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MY WICKED, WICKED WAYS
by Errol Flynn
reviewed by ROBBY O'CONNOR
a Film Comment online exclusive
"There's no moral to this - except, of course, don't get caught."
Though merely an afterthought to an episode in which 15-year-old Errol Flynn narrowly escapes prison (he stole money from his employer to play the horses), this pithy sentiment could just as well serve as the moral of the actor's unsparingly honest autobiography, My Wicked, Wicked Ways (Cooper Square Press, 438 pp., $17.95).
Written in 1958 while Flynn was living in Jamaica, the book was published posthumously only a year later in an abridged version, trimmed of potentially libelous remarks about studio head Jack Warner; Flynn's first wife, actress Lili Damita, and his own mother, among others. Though Flynn recounts his tale with the same unapologetic brashness that characterized his onscreen persona (essential when writing a tell-all biography at the dawn of middle age), there's an unfamiliar element of pathos here as well. Though he could not have known his time would be so short (he died of alcohol-related heart problems at age 50), he writes with the brutal candor of a man who has lost everything - most notably his self-respect - and knows that his best years are behind him. Ultimately it makes for a fantastic read, sharply written and full of vintage Hollywood dirt.
From the very outset, it's clear that he has no intention of debunking the myth of Flynn the Great Swordsman. If anything, he enlarges upon his legend, revealing pre-Hollywood exploits as daring as any feat he performed on screen and as rapacious and sensational as anything he would later be accused of in the tabloids.
After being expelled from school at age 15, the Tasmanian Devil takes to the ocean (his only professed love) and embarks on a series of misadventures, including a stint as a gold prospector in New Guinea and subsequently finds himself on trial for the murder of a Kanaka tribesman ("probably the only situation I was ever in where no woman was involved"). Later for some fast cash, he takes a job as a farm hand on a sheep ranch in Queensland, Australia ("All I had to do was . . . bite off the young sheep's testicles. Dag a hogget. I had good teeth") and eventually falls into some dishonest money handicapping cockfights in the Philippines (his secret - "a dab of venom on the beak").
The incidents from this period of his life and his reflections on them are alternately comical, charming, morally reprehensible, and, at their best, all three. With great fondness Flynn recalls buying the daughter of one of his Kanaka indentured servants and taking her as a mistress. Despite the patent offensiveness of the act, his cautiousness during their early courtship and his frustration trying to transcend the language barrier are endearing ("How do you tell somebody who doesn't speak your language, 'Oh Tuperselai, you are beautiful and I love the way you put your hand in mine?'"). Flynn notes, "So, in our language of gestures, our smiles, closeness, Tuperselai and I made love and it was a beautiful thing. . . . The only conclusion I can draw is that a man and a woman should never speak the same language." He then supports his observation with a verse from an Ella Wheeler Wilcox poem.
The episode is Typical Flynn; he first horrifies you with the unfathomable depths of his selfishness and depravity, makes light of it by extracting a bit of worldly wisdom from the crime, and then charms you with his erudition. The rhetorical equivalent of a sly wink or a rakish grin, it may not have been gentlemanly, but boy was it fun.
Despite his run-ins with the law and cuckolded husbands, Flynn describes a relatively carefree lifestyle that actually changes very little when he makes the transition to acting and fast becomes the big shot of the Warner Brothers lot. As "perhaps the most litigated-against man in modern times," he remains continually broke from lawyers' fees and alimony payments, and though he now moves in the film world's most elite circles, the Hollywood crowd is a veritable rogue's gallery of dishonest men and dangerous women. It isn't until his very public statutory rape trial in 1942 that Flynn describes anything even resembling grief or inner turmoil in his life.
The rape trial was a turning point in his life, dividing all experience into two catagories; that which came before and that which came after. Though he was found not guilty of all the charges and the stain of his sudden notoriety quickly faded from his professional life, the event, which coined the phrase "I'm in like Flynn," left its mark on him personally. "I no longer had much of an interest in living," Flynn says. "I didn't give a damn, in fact. . . . . I had everything - ostensibly. And yet I knew I had lost." Though broken in spirit, Flynn remains true to himself and refuses to play the part of penitent in his retelling of the event for which he was and forever will be most harshly judged. "Everyone knew that the girls had asked for it, whether or not I had my wicked ways with them."
Perhaps because the details of his life after the trial are a matter of public record, Flynn devotes only 100 pages to the remaining 15 years. What comes out in this final chapter though is a more introspective Flynn, who now, having found his character to be a prison cell, asks, "How does a man become what he becomes?" He orders his man-servant to have a "?" monogrammed onto the breast pocket of all his sports jackets so that "this my own confusion, became my trademark."
As he breaks from his contract to Warner Bros. and enters into self-acknowledged decline, slowly losing himself to alcohol, he begins to question his fortune. He wonders how it is that a young man from New Guinea who had once wanted to do something for the human race now finds himself "with a sword in one hand and a garter in the other?"
"I do not know whether I have conveyed it - or tried not to convey it-but I have been cut by my own sword so deeply that I am ready for whatever befalls. Flynn is not always In. Sometimes he is far far out."
The intention of these final reflections isn't to solicit pity from the reader. Rather it is Flynn's way of showing that, like the rest of the world, he, too, understands how pathetic he has become. He's savvy enough to be in on the joke, even if the joke is him.-ROBBY O'CONNOR
© 2003 by The Film Society of Lincoln Center
