Errol Flynn Biography

Fast Facts

• Father was the noted marine biologist Theodore Flynn
• Purchased a boat in 1930 and sailed to New Guinea, where he ran a tobacco plantation
• Began his acting career in the docudrama In the Wake of the Bounty (1933), playing the role of Fletcher Christian
• First major film role was in the Warner Brothers film Captain Blood (1935), replacing Robert Donat
• Unable to serve in World War II due to several physical ailments
• Charged with the statutory rape of two teenaged girls in 1942; he was acquitted, but the incident coined the phrase "In Like Flynn" to describe his legendary womanizing
• Memoir, titled My Wicked, Wicked Ways, was published posthumously
• He allegedly wanted to call the book In Like Me, but the publishers rejected that title
• His son, Sean, was a photojournalist working in Cambodia when he disappeared in April 1970
• He was never found and was declared legally dead in 1984