Resumo de Errol Flynn: Satan's Angel

This 273 page biography of Hollywood swashbuckler Errol Flynn trails through his early life as an errant schoolboy in Australia, colonial adventurer and accidental film feature in New Guinea, and studied actor in England, peppered all the while with tales of vigorous and lusty deeds to portray a fellow who did pretty much whatever he pleased whenever he pleased. All of that is interesting, though none of it new among the long list of books to cover the same ground, among them Flynn?s own highly entertaining autobiography My Wicked, Wicked Ways. Bret describes his progress after crossing to Hollywood to almost immediate stardom in the heyday of the studio era, and tracks his career through his famous early action films adventures like The Charge of the Light Brigade and The Adventures of Robin Hood, to his less than memorable roles in a career stagnation and its resurgence near the end of his short life, playing a series of roles as a broken-down drunk. The biography leads its reader to the conclusion that by this point he was largely playing himself, for a broken down drunk and drug addict was what he had become. Bret summarizes the already well-documented scandals of Errol Flynn?s life: his three marriages and three marriage breakdowns, his trial and acquittal on statutory rape charges, and his well-known womanising and bar-room carousing. There are also summaries, without much in the way of analysis or conclusion, on the three great question marks over Errol Flynn?s life: that he was a Nazi spy, his famed physical abnormality, and that he was bi-sexual. The last, although the subject of much debate among Flynn scholars, such as they are, is clearly accepted by Bret as fact. He sets out a series of homosexual encounters and entrapments by Flynn from the pre-Hollywood days right until his death in 1959 aged 50. Bret has him having sex with men of all ages, in all lands, paid and unpaid, in a variety of ways, so much so that seemingly a film was not made and a star not famous in Hollywood in the 1930s and 1940s without a homosexual back-drop. His evidence for this ? as well as numerous heterosexual debauches ? are a series of quotes directly attributed to named figures. If they are true, it would be a quite remarkable exposé, as well as a quite remarkable piece of research to have tracked down these primary sources which have seemingly eluded all others who came before. But that is where the book is likely to disappoint. If the reader is looking for verifiable biography, this is not it. No sources are given for these quotations, and a number of errors make it questionable as history. Similarly, the book will disappoint those who are already interested in and know something of the life and career of Errol Flynn in that it adds nothing new to the canon. There is insufficient analysis to satisfy someone intrigued at the psychology of a self-centred, self-indulgent film star who lived a short but full life according to his own floating standards. What it might do is satisfy someone completely new to the life and times of Errol Flynn who will be content to read this and nothing further on the topic, and who will be left knowing the basics of a good story.

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