“Life is only what you get out of it in the living, isn’t it? I do want money but I won’t pay too much of myself to get it. I hate discipline. Time clocks are abhorrent to me.” – Errol Flynn
Source: Harry Lang (1936)
“You once liked the blissful mobility, but then you wonder, who’s the real you? And who’s the chap on the screen? You know, I catch myself acting out my life like a goddamn script.” — Errol Flynn
“The studio, you know, always build up a star in one way or another. Because of my earlier experiences they decided to build me as the adventurous type.” — Errol Flynn
Source: J.D. Spiro (1937)
“They’ve great respect for the dead in Hollywood, but none for the living.” – Errol Flynn
“I’ve always believed that the only thing I owed the public was what appeared on the screen, and my private life was my own affair. But, of course, nobody else thinks that way, so I just have to accept my fate.” — Errol Flynn
Source: Bob Thomas (1952)
“Humor. Dimples. Ripping. Deviltry. Laughter. Drinking, talking, laughing with the guys. How the girls used to fly around him. I think of booze and good fellowship and a man who rarely let anyone know how much he cared about things, about people.” — Joan Blondell on Errol Flynn
Source: Donald Freeman (1968)
Photo: The Perfect Specimen (1937) with Joan Blondell.
The Dawn Patrol (1938)
“By instinct I’m an adventurer. By choice, I’d be a writer. By sheer luck, good or bad, I’m an actor who got his first break playing a corpse.” — Errol Flynn
Source: Jim Tully (1939)
Photo: The Adventures of Robin Hood (1939)
Super Comics (1940) published by Dell.
“They were forced upon me. I am a man of peace. I don’t want to fight. I am getting too old to deliver knockout punches.” — Errol Flynn
Source: Marjory Adams (1941)
Photo: Gentleman Jim (1942)
“It isn’t what they say about you, it’s what they whisper.” – Errol Flynn
“I am the worst businessman in the world although I must confess that it took years to convince me of this. With me, saving begins methodically and ends in chaos.” – Errol Flynn
Source: John Franchey (1942)
Flynn signing autographs outside the courtroom where he was being tried for the statutory rape of two under-aged girls. Photo was taken in January of 1943.
“I suppose I’ll be criticized, but it’s a question of living life the way you see fit, and I’ve been careless of other people’s opinions. I never thought the public would be interested in my so-called antics.” — Errol Flynn
Source: Vernon Scott (1959)
“Putting me in cowboy pictures seemed to me the most ridiculous miscasting, but it was successful for Warners. Often, in these pictures, I had to alibi my accent which was still a bit too English for the American ear. I always had to get in a couple of lines which went like this…
Heavy: Where you from, pardner?‘
Flynn: I happen to come from Ireland but I am as American as you are.
That got be the trademark in my American films.” – Errol Flynn
Source: My Wicked, Wicked Ways: The Autobiography of Errol Flynn
“I have the trait, childish, no doubt, of wanting to do anything I’m told not to do.” – Errol Flynn
“He was one of the wild characters of the world, but he had a strange, quiet side. He camouflaged himself completely. In all the years I knew him, I never really knew what lay underneath and I doubt if many people did.” — Ann Sheridan
Photo: Silver River (1948)
With Robert Mitchum and Burt Lancaster.
Flynn‘s novel, Showdown, was originally published in 1946 and republished as a paperback by Consul Books in 1961.
