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<\/a> <\/p>\nIn this series, Christopher Goffard revisits old crimes in Los Angeles and beyond, from the famous to the forgotten, the consequential to the obscure, diving into archives and the memories of those who were there.<\/p>\n
Born on the Australian island of Tasmania, Flynn had an uncommonly colorful background, which he recounted with self-mythologizing verve in his memoir, \u201cMy Wicked, Wicked Ways.\u201d As a young man, by his account, he smuggled diamonds, oversaw coconut plantations, dynamited fish, captained schooners and hunted killer cannibals in the New Guinea jungle. <\/p>\n
It was common to say that his hell-for-leather personal life bled into his film persona. He became an international superstar in 1935 in \u201cCaptain Blood,\u201d as a wrongly accused doctor who escapes slavery and takes up piracy. In 1938, he brought a jaunty brio to \u201cThe Adventures of Robin Hood\u201d that forever defined the character.<\/p>\n
When World War II hit, Flynn tried to join but was deemed 4F, or unfit for service; despite his on-screen athleticism, he had tuberculosis and a bad heart. Instead, he made war films and lived a life of epic drinking and outsize debauchery at his 11-acre Mulholland Drive estate. <\/p>\n
It was there in late 1942 \u2014 the same year he became an American citizen and signed a nine-picture deal with Warner Bros. \u2014 that two plainclothes LAPD detectives came for him.<\/p>\n
In the argot of the day, Flynn faced \u201cmorals charges\u201d carrying a possible five-year prison term. The mother of a 16-year-old girl, Peggy Satterlee, had tried to press charges the year before on the claim that Flynn had twice forced himself on her daughter aboard his yacht, the Sirocco, while it was anchored off Catalina Island. <\/p>\n
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Peggy Satterlee, 17, testifies against Errol Flynn at his sexual assault trial in January 1943. The press described her as a \u201cHollywood showgirl.\u201d <\/p>\n
(Frank O. Brown \/ Los Angeles Times)<\/p>\n
The case was dropped, then revived when a new district attorney won office and learned of a second accuser \u2014a 17-year-old named Betty Hansen who said the actor had coerced her into sex at a Bel-Air party after plying her with liquor.<\/p>\n
The actor\u2019s defense: that the girls were scheming, sexually experienced opportunists looking for a foothold in Hollywood.<\/p>\n
\u201cThese girls, who were just teenagers, were brutalized in the trial,\u201d Flynn biographer Patricia O\u2019Brien recently told The Times. \u201cThey were treated as the criminals. They were treated as the predators.\u201d<\/p>\n
Flynn\u2019s attorney, Jerry Giesler, had become famous defending Alexander Pantages, the theater-chain mogul, on a rape charge. The attorney \u201chad sort of written the playbook about how to demolish any case against these men,\u201d said O\u2019Brien, author of the recently published \u201cErrol Flynn: The True Story of Australia\u2019s Hollywood Icon.\u201d<\/p>\n
The trial hinged on \u201cthis massive contradiction, that everything in the girls\u2019 sexual history, which was very short, was incriminating to them,\u201d O\u2019Brien said, while nothing in Flynn\u2019s long record of reckless promiscuity was deemed relevant.<\/p>\n
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Jurors are sworn in at Errol Flynn\u2019s trial in January 1943. The defense aimed to fill the jury with women who would be sympathetic to the actor. <\/p>\n
(Frank O. Brown \/ Los Angeles Times)<\/p>\n
Satterlee, described in Times coverage as a \u201cbrunette Hollywood showgirl\u201d and \u201cthe pretty complaintant,\u201d was forced to admit on the stand that she\u2019d had an \u201cindiscretion\u201d with another man that resulted in an abortion. <\/p>\n
Along with the stigma this created, the tactic allowed Flynn\u2019s defense to claim she had cooperated with prosecutors under threat of a criminal charge for what the newspaper delicately called the \u201cillegal operation.\u201d<\/p>\n
Today, mainstream news organizations typically do not name accusers in sexual assault cases, much less photograph them in court. Not so in 1943. While Flynn was careful to maintain a solemn courtroom persona, Satterlee and Hansen were caught smiling for the camera. <\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019re just really naive girls who are way out of their depth, and that really shows on every level,\u201d O\u2019Brien said. \u201cYou can just imagine these guys wanting to get photos and asking them, \u2018smile for us,\u2019 or \u2018pose for us.\u2019 And then they did, and then it gets published and it looks really bad.\u201d<\/p>\n
During the four-week trial, female fans besieged Flynn. Thousands of letters poured in supporting him. Warner Bros. rushed his films to the screen to make the most of the publicity. Americans fighting overseas followed the trial avidly on the radio.<\/p>\n
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Errol Flynn with an autograph seeker outside the Los Angeles courtroom where he stood trial on charges of statutory rape. <\/p>\n
(George R. Watson \/ Los Angeles Times)<\/p>\n
In his memoir, Flynn portrayed himself as a victim of political corruption. Warner Bros., by his account, had failed to pay the necessary protection money to the powers that be in Los Angeles, and the prosecution of its biggest star was the result.<\/p>\n
\u201cThose poor girls were pawns in the local political wrangle as much as I was. They were being drained and wrung out and so was I,\u201d Flynn wrote.<\/p>\n
Flynn biographer Jeffrey Meyers endorses the view that power politics and corruption fueled the case. Flynn was being punished for his \u201creckless personality and defiant way of life,\u201d Meyers writes in \u201cInherited Risk: Errol and Sean Flynn in Hollywood and Vietnam.\u201d <\/p>\n
\u201cHe was very well-connected through all his admirers and friends, and he thought he could get away with anything, and he usually did,\u201d Meyers told The Times recently. \u201cSo here\u2019s a very high-risk man who not only took chances, but liked taking chances to see how much he could get away with.\u201d<\/p>\n
Even as he was on trial, Flynn was secretly living with an 18-year-old actress. \u201cInstead of being cautious, [he] does something that\u2019s really wildly reckless and could get him into trouble at any time,\u201d Meyers said. \u201cHis friends warned him and he said, \u2018No, nobody will find out.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
What\u2019s more, Flynn became infatuated with another 18-year-old, Nora Eddington, who worked at the cigarette-and-snack counter of the criminal courts building where he was standing trial. He invited her to his Mulholland house, gave her champagne and began seducing her. (She would become the second of his three wives.)<\/p>\n
The language of the law was clear enough. Prosecutors had to prove that Flynn had had sex with girls under 18 who were not his wife. Whether they\u2019d consented was not supposed to matter. <\/p>\n
Flynn took the witness stand in an oxford gray suit and categorically denied having sex with either of his accusers. <\/p>\n
If jurors believed he had, the defense suggested, the girls had been willing participants. <\/p>\n
\u201cSet Flynn free, and return him to Hollywood as one of its brightest stars,\u201d Giesler argued. <\/p>\n
\u201cHe has used his great acting ability for reprehensible purposes,\u201d prosecutor Thomas Cochran countered. <\/p>\n
The defense had stacked the jury with a demographic they suspected would be sympathetic to Flynn \u2014 older women \u2014 and he was acquitted, amid courtroom cheers. Flynn canceled his flight to Mexico and extolled the justice system that he had been ready to cheat as a fugitive.<\/p>\n
\u201cI might have been as guilty as hell \u2014 under the law, that is,\u201d Flynn would write, but \u201ceverybody knew that the girls had asked for it, whether or not I had my wicked ways with them.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Defense attorney Jerry Giesler delivers his closing argument in Errol Flynn\u2019s statutory rape trial, portraying the actor as an honorable man targeted by scheming accusers. <\/p>\n
(Los Angeles Times)<\/p>\n
Flynn praised Giesler\u2019s courtroom prowess, writing: \u201cHe claimed that of all the witnesses he had, I made the best. What he meant by that I still can\u2019t figure out: maybe he meant I made the most skillful liar under oath?\u201d<\/p>\n
The trial was a snapshot of community attitudes in 1943, some of which shocked O\u2019Brien as she researched her book. In remarks to the press after the trial, the female jurors \u2014 who were old enough to be the girls\u2019 mothers \u2014 demonstrated \u201czero sympathy\u201d for them.<\/p>\n
\u201cSome of the harshest treatment of these girls was from other women, and that is something which I found very hard to reconcile,\u201d O\u2019Brien said. \u201cThere was an extreme harshness, and a lot of that is about class as well, because the two girls in question came from poor families.\u201d<\/p>\n
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After his acquittal, \u201cIn like Flynn\u201d became a popular byword for sexual conquest. The actor complained that for a time, he was \u201crelatively ostracized locally.\u201d People ignored his party invitations. But \u201cwith one or two box-office successes I was completely restored in the Hollywood community,\u201d he wrote. <\/p>\n
He appeared in dozens more films. The trial had not tarnished his marketability, nor, seemingly, had it checked his behavior. In his late 40s, he met a 14-year-old actor named Beverly Aadland. His sexual relationship with her lasted for years and was not a secret \u2014 behavior that was brazen enough to alienate some of Flynn\u2019s friends and supporters.<\/p>\n
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Errol Flynn at his arraignment in November 1942, flanked by his attorneys, Robert E. Ford, left, and Jerry Giesler. <\/p>\n
(Jack Herod\/Los Angeles Times)<\/p>\n
At one point, Aadland would recount, Flynn was approached to star in a film adaptation of Vladimir Nabokov\u2019s novel \u201cLolita.\u201d He would play Humbert Humbert, the cultured pedophile who begins raping his stepdaughter when she is 12. Flynn would not take the role, however, unless Aadland was cast as Lolita. It didn\u2019t happen.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo many of Flynn\u2019s films are supposedly his life being imitated in art, and that was kind of like the last instance of that, in a very sordid way,\u201d O\u2019Brien said.<\/p>\n
When a heart attack killed the 50-year-old actor in Vancouver in October 1959, the Times headline abandoned all restraint to convey the magnitude of the loss: \u201cERROL FLYNN DIES!\u201d<\/p>\n
He was in the company of Aadland, then 17, whom the newspaper euphemistically called \u201cthe latest in a series of youthful proteges.\u201d The actor had recently told reporters, \u201cI like young women because they give you a feeling of youth.\u201d<\/p>\n
The obituary described Flynn as \u201can adventurer with a penchant for fighting and romance.\u201d It noted that he had punched a Hollywood gossip columnist, kicked a New York cop in the shins and been in fights in Havana, Nassau and Rome. The rape trial was mentioned but the overall portrait was of an enviable, high-spirited rake.<\/p>\n
Flynn\u2019s reputation was damaged posthumously, however, by allegations in Charles Higham\u2019s \u201cErrol Flynn: The Untold Story,\u201d a 1980 book claiming that the actor had been an antisemite and Nazi operative. The book pointed to Flynn\u2019s longtime friendship with an Austrian tropical medicine doctor who did become a Nazi spy.<\/p>\n
The book alleged that Flynn lobbied to shoot his 1941 film \u201cDive Bomber\u201d on location at the U.S. Naval yard in San Diego, with the aim of exposing sensitive military installations to the enemy.<\/p>\n
The claims have since been convincingly debunked. When the comedy \u201cMy Favorite Year\u201d hit screens in 1982, starring Peter O\u2019Toole as an aging, epically soused Hollywood actor trying to reclaim his courage, it could be seen as the Jewish community\u2019s defense of Flynn. <\/p>\n
Based partly on Flynn and executive produced by Mel Brooks, it\u2019s an affectionate portrait of an over-the-hill rogue told from the point of view of a young Jewish comedy writer who idolizes him. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe Jewish community sort of buoys him up and brings him back,\u201d O\u2019Brien said. \u201cIt\u2019s a really interesting commentary on that.\u201d<\/p>\n
O\u2019Brien sees the Nazi allegations as falsehoods that steal attention from the actor\u2019s actual sins. <\/p>\n
\u201cSince it came out, people have been focused on Errol Flynn and basically canceled him because he was antisemitic and a Nazi, which wasn\u2019t true, but forgotten the other things about him which were true \u2014 that he was heavily involved in some very nefarious aspects of Hollywood to do with young girls,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Sources for this story include \u201cMy Wicked, Wicked Ways: The Autobiography of Errol Flynn\u201d; \u201cErrol and Sean Flynn in Hollywood and Vietnam\u201d by Jeffrey Meyers; \u201cErrol Flynn: The True Story of Australia\u2019s Hollywood Icon\u201d by Patricia A. O\u2019Brien; and Times archives.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Errol Flynn was poised for one more getaway. On the screen, in a series of daredevil adventures, the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":451034,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[134144,178302,1872,178304,1436,11155,178303,1924,1743,48,52,51,1637,47,50,49,101178,178305,61203,1428,14955],"class_list":["post-451033","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-16-year-old-girl","tag-33-year-old-flynn","tag-actor","tag-beverly-aadland","tag-case","tag-defense","tag-errol-flynn","tag-film","tag-hollywood","tag-la","tag-la-headlines","tag-la-news","tag-life","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-headlines","tag-los-angeles-news","tag-obrien","tag-peggy-satterlee","tag-same-year","tag-trial","tag-warner-bros"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/451033","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=451033"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/451033\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/451034"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=451033"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=451033"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=451033"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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