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    Captain Blood

    Reviewed by
    pietroantoni@

    A delicious adventure film which made both the careers of Errol Flynn and Olivia De Havillannd, seven time screen partners at the insistence of JACK WARNER. Captain Blood was such a tremendous hit with Flynn at his swash-buckling best. The pairing of the 2 stars was inevitable, but Olivia hated the roles she had to play as they did not showcase her great talent. When she left Warner Bros., she went on to several more Oscar nominations winning in 1946 for TO EACH HIS OWN and in 1949 for the classic, THE HEIRESS. Her performances in the 1940's gave her the title as Hollywood's greatest dramatic actress. She was vindicated and proved how stupid Jack Warner could be. He had one of the greatest stars at his studio and gave her nothing special or important to do in film.

    Here I want to do a bit of a turn and capture the Flynn career that began to go down hill during the late forties due to his many wicked ways and habits. He died at 50 in a Vancouver hotel with Beverly Adland, a 15 year old girl. Sounds pretty tragic and very sad! A Leopard truly never changes his spots!

    Flynn really cheated himself out of a long career as he not only was undisciplined but drank too such excess that by the 50's he was almost useless in film. It is also reported that Flynn was bi-sexual as many stars were/are... and one incredible fact of his life was being charged with statutory rape whose charge he beat... but everyone knew he was guilty as sin. Jack Warner did little to tame Flynn as he was making record dollars for Warner Bros. Studios.

    By the time Mr. Flynn made KIM, a Rudyard Kipling tale in 1950, he already had aged terribly from those matinée good looks over which women swooned. His last film in 1957 or so, TOO MUCH TO SOON was supposedly a sort of bio-pic of John Barrymore who led the same type life as Flynn. By this time he is hardly recognizable and looks like 70. The film was important only in that it showed Flynn really playing himself as he took on the Barrymore role. They were two peas in a pod. It's all very sad as he died from a heart attack with severe alcohol related problems in the arms of the 15 year old girl mentioned above. Apparently, Beverly's mother did not object to her daughter's relationship with this aging alcoholic. She must have had her reasons.

    In any case, I am evaluating the entire FLYNN career which started so beautifully and ended in debauchery, a life wasted. His movies till about 1947 were decent action movies and westerns. Earlier he got to work twice with Bette Davis who was not taken by his charm and wanted him replaced on ELIZABETH and ESSEX but Warner would do no such thing as he had his two biggest stars rolling in the doe for the studio. It makes one stop to ponder why some individuals have such a destructive gene running through their bodies while others are so dedicated and true to their life's work. Errol Flynn will always be remembered for a decade+ or so of marvelous film making. He was MAGICAL! But he threw it all away.

    How tragic it all turned out to be. Oliva De Havilland was so right in not wanting anything romantic with Flynn though she was very attracted to him. She now states she saw something in his personality that kept her at arms length almost afraid he might ruin her career as well. On a further sad note, his only son with actress Lili Damita, started off as an actor playing THE SON OF CAPTAIN BLOOD but soon left Hollywood to become a reporter. He covered the war in VIET NAM but was never seen alive again after 1970. If you can believe it, he was even more gorgeous than his infamous father. Mother, Lili Damita, never stopped searching for her lost son to the day she died, brokenhearted. Obviously Sean was killed in some sort of conflict during that horrendous VIET NAM war.

    This is my short take on the Flynn career as a whole not just based on this one individual film.

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    pietroantoni@  22.3.2015 age: 36-49 14,540 reviews

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