My Wicked, Wicked Ways: The Autobiography of Errol Flynn

In his own autobiography, IN AND OUT OF CHARACTER, Basil Rathbone wrote of Errol Flynn: "He was one of the most beautiful male animals I've ever seen...but I think his greatest handicap was that he was incapable of taking anything or anyone else seriously. I don't think he had any ambition beyond 'living up' every moment of his life to the maximum of his physical capacity, and making money. He had talent, but how much we shall never know; there were flashes of talent in the three pictures we made together. He was monstrously lazy and self-indulgent, relying on a magnificent body to keep him going, and he had an insidious flair for making trouble, mostly for himself. I believe him to have been quite fearless, and subconsciously possessed of his own self-destruction. I would say that he was fond of me, for what reasons I will never know. It was always 'Dear old Bazzz,' and he would flash that smile that was both defiant and cruel, but for me always had a tinge of affection in it. We only crossed swords, never words." The extent to which Rathbone, who worked closely with Flynn on CAPTAIN BLOOD, ROBIN HOOD and DAWN PATROL, understood and did not understand the paradoxical, enigmatic, what-you-saw-is-not-necessarily-what-you-got Errol Flynn will be revealed to anyone who spends the money and takes the time to read his surprisingly thick, surprisingly deep, often amusing and occasionally appalling autobiography, MY WICKED, WICKED WAYS. Now I freely confess I am one of those fiends who folds back the edges of book pages I consider to contain important quotations. I also confess I bought this book expecting that Flynn would have little to say aside from endless recounts of alcoholic and sexual debacheries and perhaps some amusing gossip from the Golden Age of Hollywood; in other words, I expected to be entertained, but I did not anticipate folding many pages. As to the former, my expectations were met. As to the latter, I confess I was dead wrong. Errol Flynn was indeed a degenerate, libertine, almost completely amoral man, one who lived his entire life either teetering on the edge of, or completely beyond, both the rules of civilized behavior and occasionally, of civilization itself. The smile that Rathbone described as "defiant and cruel" was just that, for Flynn was defiant by nature -- defiant of everything -- and his pleasures often took an exploitative form that bore no regard for the feelings or dignity of others. He lived for those pleasures, and adventure, and laughed (literally) at the idea of consequences. He seems to have scarcely understood the idea of guilt, conscience or remorse, and he did not take himself any more seriously than he took the women he seduced, the husbands he humiliated, or the many people of all races he ruthlessly conned out of their money and their dignity. On the other hand, he was far more than the sum of his sins: Flynn was highly intelligent, extremely resourceful, deeply curious about life and human existence, and in his later years, a surprisingly self-critical and philosophical man who came to regret many of his choices. If he was ruthless, he was also without self-pity. Flynn takes us from his improbable childhood -- he was the son of a famous Australian scientist who rather doted on him, and an unloving mother with whom he remained at war his entire life -- to an even more improbable adolescence. Born in Tasmania, he took on the characteristics of that island's most famous animal. He was a curious, wild, nearly fearless child, always up to mischief, and even at a very young age obsessed with the female of the species. Gifted with extreme good looks, he collected sexual experiences (and veneral diseases) early, and his teens and twenties were spent on a series of adventures. At different points before he was accidentally discovered by Hollywood, Flynn sailed the South Seas, tried his hand at running various kinds of plantations, dabbled in the slave trade, panned for gold in New Guinea -- the most dangerous place on earth at that time -- and eventually learned to live as a vagabond con man. While guiding a documentary crew up the deadly Sepik River in New Guinea, he was noted for his looks and charisma and cast in a movie called THE WAKE OF THE BOUNTY, which opened him up to the film world but did not deliver him from poverty or give him purpose. Indeed, Flynn is 179 pages into his memoirs before he ceases his life of wandering, hanging out with street thugs in Australia, running cons from Hong Kong to the Phillippines, and sailing around the Pacific with a fellow con man named Koets, and joins the Northampton Repertory Company in England. This act set the course for the rest of his life, for it was here he learned how to act, and more than that, became interested in acting as a craft. Indeed, in his later years he remarked that the happiest times of his life were the two years he spent "trodding the boards" with this theater company. And therein lies one of the book's many moments of tragedy. Flynn's talents as an actor, which were not inconsiderable, eventually became overlooked because of his physical appearance; his handsomeness and devil-may-care smile are what got him to New York and eventually, Los Angeles, and the genuine passion and deep-soul satisfaction that a life of theater acting might have engendered in him were traded, before he even really understood what happened, for a life as a movie star: a life that fed into all of his surface passions and animal lusts, but did not ultimately leave him fulfilled, satisified, or even in possession of his self-respect. Flynn's Hollywood career started with a bang with CAPTAIN BLOOD in 1935. He rapidly became one of "the" leading men in the motion picture industry and pictures like THE PRINCE AND THE PAUPER, ROBIN HOOD, THE SEA HAWK, and SANTA FE TRAIL cemented his status as a "swashbuckler" -- the 30s-40s equivalent of an action star. His fame and money allowed him to indulge in all of his favorite pastimes, and gave him a reputation as a womanzer nonpariel, but his marital choices cost him dearly in divorce court and plagued him for the rest of his life. Indeed, it could be said that Flynn spent much of that life working in films he cared nothing about simply to feed the alimony demands of his first wife. He could not enter military service during WW2 because of malaria, tuberculosis and veneral disease picked up in his "adventures," and he unfairly suffered reputation damage by being associated with a taste for Fascism (an absurdity when you consider Flynn's centralmost desire in life was for personal freedom). His taste for hijinks and low farce hamstrung his efforts to land meatier acting parts, which fed a growing disillusion with acting generally. However, it was his trial for rape in 1943 which he regarded as the most significant moment of his life. Indeed, he qualifies the incident by stating his life can be divided into "before" and "after" the trial. What happened, in extreme brief and according to Flynn, was this: Flynn's reputation as a ladykiller with a taste for young flesh made him the subject of a number of extortion attempts, one of which led to a highly dubious rape prosecution in Los Angeles which deeply humiliated him and seems to have left him permanently traumatized. Indeed, he devotes an entire act of the book to the trial (which he believed was a frame-up) and its aftermath, which badly damaged his career and both public and self-image. Acting no longer meant anything to him, and neither did money or even sex. He speaks freely about contemplating suicide on many occasions, and writes with palpable anguish about the decline in his fortunes: "All my life the one thing I feared was mediocrity -- and my whole living effort was pitched to oppose ever becoming a mediocrity. I did not wish to live in a mediocre way, nor to be regarded artistically as a mediocrity. This to me was the cardinal sin: to be middling was to be nothing." I must pause here to say that MY WICKED, WICKED WAYS, despite its salacious fascinations, dry wit, and often appalling amoralism, comes dangerously close to becoming tedious at a certain point about 3/4 of the way through. This is not due to any deficiency in Flynn's writing style: he is actually quite a cracking good writer, and it's easy to see why Hemingway disliked him so much, and for other reasons than that Flynn shared more than one woman with him: Flynn led a life that in some ways eclipsed Hemingway's, and had he doggedly pursued mastering the craft-and-art of writing in the same way he did young women, he might have produced some fiction to put the literary world on notice. No, it is simply that Flynn's penchant for sleeping with other men's wives, his taste for sophomoric pranks and humor, his love of the con, the tinge of cruelty and complete lack of remorse he had for all the damage he caused...it all becomes tiresome after a time. Tiresome and a little disgusting. Yet just at the moment I was beginning to get sick of all these tales of seductions, pranks, parties, debaucheries, fights, disastrous vacations, sailing expeditions, financial problems and irresponsible shennanigans, Flynn abruptly changes course. No longer content with listing his victories and defeats, he spends the last 100-odd pages in a deeply philosophical quest to discover where his life went wrong, what he has learned from his mistakes, why he made the choices he did and how he came to be so disgusted with surface attractions that he refused to look in the mirror. He contemplates life and makes powerful observations about himself, some of which may have startled his friend "Dear Old Bazzz": "I know I am a contradiction inside a contradiction...you can love every instant of living and still want to be dead." "I have a zest for living yet twice an urge to die." "If I have a genius it is a genius for living. And yet I turn many things into ----." "I hate the legend of myself as a phallic representation, yet I work to keep it alive. I portray myself as wicked, yet I hope not to be truly regarded as wicked." "Praise Mama. Damn her too." At the time he wrote the book, he was acutely aware that his looks were going, his health was slipping, his bank account was void and his career was in chaos; he had become somewhat acclaimed as an actor again, but only for smoothly recherche portrayals of characters who were very much like him in that moment of his life: aged-out Romeos engaged in losing struggles with the bottle. Yet his incapacity for self-pity makes his self-explorations truly interesting and slightly tragic and even sympathetic. In the end, Flynn, who seemed to be missing the capacity to grasp the collateral and sometimes deliberate damage he had inflicted on others, is unsparing in looking at the wreck he made of his own life. To his credit, he does not blame a rapacious ex-wife, controlling studio mogul Jack Warner, his mean-minded mother, or any other person or set of circumstances for his dark night of the soul. He knows he has led an extraordinary life, and he knows it was not the life he should have led, that he might have been much more than an actor known for standing "with a sword in one hand and a garter in the other." In the end, MY WICKED, WICKED WAYS is a much subtler and deeper book than I was expecting. Many readers will be put off by his amoralism, sexual rapacity and taste for all things facetious, sophomoric and irresponsible. Others will regard his life as Rathbone did, as a rather self-indulgent waste of talent. Neither would be wr. But I think even his bitterest critics would agree that in the end, there was much more to Flynn than his wicked, wicked ways.

This is probably the most enjoyable book I've ever read. Really. Mr. Flynn tells us the story of a life filled with adventure, emotional intensity, and humor. He also manages to convey the grittiness and desperation of his life at times, but he tells it all with dignity and style. He has the ability to write so that you can see it all, in your mind's eye, as if you were right there along with him. More importantly, as he takes you on his journey, he moves you to feel what he was feeling when it was happening to him. Want to go a step further? You can really go with him to Mandarin House, in Macau, China, where he gambled with a girl named Ting Ling. Just Google "Mandarin House". Want to see the hotel where Lili, his mad wife, threw a flower pot off the balcony at him on the street below? Google the "Plaza Athenee", in Paris. It looks like a nice place, with wide balconies, full of flower pots. I especially liked the part in the book where, as a young man, he meets his life long friend Hermann, and they go from New Guinea to London on cargo ships, trains, and anything that will get them closer to their destination. Along the way they get rich, and become penniless, over and over again. Another thing that makes this book a joy to read is that Flynn is a man of consciences, who does unconscionable things to survive. He was able to adapt to the circumstances he found himself in very well. He was a man who lived life without limits, but that takes a toll. When he died at age fifty, he had the body of an eighty year old man. So, who was Errol Flynn? He was a lovable little boy who was unloved and abused badly. He worked very hard to make of himself a successful and respectable man, but success slipped through his fingers, and he was ashamed of himself. When he was making Robin Hood he was a stunning figure of a man in good health and vigor, but he kept passing out on the set because of his many health problems. Women fell at his feet because of his looks and charm and stardom, but he was afraid of women because they destroyed his life. When everyone thought he was on top of the world, rich, and surrounded by beautiful women who adored him, he was really only sitting alone on the edge of his bed in the dark, with the muzzle of a revolver in his mouth. He was one of the most sophisticated men the world has ever seen, but he had the heart of a child. He describes himself as "a desperate and hard man doing what he had to, to get on". I'll take him at his word on that. The complexity of this poor damaged men, his good luck and terrible misfortune, and the extreme adventures he lived, make him a rare and awe-inspiring individual. In his wake he leaves behind the story of an amazing life. Read it.

I enjoyed Mr. Flynn’s book immensely - it was very difficult to put down. Truly a talent gone far too soon before his time, though no one could accuse him of not living what time he had to the fullest. Four stars because the quality of the paperback itself left much to be desired, as the print was uneven and often hard to read. Most disappointing was the relatively small amount of pictures, all of which were of such light, blurry and grainy quality you could barely make out the subjects in any of them. Did feel I got my money’s worth, (thank you, Mr. Flynn), just surprised a domestically sourced book could miss the mark this one did in print quality.

Fun read! Not only do you get to learn about the life of one of Hollywood's most reknown actors of the Golden Age, but you get to feel as though you really knew Errol, for better or worse. Flynn's writing style is unabashedly forthright and funny as he covers a meer 50 years of life, and yet his escapades traveling the world before his days at Warner Brothers, are even more exciting than his adventures as beloved Robin Hood or Captain Peter Blood combined! Such a short life and yet, extremely well lived. Though he is cynical and critical of himself and others, Errol depicts a seemingly more truthful and genuine story than anything you'd ever read about him. Be aware, this is definitely a book aimed at a mature audience! By the end of this book, you'll see the man for what he was, his talents and his shortcomings, his successes and his failures. After hearing what he has to say, I hope you find you have the same level of respect for the life of Errol Flynn as I have come to have because of this autobiography. Side note: If you enjoy this book, check out "Showdown", a fictional novel written by Flynn that is a very similar retelling of his experiences as a young man in New Guinea!

Clay-footed Errol Flynn set me to thinking with his autobiography. Perhaps what struck me most was the extreme contrast between the first half of his life, living in unpretentious, free-spirited, straightforward, poverty stricken, primitive, basic-human-level, wild west culture in Tasmania, Australia and New Guinea....and then fairly quickly being whisked away to Hollywood, the most pretentious place on earth, with endless riches, glitz and glamour, inescapable contracts and obligations, contrived images and fakery, acceptable lies and liars, the value of money over authentic experience and art. Culture shock! It seemed that once Flynn either figured out what was happening to him and/or got bored with the whole Hollywood experience, an internal fist fight then ensued to reclaim his roots and his once free-wheeling spirit. In terms of evaluating his life, I recall a claim from him that "human nature" may not be the same all over the world as we like to think. In the world of his youth, men took young girls for wives or companions as common practice. They lived by their wits or the seat of their pants to survive what may be around the next corner. I would think New Guinea's head hunters and cannibals can take you to new heights of fear and clever tricks for survival. The lack of money and hunger (which was very real to him at times) and loose boundaries may have led to his crime sprees. Slave trade was acceptable as an extreme form of using people at that time. The use of fists or other minor "crimes" was a common medium for settling disputes. So many of the extreme experiences that shaped him during the first half of his life were at direct odds with the extreme culture he adopted for the second half. The book seems to be divided into three areas of focus: Pre-Hollywood, the pinnacle of his Hollywood fame and fortune, and his personal and professional decline. Using his charming story-telling style of writing, I found that what I liked about Errol Flynn most were his oft self-deprecating yarns and his brutal honesty about himself and how he saw his world. In one particular passage, he talks extensively about his many contradictions. By that time in the book, it was easy to see those in him. He didn't shy away from his own humanity and ran his life based strictly on reality. But I also came away seeing him as a lot better man than he gave himself credit for. I winced often and laughed often and by the time I got to "The End", I was in his corner for life! Anyone who can make me laugh this hard in the midst of so much pathos, confusion and chaos has something special going for him. I'm glad he shared his engaging, colorful life story with us just in the knick of time. It was his last narrow escape.

.....If only one half the episodes in Flynn's book are true then his adventures were as exciting as any fiction writer could conjure. .....His journey from Tasmania to the King of Hollywood was as improbable as any rags to riches story ever told. .....A Hollywood actress once said that Flynn's main problem was that he liked the ladies and the ladies liked him. Olivia DeHavilland, his co star in eight pictures, said that she had a crush on Errol but that their relationship was platonic and confined to the screen. She claimed that he asked her to marry him while he was still married to Lilly Damita but as loveable as Errol was she could never marry a man who was likely to be in another woman's bed whenever he got the chance. .....She told a story of shooting a scene with Errol in "Robinhood" where they had to kiss and she didn't want the scene to end so she kept flubbing her lines so that they would have to shoot it over. She said that by the sixth take Errol began to have a problem with his tights. Olivia was in her eighties and white haired when she gave that interview and she delivered it deadpan. She was hillarious. .....I am on my second reading and I think I could read this book at least once a year and still find it entertaining. Flynn was one of a kind and we are not likely to see another. I highly recommend this book.

Good book

I have a much better understanding of what the Golden Age of Hollywood was like and who actors and actresses were and were not in their personal lives. Flynn on the screen was somewhat what he was off the screen. He might be considered the first action hero on screen? I enjoyed this read greatly and couldn't put it down to the end. An amazing life, a great read and if you like old movies you will enjoy this book. It rolls with all the dash of the era. So, Mr. Flynn, you continue to amaze and bring an interesting perspective to the 1930s , 1940s and 1950s. I tip my hat to you as you had the final say about your life.

Read the book 40 years back first and than now .

Amazing hard fast life for Errol ,a lovely man inside and out ,first half of book is mostly in new guinea, where he has so many enterprises, then in England, then Hollywood, I've never read another book quite like this, I'd definitely recommend, so hold on to your hats , beware danger around every corner..

Cuando Flynn atterizo en Hollywood tenia 26 años y un pasado de vertigo. Y aunque el personaje emerge eticamente bastante despreciable (Chuleando y robándole a señoras de una cierta edad, traficando con indígenas en Selvas diversas) el libro está muy bien escrito - Las 200 primeras páginas son de novela de aventuras y el resto ya se centra en su carrera cinematográfica y demás líos de alcobas. English de fácil lectura y mas qué recomdable como lectura veraniega. Envío vía Correos rápido y cómodo.

Dont know if what Flynn writes is all true but it is certainly entertaining

Acknowledged as the best autobiography by a movie star, Errol Flynn's "My Wicked, Wicked Ways" is a revealing look at the man and Hollywood in it's Golden Era.. Detailing his early life in Australia and New Guinea, the book goes on to give his account of his tribulations including his well publicized rape trial. Highly recommended.