Betty seemed determined to publicize her own star attributes. Geisler asked if she remembered what Flynn said to her while “having the act with you”:Hansen: I do. He said I have a nice pair of breasts.

  Geisler: Anything else?

  Hansen: Yes. And I had a nice fanny.

  January 19: Betty was virtually a warm-up act for Peggy LaRue Satterlee, who now had her first day on the stand. The L.A. Examiner described her as “Sitting primly in the witness chair, clad in a powder-blue tailored suit with a small pair of silver wings pinned to the pocket, her dark hair pompadoured and tied in long curls,” and noted she spoke “in a demure, little-girl voice, that most of the time was so low that jurors cupped their hands behind their ears to hear her…” She described the two attacks on the Sirocco: one as she lay in her bed in slip and panties and Flynn came in wearing pajamas:

  “I told him not to. I didn’t know what to do. I pushed him away.”

  The second attack came later after Flynn allegedly told Peggy “how much prettier the moon was when seen though a porthole.” They went to Flynn’s cabin, where “the second attack” took place.

  “Did you resist?”

  “Some. I knocked down a curtain beside the bed.”

  “Did you say anything?”

  “I wanted him to leave me alone.”

  Peggy claimed she told her mother she’d been raped, and she, mother and sister went to the Hall of Justice. She saw a doctor for an examination. She testified she later telephoned Flynn from a hospital.

  “He left word for me to call, and I called him back. He asked me if I loved him. I said that naturally I hated him. I said my mother was going to prosecute him.”

  “Did he make any reply?” asked the D.A.

  “I don’t remember.”

  “What was the last thing you said to him?”

  “I said, He Died With his Boots On. That was the name of one of his pictures. Then I hung up the phone.”

  Once again, Geisler went for the throat: he managed to get Peggy to admit she’d been intimate with an “unnamed man” and had an abortion (then a felony in California) before ever sailing on the Sirocco. Like Betty, Peggy was shamelessly cutting a desperate deal with the D.A. to escape her own prosecution.

  Geisler tricked the prosecution into calling Owen Cathcart-Jones, a 42-year-old Canadian flyer, who had known Peggy and would (so the prosecution thought) testify as to Peggy’s fine moral character. In fact, Geisler had received an anonymous tip that Peggy and Cathcart-Jones had visited an L.A. funeral parlor one night where Peggy “had frolicked about, pulling sheets from the naked bodies and peering at them.”

  Geisler: Well, you also were with her down to a mortuary down here in Los Angeles, were you not?

  Cathcart-Jones: Yes.

  Geisler: And she was kind of playing hide-and-seek around the corpses, wasn’t she? Do you remember that night?

  Cathcart-Jones: Yes.

  Geisler: Do you remember she showed you — opened up and showed you — the body of an elderly lady?

  Cathcart-Jones: Yes.

  Geisler: And pulled the sheet down in the mortuary on a Filipino who had been crippled across the center?

  Cathcart-Jones: I remember that.

  Geisler: And then went back to where they inject the veins of corpses and there opened and looked down at an elderly man lying there, and her head was pushed down against the man’s face. Do you remember that?

  Cathcart-Jones: Yes, I remember that.

  By now, the courtroom spectators were gasping and screaming. “Keep them quie
t out there, Mr. Bailiff!” ordered the Judge.

  Yet another show-stopper came on the stand when Geisler showed Peggy a picture of herself from the previous fall, appearing at the preliminary hearing in pigtails. Peggy, in a spine-tingling moment, loudly and startlingly cackled at the picture and turned her face from the jury.

  Geisler’s depiction was now complete: Peggy Satterlee, in addition to her previous intimacy and abortion, was a necrophile witch.

  The jury visited Flynn’s Sirocco and studied the phases of the moon, thereby casting doubt on Peggy’s porthole story — the moon made no appearance the night in question. The story was sordid escapism to the U.S. at large, coping with the anguish of war news.

  January 27: Errol Flynn, in dark suit and sans mustache, took the stand. He denied it all: he never called Peggy Satterlee “J.B.” (jail bait) or “S.Q.Q.” (“San Quentin Quail”), did not spike Peggy’s milk with rum, did not put his arm around her, did not rape her at Fourth of July Cove, never asked her to look at the moon through his cabin’s porthole, and never raped her en route back to the mainland. Nor had he ever gone upstairs in Fred McEvoy’s Bel Air mansion and raped Betty Hansen.

  Flynn was smooth in the witness box, a masterful actor. He was, in fact, terrified, and later admitted keeping a plane and pilot on call to flee the country if the jury returned a verdict of Guilty.

  February 2: Deputy District Attorney Arthur Cochran took a full day to sum up the evidence, noted that the jury would decide whether the punishment was a year in the county jail or one to 50 years in San Quentin. “Send this man to San Quentin where he belongs!” demanded Cochran.