Charles Higham, I hear, made the charge that Errol Flynn was not just a Nazi simp but a Nazi spy:
***** The New York Review of Books May 15, 1980
Review
In Like Flynn
By James Wolcott
Errol Flynn: The Untold Story by Charles Higham Doubleday, 370 pp., $12.95
Stamped across Errol Flynn's face on the cover of Errol Flynn: The Untold Story is a large red swastika. Inside, the author Charles Higham is visited by Flynn's ghost, who congratulates him for slashing through a curtain of lies. "You know what?" says Flynn's ghost in the prologue. "I don't give a God damn. Where I am, there are no politics, no sex, no death, no contraband, no theft, no greed-though I've got to admit there are one hell of a lot of Nazis." So even before the evidence has been spread upon the table, Errol Flynn is convicted of treason and sentenced to spend eternity swashbuckling in the company of Nazi ghouls....
<http://www.nybooks.com/articles/article-preview?article_id=7415> *****
I've read neither Higham's book nor the review above. Maybe you can get both and judge them for yourself.
I also found the following article:
***** Flynn diary goes under the hammer
Tuesday October 31, 2000
Errol Flynn's previously unpublished diary is to be auctioned along with other Flynn memorabilia in Los Angeles next month.
Written in pencil in 1937, when the 32-year-old actor made a mysterious visit to the front line of the Spanish Civil War, the diary has been put on sale by his daughter Dierdre.
The leather-bound diary, expected to fetch more than $6,000 (about £4,200), illustrates Flynn's reputation for an adventurous life. "Flynn comes off with apparent courage, style, humour, a lot like his screen persona, but somehow even more interesting, and compelling," writes auction house Christie's in the accompanying catalogue.
In one excerpt, the actor describes riding first class on a bullet-riddled train. "Everyone is armed - some with large knives plus revolvers, but all with revolvers. The train is stopped. A plane has been heard - we are crowded with young loyalists all armed and with oddest assortment of uniforms."
Flynn, who died of a heart attack in 1959, has always been the subject of controversy. He was reviled as a Nazi sympathiser and undercover agent in Charles Higham's 1980 biography Errol Flynn: The Untold Story, a book which also reported that Flynn was bisexual.
Yet his diary suggests an altogether different allegiance: revealing that the actor addressed a group of communists in Spain and was saluted by them. Furthermore, Flynn's last film project was a semi-documentary tribute to Fidel Castro which he also wrote, narrated and co-produced.
Deirdre Flynn is also offering nine autographed letters and one heavily inscribed photo of her father at the November 15 Christie's Film, Pop and Posters auction in Los Angeles.
<http://film.guardian.co.uk/News_Story/Exclusive/0,4029,390536,00.html> ***** -- Yoshie
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