I don't remember a time when I didn't know about Errol Flynn -- if you like a certain type of book, you like a certain type of film, and his films were on TV regularly when I was young. I didn't know much about cinema history until I was in my thirties and discovered Buster Keaton, but you start noticing the names that crop up again and again in the credits -- Orry-Kelly, Franz Waxman, Leslie Howard... Errol Flynn.
Later on I was a founder member of the A.B.C.D.E.F. -- the Amsterdam-British Committee for the Discussion of Errol Flynn (Generally Held to Include Jointly Keaton). Motto: To Errol's human, to Flynn's divine ;-p Our online fandom was conducted entirely by email, and consisted of me recommending films as they showed up on the BBC (the only English TV channel accessible in Holland) and the two of us enthusing over them afterwards. We coined the phrase Flynnverheerlijkheid(sp?) -- Flynn-fan-worship (literally, 'liking Flynn as if he were the Lord'). I've by no means seen all of Flynn's films -- only the ones that have been shown within my orbit, i.e. most of the good ones -- but I did go to the lengths of watching an early film ("Escape Me Never" with Elisabeth Bergman -- https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0026320/reviews ) that was later remade with Flynn in it, just out of interest because of the connection, and to get an idea of what his role must have been like. In any case I rather like Griffith Jones (the hapless husband in "The Wicked Lady"), who again plays the 'good' role against the part that Flynn would take, that of the talented bad boy who discovers his better self. I can definitely see Flynn in the role of Sebastian, offering potential for both sex appeal and unexpected sensitivity, but apparently the remake didn't work :-(
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Date: 2019-01-23 11:08 am (UTC)Later on I was a founder member of the A.B.C.D.E.F. -- the Amsterdam-British Committee for the Discussion of Errol Flynn (Generally Held to Include Jointly Keaton). Motto: To Errol's human, to Flynn's divine ;-p
Our online fandom was conducted entirely by email, and consisted of me recommending films as they showed up on the BBC (the only English TV channel accessible in Holland) and the two of us enthusing over them afterwards. We coined the phrase Flynnverheerlijkheid(sp?) -- Flynn-fan-worship (literally, 'liking Flynn as if he were the Lord').
I've by no means seen all of Flynn's films -- only the ones that have been shown within my orbit, i.e. most of the good ones -- but I did go to the lengths of watching an early film ("Escape Me Never" with Elisabeth Bergman -- https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0026320/reviews ) that was later remade with Flynn in it, just out of interest because of the connection, and to get an idea of what his role must have been like. In any case I rather like Griffith Jones (the hapless husband in "The Wicked Lady"), who again plays the 'good' role against the part that Flynn would take, that of the talented bad boy who discovers his better self.
I can definitely see Flynn in the role of Sebastian, offering potential for both sex appeal and unexpected sensitivity, but apparently the remake didn't work :-(