The stars (1962)

Rocky Mountain, obviously one of the star's more painful roles. ness of Flynn's remarkably adventurous youth. He was born in Tasmania, where his highly conservative father had built a distinguished reputation as a marine biologist. Young Errol developed an early, strong, and lasting contempt for the staid and conservative life of his parents, and most of his life may be read as a rebellion against it. Running away from school in Australia, Flynn indulged in a life of petty crime and petty jobs until he set off for New Guinea, where he was briefly an extremely junior colonial officer, a fairly successful plantation manager, captain of a coastal sailing ship, a hunter for the forbidden bird of paradise, a gold miner and, finally a man who stood trial for murder, having killed a native participating in a raid on one of his jungle camps. Eventually he settled down to start a tobacco plantation, but he was no sooner embarked on that career than a small-time movie maker whom he had met in his wanderings telegraphed him an offer to appear in a film called In the Wake of the Bounty. Nothing came of the job immediately, but Flynn, smuggling a few diamonds to help out with his expenses, wandered by the most circuitous possible route to England where, eventually, he found work as an actor with the Northampton Repertory Company. The company, along with many others, went to Stratford one summer to appear in tbe drama festival and two of its productions were selected for showing in the West End. There Flynn was spotted by a Warner's scout. His first Hollywood part was as a corpse in The Case of the Curious Bride. Shortly thereafter, the studio took a chance on two unknowns, Flynn and Olivia de Havilland, as the romantic leads in Captain Blood. The picture and the two young players were wildly successful. By 1937, Flynn had, with The Adventures of Robin Hood, consolidated his position as the screen's leading costume romantic. Success, however, did not change the basic rebelliousness of his nature. He believed, with considerable justification, that he was underpaid, he disliked his parts, his marriage to Lili Damita was little more than a lengthy squabble. He poured a good deal more energy into his off-screen peccadilloes than he did into his work. Thus was born the great Flynn legend, which reached its height at the time of his trial on charges of statutory rape. His popularity waning, his money slipping through his fingers at an enormous rate, Flynn attempted to produce his own films but, in the process, suffered a mild heart attack and discovered that he now lacked the nerve to perform the feats of derring-do on which he had built his career. He slipped into a drifting, aimless retirement, a used-up, washed-up profile. Then, suddenly, in the late fifties, he emerged as a character actor of considerable skill. As he had played his youthful self in the early days, he now began to play his mature self — a faded, somewhat alcoholic, faintly comic, and very weary old roue. The old gallantry was still present, but it was edged with the oddly dignified pathos of the man who is suddenly, shockingly aware of his mortality. He did fine work in The Roots of Heaven, The Sun Also Rises and as John Barrymore in Too Much, Too Soon. He died of a heart attack in 1960, not long after composing his own epitaph: "I want to be taken seriously. ... I allow myself to be understood abroad as a colorful fragment in a drab world." 174