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Errol Leslie Thompson Flynn (June 20,
1909–October 14, 1959), was a film actor born in
Hobart, Tasmania, Australia, most famous for his
romantic swashbuckler roles.

As a child he was taken to Sydney, where he
attended two schools and was expelled from both.
Shortly afterwards he moved to New Guinea, where
he drifted from job to job. In 1933 he starred in
the Australian made film In The Wake Of The Bounty
directed by Charles Chauvel. In the early 1930s he
left for Britain and in 1933 got an acting job
with Northampton Repertory Theatre, where he
worked for two years. After gaining this
experience in the acting trade, he moved to
Hollywood looking for film work.

Although he had not really planned an acting
career, Flynn become a star with his third film,
Captain Blood (film)|Captain Blood, in 1935. He
became typecasting|typecast as a swashbuckler and
made several such films including The Adventures
of Robin Hood (movie)|The Adventures of Robin Hood
(1938) (widely regarded as his best film in this
genre and an acknowledged Hollywood classic) The
Sea Hawk (movie)|The Sea Hawk (1940), and The
Adventures of Don Juan (1948). He also played
opposite Olivia de Havilland in the western
movie|western Dodge City (1939 movie)|Dodge City
(1939). Overall, Flynn appeared in eight films
with de Havilland.  

During the shooting of The Private Lives of
Elizabeth and Essex (1939), Flynn and co-star
Bette Davis had some legendary off-screen fights,
with Davis striking him hard in retaliation for
his earning more than she ($6000/wk vs. $5000/wk).
Their relationship was always strained but Warner
Brothers teamed them up on three separate
occasions. A contract was even presented to loan
them out as Rhett and Scarlett in Gone With the
Wind; however, each declined to work with the
other on the project.

He was well known for having wild party|parties.
However, his reputation caught up with him when
teenagers Betsy Hansen and Peggy Satterlee accused
him of statutory rape in November 1942. A group
organized to support Flynn, named the American
Boys Club for the Defense of Errol Flynn (ABCDEF);
its members included William F. Buckley, Jr.. The
trial took place in January and February 1943, and
Flynn was cleared of the crime. The incident
served to increase his reputation as a lady's man,
and the term "In Like Flynn" came to be synonymous
with succeeding in romance|romantic endeavors. His
suave, debonnaire, and devil-may-care attitude
towards both ladies and life has been immortalized
into the English language by author Benjamin S.
Johnson as "Errolesque" in his treatise on the
subject, "An Errolesque Philosophy on Life."
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6929318/page/2/

By the mid 1950s, Flynn was something of a
self-parody: heavy alcohol abuse left him
noticeably bloated in his last years. But he still
won some acclaim as a drunken ne'er-do-well in The
Sun Also Rises (1957). His somewhat unreliable
autobiography, My Wicked, Wicked Ways, was
published just months after his death and contains
humorous anecdotes about Hollywood. Flynn wanted
to call the book In Like Me, but his publishers
refused.

Flynn was marriage|married three times, to actress
Lili Damita from 1935 until 1942 (one son, Sean
Flynn|Sean); to Nora Eddington (1924–1950) from
1943 until 1948 (two daughters, Deirdre and Rory);
and to actress Patrice Wymore from 1950 until his
death (one daughter, Arnella Roma). In the late
1950s, he met the 14-year-old Beverly Aadland at
the Hollywood Professional School, whom he courted
during his last few years. He planned to marry her
and move to their new house in Jamaica, but during
their trip to Vancouver he died from a myocardial
infarction|heart attack. His only son, Sean Flynn,
became an actor and later a war correspondent who
disappeared in Cambodia in 1970 during the Vietnam
War. The younger Flynn's life was recounted in
Inherited Risk by Jeffrey Meyers (Simon &
Schuster).

One of Errol Flynn's grandsons, sometime model
(person)|model Luke Flynn (birth name Luke
Stoecker, born 1976), the only child of Arnella
Flynn (1953-1998) and fashion photographer Carl
Stoecker, was named one of the world's sexiest
bachelors by People magazine in 2003. His mother,
a former fashion model, died on the Flynn family
estate in Jamaica after a hard life of alcohol and
drug addiction.

Errol Flynn died of a massive heart attack aboard
his yacht on October 14 1959, at the age of fifty.
He is interred in Forest Lawn Memorial Park
Cemetery, in Glendale, California. He shares
coffin space with six bottles of whiskey, a
parting gift from his drinking buddies.

Author Charles Higham published a controversial
biography, Errol Flynn: The Untold Story
(Doubleday, 1980) in which he alleged that Flynn
was a fascist sympathiser and that he spied for
the Nazis before and during World War II, but
subsequent biographies—notably Tony Thomas'
Errol Flynn: The Spy Who Never Was (Citadel,
1990)—have denounced Higham's claims as
fabrications.
Flynn's political leanings appeared to be of a
leftist bent; he was a supporter of the Loyalists
in the Spanish Civil War and of the Cuban
Revolution. 

In popular music, Flynn was the inspiration for
the song "Errol" by the '80s rock group Australian
Crawl (band)|Australian Crawl. It was a Top 20
Australian hit in 1981. Sirocco, the Vinyl
record|LP from which the song was taken, was named
after Flynn's yacht.

See also Rafael Sabatini, author of the novels The
Sea Hawk and Captain Blood, for the roots of
Flynn's screen image.

==Filmography==
*In the Wake of the Bounty (1933) (Australian)
*Murder at Monte Carlo (1935)
*Murder at Monte Carlo (1935)
*The Case of the Curious Bride (1935)
*Don't Bet on Blondes (1935)
*Captain Blood (1936)
*The Charge of the Light Brigade (1935)
*Green Light (1937)
*The Prince and the Pauper (1937)
*Another Dawn (1937)
*The Perfect Specimen (1937)
*The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938)
*Four's a Crowd (1938)
*The Sisters (1938)
*The Dawn Patrol (1938)
*Dodge City (1939 movie)|Dodge City (1939)
*The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex (1939)
*Virginia City (1940)
*The Sea Hawk (1940)
*Santa Fe Trail (1940)
*The Roots of Heaven (1958)
*Cuban Story (1959) (documentary) (narrator)
*Cuban Rebel Girls (1959)

==External links==
* http://inlikeflynn.com Rory Flynn's site on
Errol
* http://www.thegoldenyears.org/flynn.html Classic
Movies (1939 - 1969): Errol Flynn