14,001 Nights

Along a narrow trail in the jungle of darkest New Guinea, pith helmet set at a jaunty angle, strides the lithe young figure of Errol Flynn. Suddenly the dark wall of foliage opens, and a hail of spears comes streaming through. Ambush! The native bearer next to Flynn falls dead with a spear through his belly, and Flynn is struck in the foot by a poisoned arrow. Not a whit dismayed, the hero leaps behind a tree, whips out his revolver and starts firing. With the first shot he brings down one of the nasty savages. The rest of them melt into the jungle.

The fact of interest in this scene is that it did not happen in one of Flynn's films. It happened in real life--or so the late Cinemactor Flynn assures his fans in his autobiography, My Wicked, Wicked Ways (Putnam, $4.95). The book is written in a loose, well-Erroled prose that sounds as if it was talked on tape at 2 a.m. in the back booth of the Brown Derby, and the reader is often left wondering where the facts leave off and the Flynn-flam begins. But on the whole, My Wicked, Wicked Ways tells an entertaining, cautionary tale about a badly frightened black sheep who tried to prove he was the big, bad wolf and to live up to his public image ("a sword in one hand and a garter in the other").

Bottle Smeller & Gigolo. Flynn, the son of a noted biologist, was born in 1909 in Hobart, Tasmania. His mother, Errol says, considered him "a nasty little boy," and at 16 he almost killed another youngster in a fight, was expelled from school and took work as an office boy. Caught dipping into petty cash to bet on the horses, he got the sack, had to sleep in public parks till he heard of a gold strike in New Guinea. At 17, he set out to make his fortune, and for the next five years he lived by his remarkably quick wits in a wild and woolly part of the world. First off, he bluffed his way into the colonial service as a sanitation officer. Caught with a high official's wife, he landed gracefully on his feet as the manager of a copra plantation, soon bought a little schooner and took to running freight and passen gers along the coast, running "indentured laborers," i.e., slaves, to the gold fields. Twice he tried for a strike in the gold fields, twice he failed.

Meanwhile, the handsome young Aussie had made himself a name around the island as a big man with the native girls, and as a brawler. He was tried for the murder of a native, and barely escaped a long prison term. Back in Sydney to cool off (and to take treatment for a virulent dose of gonorrhea), Errol got a job as a bottle smeller for a soft-drink company, i.e., he sniffed empty bottles to detect kerosene, etc., to discover which bottles needed special washing. Later he was the gigolo of a wealthy middle-aged woman who "woke my understanding of the possible wonder and diversity of the female form." One night, tired of his work, Errol skipped out with all her jewels.

Actor & Husband. Flynn set out for England to make his fortune as an actor. On the way, to hear him tell it, he stopped off at every gambling hell, opium den and bawdyhouse from Macao to Marseilles. Late in 1932, he joined the Royal Hong Kong Volunteers to fight the Japanese in Shanghai, deserted when the going got tough. Eventually he got to London alive, landed a job in a provincial repertory group, later a bit part in a British film.

Hollywood's Jack Warner saw the movie and brought the beautiful young man to Hollywood, where he promptly came to the attention of Lili Damita, a star of second magnitude who earned his admiration with her "glorious boudoir art." One night Lili stood on a window sill and threatened to jump if Flynn refused to make an honest woman of her. Flynn gave in, made a $2 deposit on a venture that cost him more than $1,000,000 in alimony before he died.*

Joker & Braggart. In 1935 at the age of 26, Errol Flynn leaped spectacularly into the public eye in Captain Blood, and was well away on a film career that made him a sort of "rich man's Roy Rogers" whose color spectacles were almost as popular as the off-color spectacle of his private life. The lusty, naive young knockabout from New Guinea became the bored Mocambohemian. "The Baron," as his buddies called him, built the usual $125,000 mansion and kept a yacht, filled both of them with "roisterers, fun guys, rompers" and the sort of girls they liked to romp with. To the pressagents' delight, he became notorious as a columnist puncher, cop clobberer and practical joker --the fellow who wired the ladies' room at home and walked through downtown Chicago with a half-grown lion on a leash.

Flynn was proud of his Don Juandering, but by the time he reached his 40s he was forced to slow down. From 1953 until his death, he spent most of his time "aging in the ports and capitals of southern Europe," drinking, bragging, anxious about his "unique physique" and his past performances: "Since my teens I have gone to bed twelve or fourteen thousand nights." He recalls fondly how he kept busy ducking alimony payments, reminisces bravely about the time he kicked Hedda Hopper, curses Hollywood for being "the ruin of creative personalities" like his own. At book's end he pulls himself together, steps back into the only role he was ever able to play, and with a sly Irish twinkle in his prose confesses that his wicked, wicked ways have left him with one deep and painful regret: "I never learned to play the piano."

* His other wives: Nora Eddington and Patrice Wymore.

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