When Errol Flynn arrived in Hollywood, studio publicists told him to shut about his Aussie upbringing and pretend to be a British blueblood. My Wicked, Wicked Ways, while claiming to set the record straight on the Tasmanian Devil’s wild life and high times, is just as deceitful as Flynn’s original resume. Indeed some say it’s the greatest work of fiction this side of Lord Of The Rings.
Published a year after Flynn’s death, you won’t find the Nazi-sympathising, slave-trading Errol of Charles Higham’s biography here. In fact, as reported by The Baron, Flynn’s ways aren’t that wicked at all. This isn’t to say the book’s a dull whitewash. Quite the opposite, in fact, when you consider the yarns he spins about his time sailing the South Seas and the fact he doesn’t sidestep the infamous rape trial either.
Indeed, now that the Nazi stories have been discredited, there’s really only one unexplored area here; Flynn’s vicious anti-Semitism which - together with his passion for punch-ups - made him such a liability, Louis B Meyer used to send a little man after the star to ‘tidy up’.
Minus this information, My Wicked, Wicked Ways is a riotous account of a true Hollywood giant. With it comes an understanding that, while he was a huge star, Errol Flynn was an even bigger prick.