Facts about Errol Flynn

Errol Flynn died at 50 years old
Born: June 20, 1909
Birthplace: Tasmania, Australia
Best known as: The swashbuckling star of Captain Blood and Robin Hood

     

     

Errol Flynn Biography

Errol Flynn was one of Hollywood’s biggest stars in the 1930s and ’40s, famous for his boundless devil-may-care energy in the rousing adventures known as swashbucklers.

Errol Flynn spent his youth in Australia and England, and his young adult years mining and running plantations in New Guinea, before appearing in his first movie in 1933, the Australian feature The Wake of the Bounty. From there he went to England briefly before making his way to Hollywood and the movies.

In robust features like Captain Blood (1935) and The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938), Flynn was the dashing hero whose winning smile and daring swordplay made the ladies swoon with longing. Offscreen, Flynn had a reputation as a freewheeling boozer, womanizer and all-around bad boy. Tongues wagged in 1942 when he was tried for statutory rape (and acquitted), but the scandal didn’t diminish his celebrity or his popularity.

Flynn starred mostly in westerns, sea adventures and war movies, including The Charge of the Light Brigade (1935), They Died With Their Boots On (1941) and The Adventures of Don Juan (1948). He lost favor in Hollywood in the early 1950s, but we in the midst of a comeback at age 50 when he died suddenly in 1959.

Extra credit

Errol Flynn worked frequently with director Michael Curtiz and actress Olivia de Havilland… Errol Flynn’s autobiography is titled My Wicked, Wicked Ways… The phrase “in like Flynn” became popular in the U.S. in the 1940s and is generally acknowledged as a reference to Flynn’s success with women.


     

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