Fleeting Glory

As noted in Errol & Olivia, not too long ago I told a friend about E&O and explained Olivia de Havilland by saying that she, of course, had appeared in the most famous movie of all time. “Which movie’s that?” said my friend, blankly. “Gone With the Wind,” said I in surprise. “Oh,” said my friend.

I realized then that either I was sadly misinformed about famous motion pictures or my friend was, and time has proven that it’s me.

Gone With the Wind played Turner Classic Movies this past Friday night, and it didn’t play prime time; it played at 11 p.m. I grew up in a home that revered Selznick’s masterpiece and Clark Gable’s role in it. I believe that I saw Gone With the Wind twice in theaters in my youth, at a time when anticipation hung thick in the darkened theater seconds before Max Steiner’s score ushered in the right-to-left crawl of the letters that formed G-O-N-E W-I-T-H T-H-E W-I-N-D. It is such a memory that even now I am all goosebumps when I hear the music and see the words. On Friday night it took me back decades to the time it was all a part of my childhood, vivid trace memories of my parents and mom and her roadshow program. I remember thumbing through it as a kid. I remember looking at a candid of Gable and Lombard at the premiere in Atlanta, and I still wonder if this is what made me write an entire book about Carole Lombard, trying to figure out the mystique of a candid photo from Atlanta in December 1939.

What was Carol Burnett’s GWTW parody in the 1970s called…Went With the Wind? No one dared parody the classic until 35 years had passed. I think about the decades rolling by and of the humans that are now gone—the people who participated in this extraordinary event. Almost all of them now have passed. Even those of extraordinary longevity are gone, except for Olivia de Havilland and Ann Rutherford. It’s all a memory; something for the history books. I met some cast members over the years—Fred Crane, Victor Jory, Cammie King—and I have corresponded for 30 years with Olivia and exchanged voicemails with Ann Rutherford. But unless you’re one of us of a particular generation, it has all gone with the wind, a title not just about an antebellum way of life that has passed into history, but about a Hollywood way of life long expired, that being moguls and fan magazines and a studio system that promulgated the mythology of a certain breed of Olympian superhumans called movie stars.

It hit me this time, at 11 at night watching Gone With the Wind, knowing what I know of Selznick and the production through de Havilland’s eyes and through the eyes of DOS himself. Once this was the talk of the world; not just Hollywood but the world. Even 40 years later it was a major TV event each and every time it played, and now in 2012 it’s relegated to the late show. Call TCM at 11 on a Friday night what you will, but the placement there and then really struck me as a demotion. Then I started to watch the picture and realized that it’s just not holding up that well, classic or no classic, history or no.

Is it my own familiarity with the actors and the script? Or is it that this really was a script by committee, and direction by committee, and so many retakes and so much second guessing that the resulting product doesn’t hold up as well as it did when I was young? Only now, 73 years after its production, has enough time and enough preconception passed that we can judge this picture as a picture, and I wonder what we’ll say about it in the decades to come. Olivia de Havilland made a career basking in the afterglow of this production. Her video-recorded reminiscence made the 2004 DVD collector’s edition—but at the same time fans were disquieted to learn that Olivia was no longer a down-to-earth superstar but had somehow taken on the old-world personality of Melanie and saw the world, and the production of a classic, through Melanie’s eyes. It was surreal and disappointing, that realization.

What is your own experience with Gone With the Wind? How do you feel when you see it today? Having been involved in film production for 20 years, I still marvel at the scenes and set-ups and sets and costumes. I contemplate the blue pages and the retakes and the matrix on the wall that the production manager lived with for six months. I think about Selznick eating bananas and popping uppers to keep himself going, but I ask myself: In another generation, will anyone even remember Gone With the Wind? And I think back to the last line of Patton, and hear George C. Scott’s voice saying the words that I hear in my head often…“All glory is fleeting.”

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Calling Dr. Shakespeare

Hey, I made Tom Hodgins cringe! It’s my superpower; I try only to use it for the forces of Good, but that doesn’t always work out. I too always find a tear in my eye when Don Juan parts from Queen Margaret in Adventures of Don Juan; the scene works beautifully. Which is not to say that it’s considered a classic that’s crossed over to the mainstream. We know it’s good, but do they know it’s good in Peoria, or in Lille, France or Bucharest, Romania? Even in 2012 I doubt you could show a still from the parting scene of Casablanca to people on the street and not have them name at least one of the stars or the picture. Somebody could. But do you think that if you showed the same thing from Adventures of Don Juan that you’d get such a response? I doubt it. Maybe that’s the luck of the draw, but maybe it’s the skill level of a Michael Curtiz versus a Vincent Sherman.

Regarding de Havilland and Curtiz, yes, she closed her association with him on a congenial note with the production of Proud Rebel in 1958, the big HOWEVER there being that the director was suffering from cancer at the time and worked in a wheelchair. The old spit and vinegar was gone by that time. And when in 1973 de Havilland was questioned about the talent of Michael Curtiz, she replied, grudgingly, “I guess he was pretty good,” but then cited chapter and verse all of his traits that bothered her, from short lunch hours to on-set beratings.

Tom points out, and rightly so, that others like John Garfield and Jeffrey Lynn saw the softer side of Curtiz, while both Errol and Olivia maintained their hard-line stance against him for the rest of their lives. They were very much in lockstep on that one, to the extent that their words made it appear in Errol & Olivia that I did not appreciate the work of Michael Curtiz!

I resonated to another Tom–Wilson’s–comment that we don’t have to like our bosses; sometimes not liking them results in work that no sympathetic soul could have pulled out of us. Let’s think about The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex for a second. What I’ve always thought was, Flynn is damn good in this picture. He has one eye-rolling scene that I find spell-breaking, but otherwise he’s 100 percent genuine and young and ambitious and in love. For a long time the scholarly critics dismissed his performance as trivial and amateurish next to that of Miss Bette Davis. But in 2012, who gets better notices…Bette for working so hard? Or Errol for appearing to be himself?

And IF one grants that Errol’s performance has worn well over the decades—over a millennium, come to think of it—where must the credit go? What, Errol suddenly had an angel come visit and teach him how to act in a pressure-packed situation? No, it was the guidance of “sadistic” Michael Curtiz. Lots of production stills exist that show Curtiz and Flynn co-existing peacefully on a movie set, and you can’t argue with their success as a team. Curtiz knew exactly how to package and present the raw material known as Errol Flynn, including the moment when Curtiz realized in Santa Fe Trail that Flynn the hero, as written, was trapped between the lines in the climax and rendered impotent. Well, Curtiz fixed it and gave Flynn some action-packed things to do that only increased his box office appeal.

The Shakespearian paradox is that if anybody made Errol Flynn, it was Michael Curtiz, and once Errol Flynn had been made, he could no longer stomach Michael Curtiz. Since the publication of My Wicked, Wicked Ways in 1959, and The Films of Errol Flynn in 1969, it has been assumed that the move from Curtiz to Walsh was a smooth, natural transition from tough Star Maker (Curtiz) to sympathetic Star Enhancer (Walsh).

But what if the transition really was Tough Love Star Maker Curtiz to Enabler Walsh? The more time that passed after 1941, the more movie star Flynn needed to be enabled, explained away, and coddled, something that Iron Mike Curtiz never would have accommodated. In that case, Tom Wilson’s comment is almost chilling, as Wilson himself is in the motion picture business: “I’ve had bosses who were very difficult to work for, but somehow caused me to do better work DESPITE their perceived cruelty.”

Hmmm, so what would have been the result of six or eight more collaborations between hardliner Michael Curtiz and disintegrating Errol Flynn? We can only speculate at the casting and plotting of a Curtiz-led San Antonio, or the Curtiz interpretation of Adventures of Don Juan, or perhaps a slam-bang version of Horatio Hornblower with Flynn sailing a Ship of the Line at the beck and call of Michael Curtiz. We’ll never know what might have been and can only speculate, but I’m not so sure if, in the end, it was a good thing that Raoul Walsh came along to “save” Errol Flynn.

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Hey, Who’s Steering This Ship?

Staying on the subject of directors for another moment, I have more questions than answers about the strange talents and stranger personalities of Hollywood’s Golden Era helmsmen, and how the great directors influenced stars like Errol Flynn and Olivia de Havilland and brought, or in some cases, forced their talents to the surface.

As much as Errol Flynn hated Michael Curtiz, where would this star have gotten without this director? Would he have been John Ridgely or Dick Foran? Where would Olivia de Havilland have been without the director she loathed? Would she have caught David O. Selznick’s eye and been cast in Gone With the Wind, the picture that changed the course of her career?

Some readers of Errol & Olivia misunderstand my feelings about Iron Mike Curtiz. In those pages I rendered the portrait of Curtiz as seen by the stars, not by the writer. Curtiz clearly was a genius for his ability to take almost any script and make it into a story, whether sea-faring adventure picture Captain Blood, song-and-dance biopic Yankee Doodle Dandy, war-torn romance Casablanca, or claws-bared melodrama Mildred Pierce. Notice I didn’t throw any comedy in there because of our aforementioned discussion about the Curtiz formula that loud + frantic = funny.

Even allowing that for Curtiz the Peter Principle was comedy, he made a star of Errol Flynn and a star of Olivia de Havilland. With Errol it happened all at once and with Olivia it was a cumulative effect as she also worked for Mervyl LeRoy, Bill Dieterle, Archie Mayo, and even James Whale early on, but it was the Flynn pictures that got her noticed.

So let’s talk about the end of the E&O association with Michael Curtiz, which happened during a blowup on the Dive Bomber set in 1941, after which Flynn quietly met with Warner and Wallis and said point blank that he didn’t want Curtiz to direct him anymore. Then you think, well, who was the boss here? Was it the director? Was it the star? The director is supposed to be ordering around the star, but the star is the prime moneymaker, not the director, which made the chain of command dicey at best.

I wouldn’t have said this five years ago, but now I have to think that Flynn’s dumping of Curtiz was a cut-off-your-nose-to-spite-your-face move. At the Pearly Gates (or wherever), if you’d had a chance to interview Flynn, suitcase in hand for his trip to heaven (or wherever), and you’d stuck a microphone in his face and asked, “The move to replace Curtiz—good or bad, Errol?” I wonder what he’d have said.

The only picture that Flynn made in the post-Curtiz era that in any way approached the financial success of the Flynn-Curtiz pictures was They Died with Their Boots On and I could easily make a case that this was a picture that rode Iron Mike’s coattails—moneymakers like Virginia City, The Sea Hawk, Santa Fe Trail, and yes, Dive Bomber.

Popular history, shaped in part by Flynn himself in My Wicked, Wicked Ways, had it that the dumping of Curtiz was the best move he ever made. His memoir has a certain smugness about the power he’d wielded in that episode, and how much better life was with “Uncle” Raoul Walsh at the helm.

BUT, how many people do you know in your own lives who need tough love to thrive? Not just children and not just teens, but people in their professional lives who lack the self-discipline to succeed without someone there driving them to it, whether a professor or spouse or boss?

Maybe Errol Flynn and Olivia de Havilland never needed an uncle (Walsh also directed Olivia in The Strawberry Blonde, made right before Boots). Maybe they both needed a son of a bitch on the set to be commanding the pictures they made apart and together.

This column resulted from a back-and-forth email exchange this past week with my colleague Tom Hodgins, in which we discussed directors like John Ford, who’s acknowledged now as a mean-spirited human being but also a master storyteller whose pictures can make me feel like a man, as in The Searchers, or make me cry like a baby, as in The Long Gray Line. Nobody disputes that Ford was a “bastard,” but in the end what does it really matter if the stories are as rich and the performances are as alive as they are in his library of work?

Maybe Curtiz was a son of a bitch as described by our heroes. But think about the scene in The Sea Hawk when the grubby survivors of Panama make their way back to the Albatross in a quiet, underplayed moment in which one of the few remaining heroes dies, and then when they reach their ship, tired and vulnerable, Flynn’s Captain Thorpe slowly, almost imperceptibly looks about him to realize he’s been had, and his escape wasn’t an escape at all. Utterly brilliant stuff from Curtiz that helped to seal Flynn’s status as a superstar.

Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I put it to you that Flynn might have done a lot better with his career if They Died with Their Boots On had been directed by Curtiz, and Gentleman Jim, Edge of Darkness, Northern Pursuit, Objective, Burma! and Silver River. I will grant you every single great thing that Raoul Walsh brought to these pictures, and still wonder if Curtiz could have brought even more.

Consider an Adventures of Don Juan directed by Michael Curtiz. It’s possible that the love scenes wouldn’t have been as sweet, or the Flynn performance so relaxed, but maybe the action would have been even more meaningful, maybe the spectacle more grand, and maybe this would have been the Errol-Mike pinnacle, surpassing even The Adventures of Robin Hood, with Flynn’s parting from Viveca Lindfors looked back upon with an affection to rival Bogey’s parting from Bergman in Casablanca.

I just don’t think we should be so quick to accept the idea that the plot to dump Curtiz was a good one. It’s difficult to justify a claim that Olivia would have benefited similarly. Her feud with J.L.—with Curtiz a company man who supported Warner—was so bitter that it skews the data. Curtiz was a Warner Bros. director at a time when Livvie wanted out of Warner Bros. and it’s pie in the sky to say, What if Mike Curtiz had directed The Dark Mirror and the other almost-was pictures of her post-Warner Bros. years? In the end, she did just fine in To Each His Own, The Snake Pit, and The Heiress.

Still, it’s something to think about, Flynn and de Havilland fans. Michael Curtiz was known to be a mild-mannered pussycat off the soundstages, and so he had to be much more than the villain described in later years by both Errol and Olivia. Maybe, just maybe, Mike Curtiz could have deflected the tragic course of Errol Flynn’s life, which—perhaps thanks in part to the enabling of his Uncle Raoul—meandered into the decade of the 1950s in what Inga aptly describes as a “blur.”

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Gold Nuggets Mixed in with This Silver

by Guest Blogger Tom Hodgins

Raoul Walsh directed Errol Flynn in seven motion pictures during the 1940s. Like the actor, Walsh came from a background as different from the movie industry as could be imagined. He was a cowboy, having lived a rugged man’s man kind of existence. He arrived in Hollywood a hard-living carouser with more than a few romantic conquests in his past, as well as a wealth of personal experience that would help to distinguish his work. In short, he was a man who had lived.

Walsh’s films are unpretentious, often filled with good humour and a sense of authenticity. His characters depict honest emotions, sometimes mixed with sentiment. And whether he was directing a gangster saga or western or a tale of a turn-of-the century boxer, Walsh was simply a good story teller.

Flynn found much with which he could identify in the older Walsh. He liked and respected the director, affectionately calling him “Uncle.” They drank off the set together and undoubtedly swapped wild tales. Because of this Walsh, for the most part, was able to exercise a certain influence over the fiercely independent star, and it was under Walsh’s direction that much of Flynn’s best work as an actor was produced. Unlike the actor, however, Walsh was able to control his hard-living lifestyle. He continued to direct films into the 1960s, and would live to the age of 93.

Walsh’s film career had started almost with the birth of the industry, working with director D. W. Griffith on The Birth of a Nation (playing John Wilkes Booth) and later directing the great Douglas Fairbanks (as much as anyone could direct Fairbanks) in The Thief of Bagdad. Other silents of note that he made were What Price Glory and Sadie Thompson. Walsh’s greatest period as a filmmaker, however, was at Warner Brothers, starting with one of the prestige productions of 1939, The Roaring Twenties.

While renowned as an action director, Walsh was also capable of directing some scenes of remarkable sensitivity. Who can forget the poignancy of Custer’s farewell with his wife in They Died With Their Boots On, or the gallant pride of a defeated John L. Sullivan, his heart breaking, as he congratulates a victorious Gentleman Jim? Walsh was a director who seemed to bring out the best in some of his actors, that being particularly the case with Errol Flynn.

In addition to Flynn, Walsh also directed many of Hollywood’s other top A-listed male stars, among them Wayne, Cagney, Bogart, Cooper, Gable, Mitchum, and Peck. In Each Man in His Time, Walsh called James Cagney the greatest actor with whom he ever worked. However it was Flynn, exasperating as he could be, at times, who was a particular favourite of the director.

Of the seven films in which Flynn and Walsh collaborated, two of them rank among the actor’s best, but there isn’t one of those pictures that isn’t worth watching. Silver River, a western, was their final production, and is usually dismissed as one of their lesser efforts. Flynn barely made reference to it in My Wicked Wicked Ways, while the director made no comment about it all in his autobiography.

Silver River had a huge budget of 3 million dollars, and was primarily marketed, I suspect, based on the poster artwork, as another big-budget action adventure, similar to the type that Errol had made in the past. Ann Sheridan can be seen in the poster artwork wearing slinky off-the-shoulder attire, which is nowhere to be found in the actual film. Nor is it a film that will be remembered for the usual Walsh slam-bam action scenes.

But this “lesser” Flynn effort has much to recommend it, making it worthy, in my opinion, of repeated viewings. Actually the film does start in the usual Walsh-Flynn manner, with a quite rousing Civil War chase sequence, handled with the adroit flare for which the director was known. Action fans viewing the film for the first time will probably be eagerly looking for more of the same.

That sequence, however, sets the stage for Flynn, as Union officer Mike McComb, to be unfairly cashiered from the army, soon establishing his character as a bitter non-conformist now ready to play the game by his own rules. Flynn becomes a gambler who will turn into a business buccaneer in a tale of greed, opportunism, and empire building.

This will not be quite the same Flynn that fans were used to seeing. This will, instead, be the post-WWII, post-statutory-rape-trial Flynn, cynical, self absorbed, playing a man who, at one point in the film, threatens to shoot another man in the back, with the audience not at all certain that he wouldn’t do so, if push came to shove.

Flynn and Walsh had experimented with the actor’s screen image four years earlier when he played a petty-thief murderer, a master of manipulation, in Uncertain Glory. Jean Picard was the darkest characterization of Flynn’s career in a flawed but often fascinating film that died at the 1944 box office.

With Silver River the same actor and director are reunited for another tale of deception and greed, but this time with a western setting. The film deliberately draws parallels to the Biblical tale of David and Bathsheba, with those characters even being referenced in the dialogue. This adds to the fascination of the drama, more so for me than the standard action fare, as the viewer waits to see what Flynn’s conniving character will resort to next and, in turn, what may be his comeuppance.

Gary Cooper, every bit as much the movie hero as Flynn, would do a variation on this two years later, as a tobacco tycoon in Bright Leaf, directed by Flynn’s old antagonist, Michael Curtiz. Walsh’s film works better, though, because of a generally strong supporting cast, some exceptionally well-written scenes, and Flynn’s portrayal of buccaneer greed. Walsh was helping the actor to explore the dark side of his screen image, of what happens to the wartime hero when he becomes embittered. Flynn’s character’s downfall is inevitable and predictable (this is a 1940s Hollywood product, after all), but individual scenes in the film stay with the viewer.

Ann Sheridan had appeared in two previous films with the actor, in a small part as a dance hall girl in Dodge City, then, elevated to the position of leading lady, as part of an ensemble cast in Lewis Milestone’s wartime resistance drama, Edge of Darkness. Reunited with him now in Silver River, this would be the actress’ final film of her Warners contract.

Sheridan has great rapport with Flynn. Outside of Olivia de Havilland, she was arguably Errol’s best female co-star. Whether it’s their earlier scenes depicting Sheridan’s suspicion and hostility towards McComb, or their later scenes of love or emotional turmoil, there’s a strong bristling undercurrent to their interaction, providing them with a spark lacking in scenes that Flynn had with many other leading ladies. Their scenes are further heightened by the lovely musical accompaniment of Max Steiner, a sweet, gentle refrain frequently played whenever Sheridan’s character appears on screen.

There’s a small throwaway moment between the two actors early in the film that is worth mentioning. Flynn, his character clearly attracted to Sheridan in an early riverboat scene, at one moment comments “You look smart in those pants,” to which an out-of-camera range Sheridan responds, “I’d look awfully silly without them.” There’s a half chuckle from Flynn, and the scene has the feel of what may have been an ad-lib between the two actors left in the film.

A few outtakes from Silver River can be found on the internet. One of them shows a scene set at a large reception for a visiting President Grant. At one point Sheridan produces a cigar in her mouth which she holds there nonchalantly for a few seconds before Flynn notices it. He makes a comment, mugs a little, and they burst into laughter. There’s an easy rapport between them, and that same rapport infuses all their scenes together in this film.

Nine years after Silver River’s release, Flynn and Sheridan would be reunited a final time, in a television western drama, Without Incident. It would be a sad reunion, though, inasmuch as it would only emphasize the passage of years. Their chemistry would be missing, Sheridan would look tired, and Flynn’s performance, unfortunately, could best be described as somnambulistic.

Thomas Mitchell, in the role of boozy lawyer Plato Beck, scores well in Silver River in a role clearly reminiscent of his Oscar-winning turn as Doc Boone in John Ford’s Stagecoach. He and Flynn play well off one another, and there are more than a few ironies to the script having Flynn’s character making derogatory comments about Mitchell’s drinking problems.

The two actors share one of the film’s best scenes, set in McComb’s saloon. In the previous scene it has been established that Flynn is ready to send Sheridan’s husband (Bruce Bennett) prospecting for silver in hostile Indian territory, with the hopes that he will be killed.

Bennett does not know that Indians are on the warpath, but Mitchell does. After Bennett has left the building Flynn enters the saloon to find Mitchell drinking heavily. Mitchell then proceeds to draw upon the David and Bathsheba parable in order to blast Flynn for the evil of his intentions. Flynn responds to the accusation by reminding Mitchell that King David loved Bathsheba “with an all-consuming passion.”

Mitchell declares that fact to be unimportant, a comment triggering Flynn to show some fire.

“Of course it’s unimportant to you, you cold Boston codfish,” he says, “You and your sermons. You get them out of a bottle, Beck. You want to make up rules for people to live by because you’ve forgotten how to live yourself. You drunken, sanctimonious hypocrite!”

Stung by the comments, Mitchell responds with a slap across Flynn’s face. Flynn, with admirable restraint, walks away. Mitchell drunkenly slumps to the floor, and Flynn returns to help him climb onto a bar table in order to sleep it off.

As Flynn leaves the saloon there is a telling closeup of his face as Mitchell, almost like the sound of his own conscience, pleads with him to not send Bennett away. The look on Flynn’s face is that of a man determined to go through with his plan. He’s dressed to the nines and looks like a gentleman, but the audience knows that, morally, this ambitious gentleman has murder in his heart.

It’s a scene of genuine tension, with Flynn’s physical elegance and pose, along with his understated performance, a perfect contrast to the ruffled Mitchell’s more flamboyant acting style.

One of the other outstanding scenes of Silver River occurs after Flynn’s character has lost his fortune and Sheridan has left him because of his ruthlessness. The scene is set in his mansion, now being cleared of all possessions by his creditors’ workmen. Flynn is bankrupt but still proud. The one item that he refuses to let the workmen touch is a giant portrait of Sheridan that hangs on the wall.

Flynn stands in a doorway, reading a newspaper, trying to act nonchalant as his possessions are carted away. Tom D’Andrea, a friend throughout the film, has a dialogue exchange with him, finally trying to encourage Flynn to see Sheridan again.

“Of course,” D’Andrea says, “it’s none of my business.”

“That’s right,” a stoic Flynn replies, still reading the paper, “It’s none of your business.”

D”Andrea, Flynn’s only friend, walks away, leaving the actor standing by himself. Flynn then pulls himself away from the door, folds his paper and starts to leave the room. Then, almost as if by an irresistible impulse, he can’t help but look up and to the side. The camera follows Flynn’s gaze and it ends on the giant portrait of Sheridan.

It’s a touching, powerful moment by director Walsh, beautifully conveying the emotional vulnerability of Flynn’s character now that he has lost the one person that meant anything to him. It’s a searing moment, depicting abandonment and loneliness. The power hungry opportunist has finally received his comeuppance.

Silver River clearly has its flaws. Walsh’s pace slackens as the film proceeds, and the picture is inclined towards talkiness at times. One of the principal problems is the writing of the film’s final act, including a brief half hearted sequence with stunt men skirmishing in which the villains are rounded up by townspeople. There’s a feeling of the film being rushed in order to wrap up the story.

Silver River is a western that is really a compelling character study involving business buccaneer greed, coupled with an affecting love story that is adversely affected by that greed. It is a narrative driving towards a tragic ending that is hijacked from that film by a sudden unconvincing character conversion and a tagged on Hollywood happy ending.

Stephen Longstreet, who wrote the screenplay based on a novel of his, later wrote that while composing that screenplay Walsh told him, “Kid, write it fast. They’re not drinking, they promised Jack Warner that, but you never know.”

The “they” to whom he referred was not only Flynn but Ann Sheridan. While filming began promisingly after a while Longstreet noticed the two stars were slurring their words by noon. When the screenwriter tasted the “water” they were sipping he found that it was ninety per cent vodka. Because of the delays caused by the stars’ behaviour Silver River, a big production to begin with, ran into cost overruns, with the studio heads suddenly declaring the picture to be finished. (A very large thank you to Robert Matzen for supplying me with this information.)

Fortunately, though, the stars’ tippling behaviour does not show on screen. The chemistry between them is potent, and their performances are assured. Ann Sheridan was still a beautiful woman when Silver River was made, and Flynn’s abusive lifestyle did not impact his appearance in this film. The truth, though, is that he would never look quite this good on screen again.

Of Flynn’s alcohol and drug use during this period of time, Walsh would later write, “I knew I was watching a man I loved like a son go straight to hell. Yet I knew there was nothing I, or anyone else, could do to stop him.”

Silver River received indifferent reviews with its May, 1948 release and was the actor’s fourth consecutive film to disappoint at the box office. Nor is it a film whose reputation has been restored over the years. Yet it is a movie that has been unfairly dismissed, in my opinion.

A handsome production, with a strong supporting cast and one of Flynn’s best leading ladies, the Longstreet story, with its Biblical parallels, is an intriguing one before the final reel, and provides its actor with one of the last effective roles that he would have under his Warners contract. With Walsh as director there is more depth to the characterization than most others Flynn had done that decade.

In spite of the off screen activities described by Longstreet, Flynn rises to the occasion in one of his best post-war roles. The actor understands the selfishness and cynicism of McComb, and there’s a conviction to his playing. As immoral as some of McComb’s actions are, Flynn, under Walsh’s guidance, also imbues his character with intelligence, courage and tremendous dignity when his empire starts to fall apart. Flynn’s Mike McComb is not a man to whimper when his luck and fortunes run out, not unlike the actor himself in the years to come.

The Michael Curtiz period of Errol Flynn’s career contains most of the roles for which he is best remembered today, Captain Blood, Robin Hood and Geoffrey Thorpe in The Sea Hawk. It was during the ’40s, however, under the direction of Walsh, in which Flynn played heroes of more complexity than before. The edge to some of these characters allowed Flynn greater scope as an actor, and it is here that he did much of his best work as a performer.

I strongly suspect that Flynn, a man who had grown increasingly tired of playing film heroes, must have seen the possibilities of showing those same characteristics but turning them inside out by using them to portray a person hell bent on personal gain at the expense of others. That’s why he’s so effective in the role.

Mike McComb represents the dark side of Flynn’s screen adventurer. Walsh, like Flynn, would have been interested in exploring the theme of hero-turned-opportunist. Flynn’s completely convincing performance in this film came five years after his emotional downward spiral began with his statutory rape trial.

In one scene of the film, when McComb is embarrassed at a large dinner party he hosts by Thomas Mitchell’s character, Flynn could identify with that humiliation. And, just as Flynn remained “cool” in public during the rape trial, so, too, his McComb retains his pose and dignity when verbally assaulted by a drunken Mitchell before most of the town’s proper citizens.

Perhaps that is why Silver River, a largely neglected film, flawed, to be sure, but still fascinating as a character study, has always had a rather special place for me. It contains a Flynn performance of persuasive charm and assurance, with a touch of vulnerability, made before the demons that so afflicted this gifted but tormented man would blunt his abilities as an artist.

Exasperatingly, Silver River is the only Flynn western not available on DVD. There was talk that Warner Home Video was hoping to release the film, which would have included a restoration of five minutes or so which has been missing from television prints for years. Those film elements, to the best of my knowledge, were not found, and the film remains in limbo as far as DVD release is concerned.

Blogger’s Notes: Just to show how small a town Hollywood was, among Lili Damita’s relatively few pictures in Hollywood was The Cock-Eyed World, directed in 1929 by Raoul Walsh. A friend of mine, Paul Day, heard Walsh speak on the campus of SMU in the 1970s in support of the memoir, Each Man in his Time, and the director’s main topic of conversation was none other than our boy Errol Flynn. Walsh’s rendition of the Barrymore body-snatching story, with the corpse ending up at Mulholland, left such an impression that 30 years later Paul was ecstatic to learn that Mike Mazzone and I actually assert that the ghoulish prank is more than myth, a case we made in Errol Flynn Slept Here.

I appreciate Tom Hodgins’ look back at Silver River, a picture I haven’t seen for 30 years but one that made a first impression of excellence, which surprised me given the reviews in The Films of Errol Flynn and elsewhere. “Standard,” “tired,” “predictable” were words attached to this picture, but for me it was anything but, for reasons that Tom explains below. Silver River is all about desire and greed—and the moral sacrifices that must be made to achieve them. Who can’t find such a topic relevant?

Tom and I disagree about two things: I am a big fan of Without Incident; it’s Flynn back in Hollywood, back in the saddle, and making his way in a new age of television. And I am not a big fan of Thomas Mitchell, who never met a backdrop he couldn’t chew up and spit out. I realize this is my own problem, but something snapped in me the umpteenth time that Gerald O’Hara burst into the room and wild-eyed proclaimed that the War was over. Then it didn’t matter what picture I saw Thomas Mitchell in—Only Angels Have Wings or Stagecoach or Mr. Smith goes to Washington or It’s a Wonderful Life, but I always imagine the St. Valentine’s Day gangsters walking into the scene and mowing Thomas Mitchell down with tommy guns. It’s the only way I can make it through his performances. That said, thank you Tom for another insightful guest blog.

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Words

In deciding on a topic for today I decided to continue on with the discussion about screenplays. For reasons already discussed, there aren’t many Flynn-de Havilland scripts worth lauding, I don’t think, and I happen to agree with Tom that Adventures of Don Juan was as close to an inspired screenplay as Flynn would get—largely due to the writer’s willingness to choose Errol himself as a target for satire. But a mere moment later I argued with myself that the script for Dodge City is as overlooked as any. Yes, a Warner Bros. executive memoed to the scriptwriter that this screenplay “stunk” and since the picture was only an A western, it’s easy to dismiss Dodge City as just another formula picture for superstar Errol Flynn.

However, I love the authenticity of the pal relationship between Wade, Rusty, and Tex. The way these guys treat each other is the way guys really act in a close-knit group—bravado and insults in double dose to obscure affection. The first reel establishes these guys and their bond, along with the story of the Transcontinental Railroad and the key placement of Dodge City, Kansas as the place to be in America.

Then, has there ever been a more charming courtship than between Errol’s Wade and Olivia’s Abby? She’s all novice and he’s all been-there-done-that about life on the frontier and when Wade’s actions indirectly cause Abby’s brother to be killed, it’s straight out of Boy Meets Girl. As in, boy loses girl as a plot device and then the audience gets to root-root-root for boy to get girl in later reels.

Abby spends a time hating Wade, while the script around this conflict establishes just how competent Wade really is and how badly the many good people of Dodge City need him to clean up the town. The death of little Harry Cole, played by Bobs Watson, is the one nit I have to pick with the first four or five reels of the picture, because Warner Bros. insisted on killing off children in its important pictures to make the bad guys seem really bad and to justify all the actions of the good guys. I think this goes straight to the mindset of brass-knuckles Jack Warner, who would do anything to sell his pictures, including infanticide. So the bad guys just don’t seem to be bad in pictures like Dodge City, they’re hateful and whatever happens to them is too good. In Charge of the Light Brigade this meant that despicable Surat Khan got skewered, and in Dodge City it means that the bad guys get practically massacred off their horses in the last reel.

But let’s not get there just yet. Dodge City contains three enchanting scenes between Errol Flynn and Olivia de Havilland that show just how much screenwriter Robert Buckner knew about men, women, romance, and life. In the first of these three scenes, Wade takes Abby out for a ride on the plains and romances her in the sunset, and steals a kiss for good measure. In the second he settles an argument between them with another steamy opened-mouth kiss. The third scene contains a witty duel of words between the players about the role of women in society and ends with underdog Abby putting he-man Wade in his place.

Only in the last reel does Dodge City fly off the tracks with a lame climax in which the bad guys are all shot off their horses by Wade and his Winchester. After that, Abby dutifully permits her new husband to ride off with Rusty and Tex to clean up another town. First of all, just a year earlier Flynn had bested his adversary Basil Rathbone in a close-up duel in The Adventures of Robin Hood. Who then thought it was a good idea for hero Flynn to line up bad guy Bruce Cabot along the sights of his rifle and pick him off at long distance? One by one the bad guys fall via sniper, which in my estimation has nothing to do with honor or courage.

But the last scene in which Olivia’s Abby condescends to go off with Errol’s Wade to tame another town? That’s pure Warner Bros. crap! Abby has seen her brother trampled, her boss murdered, and a child placed in her care killed. Hell, the woman needs counseling for post-traumatic stress syndrome, and the last thing she would want to do is repeat these scenarios in another town, but there’s new husband Wade patting himself on the back for marrying such a great gal, and in the last shot they ride off into the sunset together toward grand new adventures.

As noted in Errol & Olivia, the experience of making Dodge City was the worst of Olivia de Havilland’s long career. She could see only the downsides of enacting such a brutal script, again as damsel in distress to adventure star Errol Flynn. But in misjudging the forest and trees, Olivia fails to grasp just what a gem the majority of this script was, from the sweeping panoramas to the buddy dialogue to a very human relationship that boiled up between Wade and Abby in America’s heartland, and a visionary view of what it would be like to take on the role of career woman and female hero in the year 2000 and beyond.

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We’ll Always Have…Turkey?

I have more to say on all your posts regarding dialogue from the Flynn-de Havilland pictures, but first let me just post what I was inspired to post by today’s events.

A guy and a girl fall in love when they least expect it. At their happiest moment, Fate intervenes. He thinks she’s dead and he grieves. In fact he never gets over her, and five years later, at the very place they had met, he finds her quite alive when he least expects it. How would I feel in such a circumstance, seeing my lost love in the flesh? What emotions would I go through? How torturous would this be?

After nearly five years as an ex-patriot American living in hotels and on his boat, Errol Flynn returned to Hollywood in 1956 and was cast by Universal in a remake of the 1947 dark-shaded mystery, Singapore, which had been written by Seton I. Miller, one half of the duo that had penned The Adventures of Robin Hood a generation earlier for then-young heartthrob Errol Flynn.

I’m not breaking new ground here by saying that Istanbul looks and feels like Casablanca for the fact that the hero is a knockabout American bitter over a dame for reasons explained in a long flashback showing happy times and then a kick-in-the-guts conclusion that catapults us back to present day. Other Casablanca ingredients include a bar setting in which much of the story plays out, a Black keyboard player who sings romantic songs that make the lovers swoon, a secondary plot that involves intrigue over a certain mcguffin (a letter of transit in Casablanca and diamonds in Istanbul), and a heroine who looks and sounds so much like Ingrid Bergman that at times I couldn’t believe that this wasn’t Ingrid Bergman.

For whatever reason, Cornell Borchers is no Ingrid Bergman, and it’s hard to put my finger on why because she’s the spittin’ image of Ingrid Bergman. Part of it’s personal magnetism, certainly. I never cared much for Bergman, but I admit to thinking she did well in Casablanca and in Anastasia, and I figure that talent and magnetism won me over in these two if not in other of her big pictures. I also have to believe that Mike Curtiz’s loving, soft-focus close-ups in Casablanca, the ones he was loathe to give Olivia de Havilland in many Warner Bros. pictures, made a U.S. superstar out of ice-cold Ingrid Bergman.

While doing other things this morning I screened Istanbul for myself. Or rather, I screened half of Istanbul, which was a CinemaScope eye popper when released in January 1957, later a stable on the late show on American TV, and in 1991 an oddity that ran on A&E, which is where I taped it. So instead of seeing the original widescreen palette, I watched the 4×3 pan-and-scan version, which is still one attractive mix of Technicolor, Universal on-lot renditions of Turkey, and B-roll cutaways to some contract film crew’s pickups of Istanbul aerial and location shots.

I realized just today how fond I am of Istanbul for many reasons. Here we see what was left of Flynn back on American soil playing cynical and world weary. Sure, seeing Flynn in modern-dress pictures like this one and The Big Boodle is like watching John Wayne in McQ or Brannigan. It’s not the Flynn we’d prefer to see, given our druthers. But Istanbul doesn’t pretend to be important stuff; it knows it’s a little Universal potboiler, and it plays itself out with perfect competence. Errol underplays that highly dramatic plot to Flynn perfection. His lady love thought dead had survived a hotel fire set by the bad guys, and suffered hysterical amnesia as a result. When he finally meets up with her five years later, he’s desperate for her to remember, and when she doesn’t, he gives the exact same downshift in emotions that he affected when the Duke DeLorca ruined his jacket with a sword. He seethes, and then lets the anger go and his shoulders slump and he smiles in resignation. It’s really great stuff, very modern acting, and it’s organic Errol Flynn.

I also love Istanbul for the performance of Nat “King” Cole singing When I Fall in Love and turning all Dooley Wilson at key moments. In 1957 Nat had his own show on American television, which was cancelled because sponsors of the day didn’t know what to do with a talented, urbane African American—except they knew they couldn’t put money into products that supported him. So it’s good to see him so young and happy and relaxed on camera, earning a nice buck at Universal. I just want to reach through the screen and smack his hand when he picks up yet another cigarette since he’d die of lung cancer eight short years later.

There are many reasons to watch a motion picture. You can watch one because you know it’s a masterpiece, or because everyone else is doing it, or to kill a couple hours. Me, I wanted to go off the beaten path a little, and there was Istanbul to lead the way. Aside from Flynn and Cole, the most remarkable performance is turned in by Werner Klemperer as a weaselly bad guy enacting the kind of part usually played by Peter Lorre. He’s very good, as is John Bentley as the wily police inspector who’s hunting down the mcguffin diamonds. In fact, Flynn and Bentley have far better chemistry onscreen than Flynn and Borchers, who have none, and maybe Istanbul would have benefited by being a buddy film with Flynn and Bentley as allies embroiled in diamond-based hijinks.

I’m certain that the CinemaScope version of Istanbul has never been released on DVD, although I don’t know if you can stream it on Netflix. It would be great to see it in widescreen HD and step back into that Mad Men world of men in suits and ties and dames in tight skirts and heels and sunglasses. It was a place I was happy to lose myself in today, even if I only saw half the picture.

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The Smell of Molasses

Your conversations of last week, particularly Inga’s wondering about what makes one screenplay good and another one less so and Tom’s response to it, got me thinking about scripting for the pictures that Errol and Olivia made together—and individually—at Warner Bros. In 1973 de Havilland did a long Q&A in a workshop setting and discussed at length the studio writers and how they were viewed. They had their own table at the commissary and held very high opinions of themselves. They had their own building on the lot behind the dressing rooms—near enough to the administration building that J.L.’s presence could be felt, but not so close that he’d be able to look over their shoulders. To hear Olivia tell it, the writers trumped the players in nearly all ways.

I wrote a fair amount in Errol & Olivia about prestige pictures and what constituted one. I asked the highest available authority, Rudy Behlmer, and he gave a fantastic answer: Prestige could mean subject matter, cast, and/or budget, and according to Olivia, the sad fact was that the brass and the writers considered Flynn’s pictures to be mere “adventure” and not worthy of practiced and polished dialogue of the type that we discussed last week. The idea was to get past the blah-blah and focus on the heroics, so to the writers the descriptions (“Robin Hood swings from a vine from the limb of an oak across the trail to a high boulder”) were as important as the dialogue itself (“Welcome to Sherwood, Milady!”).

In Humphrey Bogart’s The Maltese Falcon, after almost two hours of the bad guys chasing the black bird and the good guy thwarting their efforts, head baddie Kasper Gutman, played by Sidney Greenstreet in his film debut, growls at hero Sam Spade with admiration, “By Gad, sir, you are a character. There’s never any telling what you’ll say or do next, except that it’s bound to be something astonishing.”

How can I convey to you what wild pot luck this was for Bogart, that a brilliant young upstart writer named John Huston would be allowed to try his luck on a little detective picture with such a result? Huston might just as easily have decided to do a couples detective picture instead, and written Footsteps in the Dark, and changed the lives of Errol and Olivia, because that’s the kind of impact John Huston would have had. Look what he did for Bogart! He changed the odd-looking little guy with a lisp from a B star to an A star overnight, and 70 years later Bogie’s name still means something and he’s still on the maintstream radar.

I’m not saying that Flynn and de Havilland endured lousy scripts at all. They had good and sometimes great writers working on their projects, and as we know, all their pictures made money, and sometimes a lot of money, in large part because the writers arranged the words so that the stars would enjoy maximum benefit from each exchange.

There are lots of memorable lines in the Flynn-de Havilland pictures, like in Dodge City when Flynn says to bad guy Jeff Surrett, played by Bruce Cabot, “I don’t like the smell of your molasses, Surrett.” It’s the sort of line that’s just out of the blue, surprising and cool at the same time. I also find the Errol-Olivia scenes to really pop in this picture, despite the view of the brass that the screenplay “stunk,” and despite de Havilland’s lack of appreciation for the whole project. Up until the last 10 pages this was a fun script, with my favorite sequence the one in which Wade finds Abby working in the newspaper office. In one long exchange he says she should be tending the home and not attempting some man’s job, threatens a spanking, and compares her stubbornness to that of a buffalo. And yet she wins the scene by presenting a thoroughly modern view of equal rights for women and then enjoys the last laugh when the smug Wade trips and falls and gets whacked in the head by a swinging door.

OK, now it’s your turn to remind your fellow readers of some other memorable writing from the output of Errol and Olivia. I don’t even know how many Warner Bros. pictures they made between them—60, 70? I could go on and on about this topic, but I’d rather hear from the group because you come from such varied places and backgrounds and bring unique perspectives to this forum. What are your favorite scenarios and lines of dialogue? And, heck, it doesn’t even need to be from a Flynn and/or de Havilland project. I’m up for giving any writer props because writing for the screen ain’t as easy as they often made it look.

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Happy New Year—1942

I’ve always seen the end of 1941 and the beginning of 1942, 70 years now as the crow flies, as the pivotal point in time for our two heroes, Errol Flynn and Olivia de Havilland. As noted in Errol Flynn Slept Here, the varnish at Mulholland Farm, his new mountaintop fortress, had barely dried by New Year’s Day 1942. He loved this place, this tangible outcome of his talent, charm, and hard work. (What…Errol Flynn a hard worker?) Yet the swashbuckler had no intention of settling down. He thought he was free of Lili Damita, not realizing either the price he would pay in the divorce settlement or the emotional and sexual hold she really had on him. He’d already experienced health problems, his looks were starting to suffer, and Peggy Satterlee had already been aboard Sirocco, making her a time bomb to explode some months down the road. Pearl Harbor had happened three and a half weeks earlier, and Flynn must already be assuming that he would soon be in uniform for his adopted country. For all these reasons, New Year’s Day 1942 coincides with Flynn at a crossroads.

This same day found Olivia de Havilland soldiering on in her personal war against Warner Bros. in general and brother Jack in particular. She has been terribly unlucky in “a series of love affairs,” as she referred to them; the most recent, with Flynn, was just unraveling now. Within three weeks she would be refusing to test with him for Saratoga Trunk, as discussed here recently. Had she been genuinely too ill to appear for the test, it would have been rescheduled. The test never happened. Olivia had made some really good pictures recently, and took some satisfaction from this fact, but remained unhappily in bondage to her old studio. The beginning of 1942 found her publicly gloomy, and just a month from a rebound-from-Flynn scorcher of an affair with married John Huston. So here on January 1 was Flynn at one crossroads, and de Havilland at another, and they’d never be close again.

I guess none of us ever knows where life’s going to take us. We think we do; we plan our course and make the best decisions we can, but so much is in the hands of Fate, like the crooked D.A. that took down Flynn, or the vindictive Warner brother that de Havilland bested on her way to a dazzling few years as queen of Hollywood from 1946 through 1949.

So I want to say to all of you, Happy New Year, and may the Fates be kind to you in 2012.

I got a big kick out of reading this week’s comments concerning Never Say Goodbye, plus the ricochets into different areas, from scripts to musical scores. Inga, you ask a great question: What makes one script strong and another one weak? I think a script is like any other kind of writing. The goal of the writer is to engage the imagination of the audience by taking them in unexpected directions from moment to moment while managing to avoid clichés or any other impedance that could break the woven spell. Some examples are in easy reach. The Maltese Falcon is one. It features one private eye with an unshakeable code of honor against a group of zany criminals who have none and are questing for a jeweled black bird. If you haven’t seen it before, you have no idea what’s going to happen next. It’s original and witty and thrilling, all courtesy of the above-mentioned John Huston.

You mentioned Casablanca and say that you don’t see what all the fuss is about, but the writers of Casablanca also did this very thing—they set up a wartime North African city inhabited by innocents, soldiers, heroes, and criminals, and proceeded to engage our imagination with unforgettable characters like the cynical bar owner, the weak femme fatale, the insurgent hero, and the morally ambiguous policeman. Each gets to recite clever and unexpected lines of dialogue as the story of heroes and doomed love unfolds. If ever a picture has writing that makes me smile, it’s Casablanca.

I agree with everyone who has trouble with Warner Bros. comedies in general for being loud and strained. This isn’t to say that there aren’t moments in each, whether it’s the butter on the train tracks or Flynn hanging from the vines in Four’s a Crowd or Santa Errol in Never Say Goodbye. But I’m in line with those who favor the Warner pictures that don’t beat you over the head with comedy, but rather infuse comedy into meaty pictures like Gentleman Jim and Adventures of Don Juan.

As noted in Errol & Olivia, a picture that had a great bearing on They Died with Their Boots On was Sergeant York, which opened just as Boots went into production. J.L. attended the sneak preview of York somewhere (I don’t remember where) and the audience reaction to George Tobias as comic reliever really hit the Boss. He ordered Hal Wallis to go for some comedy in Boots and proclaimed that he wanted a funny black-boy servant for Custer and a similar maid for Libby. Well, the former didn’t work out, and after we see the young African American tending Custer’s hounds in the first scene, there’s no more such nonsense. But there’s plenty of Hattie McDaniel’s wily maid for better and at times for worse for a couple of reels of the picture.

Bottom line: Warner Bros. comedies reflected the sense of humor of Jack L. Warner himself, and Warner was notorious with a capital N for telling terrible jokes, and I mean legendarily bad jokes, at inappropriate times, like when he quipped to Madame Chiang Kai-shek at a black-tie event that he wanted extra starch in his collars. How can any studio run by such a man, who approves the material in the pictures made by said studio, have any hope of making successful comedies?

At any rate, thank you again, Tom, for giving me the week off so I could live the life of Riley, and thank you all for your spirited conversations and the resulting great ideas that will form the basis of future columns. And please keep in mind in 2012 that the podium is right here if you want to try your hand at a guest blog. And if I haven’t said this before, Happy New Year!

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SANTA ERROL by Tom Hodgins

Errol Flynn as Santa Claus. What, In Like Flynn as Saint Nick? Well, it’s Christmas Day, so let’s discuss the impossible. Except many Flynn fans already know that it’s not impossible. It did happen once, on screen. (I have no idea if he also did it in real life but I wouldn’t be a bit surprised. Imperfect husband that he may have been, he was still a loving and devoted father).

This was in a little romantic comedy of 1946, Never Say Goodbye. Jack Warner finally acquiesced to Flynn’s demands to allow him to play comedy, to do something other than screen heroics. He had previously been cast in three other comedies since becoming an international film star over a decade earlier. Warner Bros. was a studio that was adept at a great many things, but comedy was, well, just not one of them. The material was weak and the results of those three efforts had all been decidedly mixed, with a yawning indifference from the public.

Flynn, however, had shown a certain potential at screen comedy. Perhaps not to the level of a Cary Grant, but he was an awful lot better in Cary Grant territory than Grant would have been if he had ever tried to lift a sword. Flynn was a man known for his sense of humour, and his flair for humour frequently came across in many of his films. In particular, two of his first features with director Raoul Walsh, They Died with Their Boots On and Gentleman Jim, had confirmed that humorous gift. Then there was his hilarious Cockney sailor routine while singing “That’s What You Jolly Well Get” in Thank Your Lucky Stars.

Exasperatingly, though, the out-and-out comedies he had made had been weak, with the material ultimately defeating an eager Flynn. Four’s a Crowd, a 1938 screwball effort very similar to other films of that genre, had probably been the best of the lot, with Flynn’s own contribution to the antics showing promise. But no one it seems, outside of the actor himself, really seemed to care, and he was soon back in costume attire.

Having had two hits at the 1945 box office (Objective Burma, in spite of its controversy with the British press, and San Antonio), Flynn was then allowed to play in a comedy for his sole film release of 1946. Never Say Goodbye is the kind of marital farce in which the audience knows what the ending will be before the film even begins. The fun, hopefully, will be during the journey to that ending.

Again, there would be a problem with the script. (One of the credited co-writers is I.A.L. Diamond, who would later work, rather more memorably, with Billy Wilder in Some Like It Hot and The Apartment, among others). This screenplay will never get high marks for originality. An early comedy sequence set in a restaurant in which Flynn juggles back and forth between two dates, trying to prevent either lady from knowing of the other’s presence, is right out of a 1941 Warners comedy, Honeymoon for Three. The routine works a bit better this time around, if only because Flynn at least has a sense of how to play comedy, unlike the hapless George Brent in the earlier film.

Never Say Goodbye is sentimental and coy and the young actress playing the divorced couple’s little girl, Patti Brady, is just too precocious for words. Flynn, though, still looked good on screen in 1946, and his charm is potent. He seems comfortable with young Brady and his predictable scenes of interplay with leading lady Eleanor Parker have, at least, a certain easy flow.

S. Z. “Cuddles” Sakall, a comedic Hungarian character actor with whom Flynn had enjoyed working in San Antonio, was brought back to add to the comedic proceedings with his English mangling and “Sheesh!” shtick, both of which can be quite amusing if delivered in small allotments.

Hattie McDaniel, so memorable in They Died with Their Boots On, is also back, playing the role of a maid, of course. Curiously her character disappears from the film without a word of explanation at about the one hour mark. In a later family dining room scene another maid appears, this one played by an anonymous white actress with no dialogue. I guess the producers were hoping that audience members wouldn’t notice the difference.

One of the most interesting aspects of this film, however, is Flynn’s eagerness to poke fun at his own screen image. At one point Forrest Tucker, playing a burly marine interested in Flynn’s ex-wife, says he’ll put Flynn to bed and picks the actor up like he’s a toy doll, carrying him to his room. Flynn’s expression is one of surprised annoyance, combined with a certain helplessness over the situation. Sir Guy of Gisbourne would never have been allowed to do this to Robin Hood.

Speaking of which, there’s even an inside joke reference to Flynn’s most famous screen role when his character, speaking to his daughter, says “Well, you believe I’m Sir Lancelot, don’t you? You believe I’m Robin Hood.” “No one would ever believe you’re a tough guy,” his little girl tells him.

It’s also interesting that NSG is one of Flynn’s few films in which he played a conventional family man. Or, at least, a divorced man still trying to keep his family together. Not much there reflecting Errol Flynn’s personal reality, of course, since this particular actor was anything but conventional.

But back to the Santa Claus bit. Yes, Errol does get dressed up as Kris Kringle in Never Say Goodbye as part of a plot contrivance. And it’s one of the highlights in the production. There’s a certain familiarity to this kind of humour, of course, but it is amusing, if only because it’s unexpected, to see the most famous movie swashbuckler of the talkie era indulging in these kind of domestic antics.

Flynn even gets to do a variation on a Marx Brothers routine from Duck Soup. (Memorably, Harpo would repeat it when he appeared with Lucy in a classic episode of I Love Lucy). In Errol’s case, though, he’s in a full Santa Claus outfit, looking back at romantic rival Donald Woods, also dressed as Saint Nick. Only Woods’ character thinks he’s looking into a full length mirror, his mirror image, of course, being Flynn, mimicking Woods’ moves.

It’s an amusing little sequence, making a viewing of the film worthwhile, if only to see this bit. Flynn also has the fun of running around the house dressed as Santa (with everyone thinking that he’s Woods in disguise) and doing a few other silly things, including making bleating cries like a goat. Flynn looks like he’s having fun here and I think that some of that feeling may extend to the audience, as well.

The other highlight scene has Flynn trying to scare off the persistent marine by making a sudden appearance as his own tough guy “brother.” Darkening his face to resemble five o’clock shadow, donning a trench coat, and with a cigarette hanging from the side of his mouth, he confronts the marine with an expert Bogart impersonation (assisted in no small measure by Bogie’s own voice being dubbed to Flynn’s lip synch). Of course, since one of the points of the film is that this Flynn is not such a tough guy, the scene ends with him flat on his back, his eyes wide open like saucers, the cigarette still protruding from his mouth, as he then passes out. I have a feeling that, for comedic purposes, Errol probably enjoyed losing this screen altercation.

After the 1943 statutory rape trial, while Flynn would still do some interesting work in the ‘40s, particularly when working with director Walsh, there would gradually be a decrease in the energy level of his performances. That would be particularly apparent in his films of the ‘50s.

In Never Say Goodbye, a lightweight froth, to be sure, Flynn is engaged. There’s an energy to his performance here that indicates he really wanted this film to work. Unfortunately, the picture did not do well at the 1946 box office, one more nail in Flynn’s artistic coffin as an attempt to break out of his heroic screen mould. It would be his last comedy but, fortunately, not his last time with screen humour.

Two years after this film’s release Warners would then feature their swashbuckling star in Adventures of Don Juan. And it would be in this film, an important one for the studio, that Flynn would be provided with a lavish star vehicle also benefiting from a wit in the screenplay that NSG lacked. It would be in Don Juan that the actor would have some of the most clever dialogue of his career, and have the opportunity to demonstrate what a fine subtle touch he had with sly, tongue-in-cheek material.

Still, small pleasures can be found in Never Say Goodbye, and most of those are in the charm and skill with which Flynn played romantic comedy. That, and the unique opportunity to see a pot belly and Santa Claus beard on a classic screen hero eager to have fun with his own screen image. If I. A. L. Diamond thought that part up, then maybe we should give him some credit, after all.

Thank you, Robert, for your generosity in allowing your readers to make a guest blog contribution, as well as to Mary for the suggestion.

Best holiday wishes to both of you, as well as to all the readers of Errol & Olivia.

Note from Robert: Thanks very much, Tom, for this look back at the closest thing to a holiday favorite that Flynn did at Warner Bros. In terms of Eleanor Parker playing Flynn’s ex, she certainly presaged Errol’s choice for wife #3: tall, elegant and a bit frosty. Parker would prove her talent in a variety of roles, from supportive wife in Pride of the Marines to a hardening-before-our-eyes convict in Caged! to the social-climbing Baroness who just happens to have a heart of gold in The Sound of Music. Eleanor is still with us, living a reclusive retirement in (I believe) Palm Springs. I can’t recall hearing her ever open about her soundstage experiences with Errol Flynn, although she did deliver some blistering broadsides about the chore of working with Stewart Granger in Scaramouche. There’s an audio file of that one floating around the internet. If you’re ever in need of a quick wake-me-up, give it a listen.

Tom has set the bar for guest blogs very high! Who else wants a turn? A special Merry Christmas to one of the earliest visitors to this site, Elayna and to all of you around the world.

19 Comments

Second Glance

I’m never very happy unless I’m writing something, whether it’s a book or a script or something. And I haven’t been lately. True, Mary and I are editing a book by our good friend John McElwee, a film enthusiast who has worn many hats, including Interviewer of the Stars. Since college he’s spent time with many Hollywood notables, and only John could begin a section of his book: “The only Academy Award I ever held in my hands was the one given to me by Hal Wallis.” Now if this isn’t a sentence that makes you want to read more, I don’t know what is. John presides over the Greenbriar Picture Shows blogspot and has written a lot on both Errol and Olivia over the years, but he’s a soup to nuts kind of guy and has covered just about everything from silent serials to Hammer horror. I urge you to hurry to his site, bookmark it, and never look back. Well, please go there after you’ve finished reading my column, of course.

So I’ve been kicking around ideas of what I wanted to write a book about next, and the other day the multi-talented Robert Florczak (who has a whale of an interesting Flynn project in the works, BTW, called Errol Flynn—An Illustrated Life Chronology), suggested two possible subjects: Basil Rathbone or Claude Rains. When I considered my life-long exposure to Rathbone (a guy I’ve always taken for granted, I’ve come to realize), this is the way I have to go. I wonder about him, how he got started, what drove him creatively, how he approached his roles, and how he could walk away from Sherlock Holmes years too early when it was providing for him such a comfortable living. He disdained Holmes but eventually ended up in things like The Magic Sword and those bikini pictures.

Thank you RF for suggesting this topic. I hadn’t more than glanced at the possibility of Rathbone as a subject and never stopped and thought about the possibilities. I know many of you have mentioned an affinity for him in the past, even as recently as this week discussing The Dawn Patrol, so if you have any tidbits or photos to pass along, please do so. I stumbled upon a fantastic shot of Basil and Olivia on the set of Robin Hood—that one will be in the much-discussed second edition of Errol & Olivia down the road a bit.

It’s very funny, the whole topic of Flynn on Your Show of Shows; funny in part because I always accepted the truth of a young Mel Brooks shepherding Errol Flynn around New York City in preparation for EF appearing with Sid Caesar—without ever putting two and two together and realizing that I’ve never seen his performance on the show or any documentation thereof. So my hat’s off to Tom for trying to get to the bottom of it, and to Rosemarie for bringing Tom’s TCM thread to the group’s attention. I always had a soft spot for that picture for several things, from the cool period it depicts, sort of pre-Mad Men, to the byplay between the writers to Joe Bologna’s take on Sid Caesar to the Allan Swan character himself. It’s an idealized version of Errol Flynn that served as wonderful positive publicity in the wake of the 1980 biographical hatchet-job by you know who.

I think we can all agree that Flynn matched Peter O’Toole in the charm department, but the various schemes of Alan Swann had childlike innocence at their core. Errol on occasion had a darker streak that I’m glad didn’t sneak into the 1982 screenplay. As you say, Rosemary, My Favorite Year takes the time to stop and reflect on the positive impact that movie stars had on the film-going public. And as noted in Errol & Olivia, I don’t think Flynn ever understood, or could accept, how much he good he brought to the world.

Lastly, Mary has come up with what I think is a great idea. How about if we have a guest blogger? Or a different guest blogger every so often. What do you say, Bonnie? Tom? Rachel? Rosemarie? Inga? Mile? If you could take the stage for a week and write about a topic, what would it be? Let me know your thoughts here in our public forum, or at rmatzen@hotmail.com.

The next time you read a new blog, whoever writes it, will be on Christmas day. May I wish you all the happiest of holidays, and a healthy and prosperous 2012.

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