Good Morning POU! Today’s entry in the scandals of Old Hollywood is quite disturbing to say the least. Errol Flynn was THE pervert of Hollywood perverts.
It’s not a secret that Errol Flynn had a large sexual appetite. The phrase “in like Flynn” was popularized after his trial for the statutory rape of two girls. Flynn was acquitted of all charges, and the trial only increased his reputation as a Lothario.
Flynn began his Hollywood career after working as a river guide for a film crew, fighting off crocodiles, and dodging arrows from headhunters (apparently true). He was spotted and offered a role in a remake of Mutiny on the Bounty.
Errol Flynn is one of the more storied personalities in Hollywood history. Women swooned over him. Men desperately wanted to emulate him. He had no shortage of lovers and certainly no shortage of scandals. An inordinate amount of literature has been devoted to Flynn. Co-stars, ex-wives, stunt doubles, and even the coroner that tampered with his cold, lifeless venereal warts, have written at length about this celluloid Robin Hood. There is actually a book solely devoted to Flynn’s not-so-humble abode, written by a guy who pulled a break n’ enter in order to gain access.
The homes of Errol Flynn were notorious for their insouciant parties. Flynn shindigs were considered wild denizens of debauchery even by the standards of Hollywood’s gilded age. One of Flynn’s closest friends was the equally dapper David Niven. The two had a lot in common. Both men came to Hollywood via the London stage and both were known for their suave demeanor. They battled each other for pencil moustache supremacy and shared a compulsive appetite for the opposite sex. Niven spoke reverently of Flynn as a “magnificent specimen of the rampant male.”
Actress Marion Davies sublet a Malibu beach house to the two actors in the late thirties. It quickly became a notorious venue where “men could be men” and avoid inconvenient realities like Flynn’s wife, Lili Damita. Actress Carole Lombard nicknamed the home “cirrhosis by the sea.” The beach house was one of several lavish guest cottages built by media mogul William Randolph Hearst during his well-documented obsession with Marion. Eventually she would reclaim the house from the clutches of Flynn and Niven and they moved their orgying to North Linden Drive in Beverly Hills. The parade of women and varying soirées continued to be a great source of enjoyment, but Flynn wanted more specific kicks. He eventually purchased a large, sprawling property at the peak of Mulholland Drive and spent several years designing a home to his specifications; constructed to adhere to his every whim and every perversion.
Flynn died at age 50 of a heart attack. It is alleged that the coroners at the inquest removed a number of genital warts from the body as souvenirs.
The story of what happened with Errol Flynn’s body and “the coroner that tampered with his cold, lifeless venereal warts” is well worth recounting. Flynn flew into Vancouver, British Columbia on October 9, 1959 to solidify the sale of his yacht, the Zaca, to a wealthy stooge named George Caldough. Errol was fifty years old and some Vancouver journalists described him as having “the body of an 80-year old man.”
Flynn had been feeling ill for several days. October 14, he was headed back to the airport, but asked Caldough and his wife to instead immediately find him a doctor. Caldough went to the Sylvia Hotel to get the house doctor Grant Gould, cousin of piano virtuoso Glenn Gould. They were told to bring Errol to the doctor’s apartment at 1310 Burnaby Street. True to Flynn’s character, he held court in the doctor’s home, entertaining, doing impressions, and consuming a great deal of liquor – as did everyone else. He wasn’t feeling much better, however, and complained of aggravating back pain. He went to lay flat on the floor of an adjoining room. Beverly Aadland went to check on him some twenty minutes later. He had turned blue. He couldn’t speak. Dr. Gould attempted chest thrusts to no avail. An ambulance was called. Shortly before the paramedics arrived, Dr. Gould pronounced Errol Flynn dead.
What followed next is something straight out of Ripley’s Believe it or Not. “An observation [Chief Pathologist] Dr. Tom Harmon made startled me. It concerned a number of VD warts on the end of Flynn’s penis. Tom seemed fascinated. ‘Well, Tom,’ I said, ‘They may be of clinical interest to you as a medical man, but there’s going to be another autopsy done down in Los Angeles. I really don’t think these warts are material to the case. Unless you disagree.’ ‘Perhaps not … But, look, I’m going to be lecturing at the Institute of Pathology and I just thought it might be of interest if I could remove these things and fix them in formaldehyde and use them as a visual aid.’ ‘No way!’ I said. ‘We’re not going to do that. I don’t want anything done that isn’t relevant to the case because we’re really in the limelight tonight. We’re on the hot seat. How can we send Mr. Flynn back to his wife with part of his bloody endowment missing?’ So I insisted on absolutely no change or variation of routine procedures … I left Doc Harmon and Errol Flynn alone in the autopsy room … the telephones were still ringing like mad … The night janitor had become an expert of evading questions … Doc Harmon strolled casually into my office, ‘Well, I’ve finished,’ he said. Tom and I went back to the autopsy room and the first thing I noticed was that the VD warts had gone – vanished from the end of Mr. Flynn’s penis. Then I spotted a jar of formaldehyde on a shelf that looked suspiciously like it might contain VD warts. It did.
Sources:
Backstage Vancouver by Greg Potter (2004, Harbour)
Confidential, March 1955, May 1955
My Wicked, Wicked Ways by Errol Flynn (1959, GP Putnam)
Ecstasy and Me by Hedy Lamarr (1967, Fawcett)
Errol Flynn Slept Here by Michael Mazzone and Robert Matzen (2009, Good Knight)