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Centenary of Biology at UTAS, its first professor T. T. Flynn and his son Errol's birth, 1909 - 2009 |
Errol Flynn 1909 - 1959
Errol was born on 20 June 1909 in Hobart. During a rebellious childhood he attended several Hobart schools,[Hutchins, Albuera Street, Friends’ and Hobart High], in none of which he lasted long, as well as South Western London College, while in London with his father, and Sydney Church of England Grammar School (Shore), from which he was expelled. In 1927, after a short period of office work with a Sydney shipping company, he began training as a district officer in New Guinea, but moved on to become in rapid succession copra plantation overseer, partner in a charter schooner business and gold prospector. He purchased the cutter Sirocco in Sydney in 1930; his seven-month journey back to New Guinea, where as manager of a tobacco plantation at Laloki he wrote columns on New Guinea life for the Sydney Bulletin, became the subject of his first book Beam Ends (1937). Sailing remained a lifelong hobby. In 1932, back in Sydney and notorious for unpaid debts in New Guinea, he played the part of Fletcher Christian in the film In the Wake of the Bounty directed by Charles Chauvel. Next year he went to England where he acted with the Northampton Repertory Company until signing a contract with Warner Bros. After Murder at Monte Carlo, made at the Teddington studio, he moved to California, where in 1935 he shot to stardom as the swashbuckling hero in Captain Blood. He proceeded to make some sixty films, his heyday as one of Hollywood’s most handsome and agile actors being 1936-42. The Adventures of Robin Hood, The Dawn Patrol and The Sea Hawk date from this period. Granted American citizenship in 1942 he never returned to either New Guinea or Australia. In his later years he was a wanderer aboard his schooner Zaca and addicted to drink and narcotics.
On 19 June 1935 at Yuma, Arizona, Flynn married actress Lilliane Marie Madeleine Carré (Lili Damita). Divorced in 1942 he married Nora Eddington in 1943 or 1944 at Acapulco, Mexico. Nora divorced him in 1949 after which, on 23 October 1950 at Monte Carlo, Monaco, he married Patrice Wymore. He died on 14 October 1959 at Vancouver, Canada, survived by his wife, a son of his first marriage, two daughters of his second and one daughter of his third. His novel Showdown was published in 1946 and his autobiography My Wicked, Wicked Ways, ghosted by Earl Conrad, in 1960. (adapted from The Australian Dictionary of Biography) Books written by Errol Flynn
Books about Errol Flynn David Bret, Errol Flynn: Satan’s angel, (London, Robson, 2005)
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