Well, having held onto the wreckage for another week, here we are once again to stroll down Memory Lane, whether you can sprint, jog or like me limp along and remember our youthful days when we could run through a cornfield and collapse with your girlfriend or boyfriend under the summer sun and hope a combine harvester was nowhere near.
I digress as usual, as the sun has set somewhere and thus time to partake of a drink, but only for medicinal reasons. Does anyone remember the slogan 'Guinness is good for you', and when hospitals gave you a bottle of stout beer to help build you up? To think how much the NHS spends on sedating patients before an operation when the old movie westerns dealt with it by giving the patient a slug of whiskey and a gag to bite on.
Errol Flynn. Photo: National Library of Australia
Today I reflect on the end of that legendary Hollywood star Errol Flynn, who died at the age of 50. His motto was 'live your first half century to the full as it is downhill after that'.
Having gone a couple of decades past that target I still hope the best is yet to come, but only after a drink. By 1959 poor Errol was broke and his lifestyle had caught up with him in that he was addicted to drink and drugs in an attempt to still get a kick out of life, which is a very poor idea.
He went through several wives and a court case for enjoying himself with underage girls but he was acquitted. He later said: "I prefer my whiskey old and my girlfriends young."
Can you imagine any famous person saying that today? But in that era the media were vastly different and the public perhaps more innocent.
Olivia de Havilland and Errol Flynn in Santa fe Trail, 1940
Errol made several films in Borehamwood during the 1950s and his co-star in two Elstree-made movies, Dame Anna Neagle, told me he was a challenge to work with due to his drinking, and the best scenes were filmed before a liquid lunch break. If you visit McDonald's in Borehamwood, that building was once the Red Lion pub and Errol and many other stars raised a glass or two in there.
Errol died in an apartment in Vancouver while on a trip to sell his beloved yacht due to debts. The immediate cause of death was a heart attack but his health was terminal anyway. I wonder whether whoever owns that apartment today knows a Hollywood icon died in the bedroom, lying on the floor? He was taken to a morgue for an autopsy, in which one of the pathologists decided to cut off some warts from his penis as a talking point for future lectures. He was ordered to 'Scotch tape' them back on as another autopsy awaited the body in Los Angeles. Errol was shipped back to Tinsel Town in a coffin in a crate by train.
Errol Flynn's coffin on Los Angeles Union Station train platform in 1959. In dark suit and hat behind the coffin is Buster Wiles, Flynn's double and friend. Photo: Los Angeles Times archive
He was then buried in a famous Hollywood cemetery, which he hated, and it was a while before a simple plaque was put on his grave. I would have loved to meet Errol, but as with Bogart and others before my time, I certainly don't recommend his lifestyle to readers. In fact I am embarking on a health kick. Can anybody tell me if there is vegan-friendly alcohol with the same kick so I can make it to the big 50?
- Paul Welsh MBE is a Borehamwood writer and historian of Elstree Studios
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