Errol Flynn, an Australian-born film actor, was popular for his romantic roles in Hollywood films and also for his flamboyant lifestyle. Flynn was born in Hobart Tasmania 100 years ago today, on 20 June 1909 and I write this prose-poem as a sort of quasi-eulogistic, personal reminiscence, personal reflection on Flynn, my life and our respective ways and beliefs. He was born three months after the wooden casket containing the sacred remains of the Báb were placed in a marble sarcophagus in Haifa Israel inside what is now the Shrine of the Báb. Flynn died the day, or perhaps it was the week, that I joined the Bahá'í Faith, the religion which the Báb had come to announce, much like John the Baptist had done in preparing the way for the coming of Jesus two thousand years before. Flynn died on 14 October 1959. –Ron Price, Pioneering Over Four Epochs, 20 June 2009.

You were getting famous, Errol,
right at the start of that teaching
Plan, in those entre deux guerres1
years....your first novel came out
in the first year of that teaching
Plan--1937--and you were still
getting your name in lights when
I was getting into this new religion
that came into town back in those
50s when rock-‘n-roll started, words
for Negroes & genitalia were no-nos
and a superficial propriety prevailed.1

My autobiography will not be as
compelling as your’s-My Wicked
Wicked Ways-released just before
Christmas when I was fifteen, still
in love with Susan Gregory & never
having heard of you or your book....

You pulled no punches about your
convictions, obsessions, addictions,
Errol, but your exaggerations, your
entertainment and shock makes the
work ahistorical and a confirmation
of the view that it is impossible to write
autobiography that is really true history.

1 A French expression for ‘the years between WWI and WW2’
2 D.T. Miller and M. Nowak, The Fifties: The Way We Really Were, Doubleday & Co. Ltd., NY, 1977, p.302.

Ron Price
20 June 2009

Nice poem, Bahaichap - but I like this one better:

Convict state
It just don't rate
He want to get higher
Apple Isle, the inbred smile
He's going to get by'a
His mother's hand
He could not stand
He left for the islands
To fish and hunt
He take a punt
The New Guinea Highlands

Ohhh Errol
I would give everything just to be like him

He had to go
The Sirocco
He's sailin the high seas
Hollywood, Captain Blood
He's billing the Nazis
Took a rebel stand
Contraband
Coast of Mexico
He want to pounce
Like an animal
To girls he just can't say no

Ohhh Errol
I would give everything just to be like him(x2)

He had them all
Screamin for more
He play the wild scene
Ah scandalise, no compromise
He's down on his knees
Swashbuckling
He was the King
The toast of Tinseltown
They build him up
They took it all
And then they just cut him down

Ohhh Errol
I would give everything just to be like him(x2)

Don’t tell me it’s true
I don’t wanna hear about it (4x)

Ohhh Errol
I would give everything just to be like him(4x)

In Port Moresby (PNG) in the 30-60's there were 2 hotels referred to as the "top"& "bottom" hotels. The "top" hotel was allegedly more up market (hmm).

In the "Ladies Lounge" framed on the wall was a Dishonoured check for Two Pounds ($4) signed by Errol Flynn. Dated in the 1930's. From all account by the older residents who claimed to know him, EF was anything but an honourable person, A letch, boozer and unreliable.

Now a days he has been spun as being some sort of 'scallywag', Who really knows what the truth is/was.

"Errol Flynn was quite a guy,
So many say that's true.
Blessed with the curse
of an insatiable thirst,
What else could an addict do?"

And from what I've read - Flynn was an addict of
so many things - love, drugs, women, alcohol.
He devoured life - not simply watched it roll
on by. Plus, - his movies brought so much
entertainment - to so many people.
"Robin Hood, Robin Hood,
running through the Glen..."

David Niven in his book, "The Moon's A Balloon,"
told many amusing anecdotes concerning Flynn.
Including the one - where Flynn one evening
while they were making a film on the isle of Malta,
decided to romance a beautiful woman and take her out
for a moonlit ride in a horse-drawn carriage. Niven
and a friend fed the horse heaps of wet straw prior
to Flynn's 'adventure,' with the lady that night.
The rest as they say was history. Flynn's chances
of a romantic liaison was greatly diminished by the horse
farting up a storm that evening - much to the amusement
of Niven and Co.

Flynn, came, saw, and definitely conquered -
so many - not only in Hollywood, but the
world. His legacy will continue to live on in
his films - which today have been digitally
re-mastered and available on DVD for all to
enjoy!

Some dream of Errol’s wicked ways
of Captain Blood, Sea Hawk, or even Robin Hood adventures.

Some yearn to co-starring with him
cutlass in hand, storming Spanish galleons on the high seas.

But I, I dream of umbrellas and lesser roles
playing The Bodyguard to Rihanna, keeping Brown moods at bay.

“No clouds in my storms”-nor high seas
“Let it rain… You can stand under my umbrella
Ella ella eh eh eh”…anytime, Rihanna.