Olivia de Havilland and Errol Flynn

A hundred years after the birth of Errol Flynn, one of the most talked about romances from Hollywood’s Golden Age has provoked decades of speculation. What exactly did happen between matinee idols Errol Flynn and Olivia de Havilland when the camera’s stopped rolling?

In a rare interview with the ‘Royal Society of Chemistry’ (apparently investigating on-screen chemistry!) and to celebrate the 70th Anniversary of Gone With the Wind screen legend Miss de Havilland has been looking back and putting the record straight.

Olivia de Havilland starred with Flynn in his break through film Captain Blood in 1935. As screen newcomers, they came of age together in a series of eight films for Warner Brothers including The Charge of the Light Brigade in 1936 and the all-time classic Adventures of Robin Hood in 1938.

Miss De Havilland has repeatedly denied film historian Rudy Behlmer's claims that she became romantically involved with Flynn while making Robin Hood. But despite these denials, many suspected Olivia de Havilland and Errol Flynn did have an affair, not least because he was a notorious womaniser. Australian-born Flynn’s good looks and magnetic charm ensured his success with legions of women.

In his autobiography, My Wicked, Wicked Ways written just before his death in 1959 Flynn described his undying love for her and now she has admitted:

“We were very attracted to each other and yes we did fall in love. I believe that this is evident in the screen chemistry between us. But his circumstances at the time prevented the relationship going further. I have not talked about it a great deal, but the relationship was not consummated. Chemistry was there though. It was there.”

But:

"So much nonsense has been written. I am always being misquoted.... We were lovers together so often on the screen (eight times) that people could not accept that nothing had happened between us.”

She continues:

“I didn't reject him. You know, I was also very attracted to him. But I said that nothing could happen while he was still with Lili. (Flynn was married to Lili Damita an actress five years his senior when he first met Miss de Havilland). She was away at the time and he said that there was no longer anything much between them. I said that he had to resolve things with Lili first. But, you know, he never did. I think he was in deep thrall to her in some way. He did not leave her then and he never approached me in that way again. So nothing did ever happen between us."

Also onscreen, she was romanced by the likes of James Cagney, Leslie Howard, Charles Boyer, Henry Fonda, Montgomery Clift, Richard Burton and Robert Mitchum. In life, she was perhaps the great love in the turbulent career of John Huston. She was responsible for the decisive legal action that freed contract players from their seven-year sentences (with time added on for defiant behaviour).

Olivia de Havilland went on to win an Academy Award for Best Actress in To Each His Own in 1946 and The Heiress in 1949. She married novelist Marcus Goodrich in 1946 and had a son. She divorced Goodrich in 1953 and married Paris Match editor Piere Galante. Shortly after the birth of their daughter in 1979 they divorced.

The 93 year old actress, who has now lived in a four-storey house near the Bois de Boulogne in Paris for 56 years, has looked back on a career that began incredibly in 1935. She says, “I feel not happy, not contented-but something else. Just grateful for having lived and having done so many things that I wanted to do that have also had so much meaning for other people.”

After Errol Flynn’s overnight success in Captain Blood and Robin Hood he quickly became stereotyped in swashbuckling roles such as The Sea Hawk (1940) and The Adventures of Don Juan (1948). But by the 1950’s he had become a spent force due to heavy alcohol and drug abuse. He died of a heart attack in Vancouver on 14th October 1959.

“What I felt for Errol Flynn” Miss de Havilland says,” was not a trivial matter at all. I felt terribly attracted to him. And do you know, I still feel it. I still feel very close to him to this day."

What a truly remarkable lady.

Seaman Si by Perce Pearce

Information on Perce Pearce (1899-1955) is scarce. It is only quite recently that I have managed to piece together details of his career thanks to information from a couple of Disney websites. If you click on the Label ‘Perce Pearce’ you will see my recent posts about his life.

Pearce had worked for Walt Disney since 1935 and was sequence director on his first feature length animated cartoon Snow White and the Seven Dwarves in 1937. He was said to have been the ‘model’ for Doc. But according to some sources there was a love/hate relationship between Pearce and Disney.

After working at Burbank, Pearce was sent to England to produce the first Disney live-action movies Treasure Island (1950) The Story of Robin Hood (1952) The Sword and the Rose (1953) and Rob Roy the Highland Rogue (1953).

But before all this, Perce Pearce had worked as a cartoonist. He graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Chicago and his first published work was a series of cartoons for the Great Lakes Bulletin, a military newspaper serving the US Naval Training Centre at Great Lakes, Illinois.

Pearce’s popular cartoon series was named after its hero, Seaman Si The funniest "Gob" in the Navy and the humorous adventures of a Blue Jacket on the High Seas of Fun and Trouble. (See the images above.)

The series ran in the paper and was collected into a soft-cover edition in 1917, and reprinted in book form in 1918. At the same time, Pearce did editorial cartoons and political caricatures for his news agency, some of which appeared in the New York Evening Post, and were later included in a 1917 article in Cartoons Magazine called "Under the Big Dome" by Elisha Hanson (v. 11, no. 4, Apr. 1917).

In late 1919 Pearce left his original position to work directly for a Denver newspaper as a cartoonist. He took a room in the house of John Cory, who was also a cartoonist for the same paper, along with a third cartoonist, Charles Cahn.


During the 1920’s he moved to Hollywood where popular legend says he met another young cartoonist on a pier at Santa Monica. Yes you guessed it-his name was ......................Walt Disney!


If you have any more information on the life of Perce Pearce please get in touch at disneysrobin@googlemail.com

Joseph Ritson (1752-1803)

Any researcher or historian interested in the Robin Hood legend owes a great debt to Joseph Ritson (1752-1803). He was not the first scholar to collect earlier literary materials on the outlaw, but due to his phenomenal determination and critical enquiry, we have today what has become the classic ‘literary life’ of Robin Hood.

Joseph Ritson was born at Stockton on Tees in the County of Durham on the 2nd October 1752. He was the second of a family of nine children and the second son that survived of Joseph Ritson and his wife Jane Gibson. They were a respected yeoman family that held lands at Hackthorpe and Great Strickland.


Ritson was trained in conveyancing under a Mr Ralph Bradley, a distinguished conveyancer, and it was probably his suggestion that Ritson moved away from Stockton, to put his abilities to the test. In 1775 Ritson settled in London and was engaged to manage the conveyancing department of Masterman and Lloyds in Grays Inn at a salary of £150 a year. On the 20th of May 1789 Ritson was called to the bar.


Before he left Stockton he had published ‘Verses Addressed to the Ladies of Stockton’ (1772). His letters reveal a hunger for literary research, away from the monotony of chamber life, and show that at Grey’s Inn he became a reader of the antiquarian manuscripts at the British Museum. In October 1779 he spent many hours examining the literary treasures of the Bodleian Library in Oxford.


In July 1782 he passed a few weeks at Cambridge where he says, ‘I saw a great many curious books and made a great many important discoveries.’


Ritson was always determined to report exactly what he found and was highly critical of those at that time who took license and transposed or changed words in manuscripts to suit themselves. This led to him being given the derisory nick-name ‘the Mister Ritson.’

He attacked Thomas Warton's scholarship in Observations on Warton's History (1782) and fiercely disputed the originality of Bishop Percy's Reliques, which he described as ‘printed in an inaccurate and sophisticated manner’. He criticized Dr. Johnson, George Steevens, and Malone as editors of Shakespeare. He caused an outrage with his in literary circles.

He was an acrimonious but painstaking in his work, always eager to see the actual manuscript or old book when its contents were of particular interest to him. Ritson made good use of friends and acquaintances who resided near the libraries where his source material lay.


After ‘restless enquires,’ he had published his ‘Observations on the History of English Poetry’, and jocularly remarked that it would ‘turn the world upside down.’ His bold and often rude style of criticism including taunts made him many enemies, but this never seem to cause him any concern and most of his observations and corrections were adopted.


In 1792 Ritson’s ‘Ancient Songs from the time of King Henry the Third to the Revolution’ was published. During his extensive travels he was already collecting historical manuscripts, legendary songs and merriments from provincial printers so it was inevitable he would come into contact with the Robin Hood saga.


Considering the problems with transport and communication during this period, it is remarkable to consider that Ritson managed to gather together thirty three of the major Robin Hood texts. Francis J Child in his English and Scottish Ballads (1882-1898) managed only five more nearly a century later.


Sadly, Ritson was only able to see a fragment of the ballad ‘Robin Hood and the Monk’ or Robin Hood and Little John as he names it. It was inserted by the printer in the appendix of the second edition of his work in 1832.


1795 saw the first publication of Ritson’s “Robin Hood: A Collection Of all the Ancient Poems, Songs, And Ballads, Now Extant Relative To That Celebrated Outlaw: To Which Are Prefixed Historical Anecdotes Of His Life."


The book was dedicated to Sir Walter Scott, a regular correspondent and someone he greatly admired.


Ritson’s long introduction-over a hundred pages-but abbreviated in later editions-opens with a ‘life’ of Robin Hood:


“It will scarcely be expected that one should be able to offer authentic narrative of the life and transaction of this extraordinary personage. The times in which he lived, the mode of life he adopted, and the silence or loss of contemporary writers, are circumstances sufficiently favourable, indeed, to romance, but altogether inimical to historical truth. The reader must, therefore, be contented with such detail, however scanty or imperfect, as a zealous pursuit of the subject enables one to give: and which, though it may fail to satisfy, may possibly serve to amuse.”


This was the first comprehensive collection of references, ballads and opinions on Robin Hood. There was scarcely a reference in literature to the outlaw that he didn’t discover. But Ritson in his eagerness to assemble almost all the work of the earlier antiquaries and ballad mongers failed to discard any bogus material. Therefore we have in ‘the full paraphernalia of scholarship,’ what Professor Holt described as the ‘critical apparatus overwhelmed by the plethora of detail’.


Ritson concluded:


“Robin Hood was born at Locksley, in the county of Nottingham, in the reign of King Henry the Second, and about the year of Christ 1160. His extraction was noble, and his true name was Robin Fitzooth, which vulgar pronunction easily corrupted into Robin Hood. He is frequently styled, and commonly reputed to have been Earl of Huntingdon; a title to which in the latter part of his life, at least, he actually appears to have had some sort of pretension.”


On his death:


"At length the infirmities of old age increasing upon him a desirous to be relieved, in a fit of sickness, by being let blood, he applied for that purpose to the prioress of Kirkley’s nunnery in Yorkshire, his relation (women, and particularly religious woman, being in those times somewhat better skilled in surgery than the sex is at present), by whom he was treacherously suffered to bleed to death. This event happened on 18th November 1247, 31st year of King Henry III. If the date assigned to his birth is correct, about the 87th year of his age. He was interred under some trees at a short distance from the house; a stone being placed over his grave, with an inscription to his memory.”

In this one book, Ritson had brought together strands of Robin the yeoman and Robin the nobleman with a mish-mash of details from the unreliable ‘Sloane Life’, chronicle statements, alleged tombs and epitaphs. And although the book was hugely popular and everybody plundered it for ideas, references and narratives, it made very little immediate impact on the tradition.

But it was remarkably the first historical milestone in the long quest for Robin Hood.

Russell Crowe on Robin Hood

Joan Rice March 1952

Joan Rice in a rare publicity picture taken in March 1952 for the forthcoming release of Walt Disney’s Story of Robin Hood and his Merrie Men.

Interesting to see the Mickey Mouse figure in Robin Hood costume, ‘whispering’ in Joan’s ear. Although the ‘medieval' Mickey character might have been designed for the premier of the live-action film, he was probably left-over from the animated feature Mickey And The Beanstalk in 1947.

Robin Hood's Chair

Over the last few years interest in my Disney's Story of Robin Hood Facebook page has been growning and there are now 41 members. One new member, Brian Varaday, has recently sent me another example of the use of what has become known as Robin Hood's Chair.


Brian has very kindly sent me a still from the movie The Dark Avenger (1955) which not only starred Errol Flynn, but also involved many people that would have been familiar with the chair when it was first used in Walt Disney's Story of Robin Hood (1952). Peter Finch, Michael Hordern, Ewen Solon, Guy Green, Alex Bryce and Charles Beard.

The original chair used in Walt Disney's Story of Robin Hood (1952)

                                                                 

The chair used in TV's Adventures of Robin Hood (1955-1960)

                            

A few years ago I was given the complete box set of The Adventures of Robin Hood (1955-1960) on DVD. It was during watching one of the first episodes of this wonderful classic TV series that I noticed a familiar piece of furniture, in the Sheriff of Nottingham’s chamber. It was a distinctive, highly decorated chair, with a circular headrest and pineapple decorated top.

I was sure I had seen it before-It couldn’t be could it?

I immediately paused the DVD and quickly grabbed my illustrated book of Disney’s Story of Robin Hood - I was right, it was the same chair!

This extremely elaborate and colourful chair designed by Carmen Dillon and her art department in 1951 for Walt Disney’s Technicolor movie had found its way to Nettlefold Studios and the set of the groundbreaking black and white TV series starring Richard Greene in 1955.

As a young lad, these two versions of the Robin Hood were hugely influential and remain my two favourite interpretations of the legend. So you can imagine my surprise when I recently found, what I believe to be that very same chair, appearing thirty years later in another favourite of mine, HTV’s excellent Robin of Sherwood (1984-1986)!

The chair used in Robin of Sherwood (1984-1986)

I made a few enquires about this remarkable coincidence and received this message from a member of the Britmovie forum:

“I think it’s quite normal for props and costumes and even whole sets to be used in other films over the years, studios normally had their own prop stores and there are also several large independent prop hire companies around London that have been on the go for years. I remember visiting one in Acton many years ago while helping a friend find some props for a theatre production; it was like an Aladdin’s cave with the proprietor cheerfully pointing out what other famous plays some of the props had been used for in the past.”


And:

"I guess most of the props these days are located in private rental firms. In the old days before studios went four walls they contained huge prop departments on site. I know Pinewood had a massive prop dept so it’s not unusual for the same prop to pop up in many films and are now privately owned. I know when MGM Borehamwood closed they flogged a lot off in a huge auction and many went down the road to Elstree."

The chair used in Men of Sherwood (1954)

A regular blog visitor kindly sent me stills of the chairs from the Story of Robin Hood  also being used in Men of Sherwood Forest (1954). This was the first of a trilogy of Robin Hood features made by Hammer Film productions and also their first colour movie. Recently some critics have described it as the possibly the worst sound film about the outlaw ever made, although American actor Don Taylor gives a good performance as Robin Hood and Reginald Beckwith is an excellent Friar Tuck in this low budget romp.

So there we are, what I like to call ‘Robin Hood’s Chair’ has appeared in all three of my all-time favourite Robin Hood productions.

Men of Sherwood (1954)

The various chairs from the Story of Robin Hood used in Men of Sherwood.

If anybody reading this, knows if that chair and other movie props from Disney's Story of Robin Hood are still stored away somewhere, please get in touch. I think that chair would look just great in my front room!

Holiday

I will be laying down my quill for a couple of weeks as I am off on Holiday.

I would like to say a big thank you to Neil and Mike, my regular contributors, for their continued support.

If you enjoyed the film, have any information about the making of it, or are interested in the remarkable legend of Robin Hood, you are welcome to get in touch at disneysrobin@googlemail.com., in the Guest Book or in the Comments at the bottom of the page. It would be great to hear from you, so please do!

The Whistling Arrows are always looking for new members, so just click on the Label ‘The Whistling Arrows’ and answer the ten questions to become a unique member of this merry band.

Adele has been in touch to say her ‘Robin Hood’ gig with Wrens Song went well at the St. Louis Festival of Nations, which is great news. Well done Adele!

Finally, don’t forget that every post has a ‘Label’ (e.g. Robin Hood Ballads, Joan Rice, Sherwood Forest) so to see all the pages about a subject, just click on the particular ‘Label’ at the bottom of the page or in the right hand column.

See you soon.

Robyn and Gandelyn

Historians often slip into their various tomes on Robin Hood, the ‘ballad’ Robyn and Gandelyn and then try to dismiss it; by saying that ‘no way can the Robyn of the lyric be identified with the outlaw Robin Hood.’ But I feel it cannot be ruled out-but more on that later. In the meantime let’s look at this controversial and enigmatic tale.The unique manuscript dated from about 1450 was preserved in the Sloane MS 2593 and was first published by Joseph Ritson in 1790, and has been reprinted many times since. Francis. J. Child in his monumental English and Scottish Ballads (1858) (Vol. III, pp.12-13) pointed out that in regards to Robyn and Gandelyn, 'thought is free'. Child also goes on to quote Thomas Wright in his Songs and Carols, who remarks on the similarity of the name Gandelyn to Gamelyn in the tale assigned to the Cook in some manuscripts of the Canterbury Tales, and on the resemblance of the ‘Tale of Gamelyn’ to the Robin Hood story.
Walter Skeat (Oxford, 1893, p. ix) believed that the Robyn of this poem was Robin Hood, and that Gandeleyn is a mere corruption of Gamelyn from the Tale of Gamelyn. Douglas Gray, in his The Robin Hood Poems (1984) just described the ‘carol’ as ‘mysterious and evil’.

Below is a modern translation:

ROBYN AND GANDELYN

Robin lies in the greenwood wrapped in a shroud.

I heard the singing of a clerk,

All at the yonder wood's end,

Of good Robin and Gandelyn;

There was no other company.

Strong thieves those children were not,

But bowmen good and honorable;

They went to the woods to get some meat,

If God would send it to them.

All day went those children two,

And flesh they did not find,

Until it was again evening;

The children desired to go home.

Half a hundred of fat fallow deer

They came upon,

And all were fair and fat enough,

And blemishes there were none;

"By dear God," said good Robin,

"Of these we shall have one."

Robin bent his jolly bow,

Therein he set an arrow;

The fattest deer of all,

Its heart he cleft in two.

He had not flayed the deer,

Not half out of the hide,

When there came a shrewd arrow out of the west,

That felled Robin's pride.

Gandelyn looked east and west,

Be every side:

"Who has slain my master?

Who has done this deed?

I shall never go out of the greenwood

Till I see his sides bleed."

Gandelyn looked east and looked west,

And sought under the sun;

He saw a little boy

They call Wrennok of Donne.

A good bow in his hand,

A broad arrow therein,

And four and twenty good arrows,

Tied in a bundle:

"You beware, beware,

Gandelyn,

You shall have some of the same.

"Beware, beware, Gandelyn,

Of this you will get plenty.

""Ever one for another," said Gandelyn;

"Misfortune have he who should flee."

"Where shall our mark be?"Said Gandelyn.

"Each at the other's heart,"

Said Wrennok again.

"Who shall give the first shot?" Said Gandelyn:

"I shall give the one before."Said Wrennok again.

Wrennok shot a full good shot,

And he shot not too high;

Through the clothes of his breeches,

It touched neither thigh.

"Now you have given me one before,"

All thus to Wrennok he said,

"And through the might of our Lady

A better one I shall give you."

Gandelyn bent his good bow,

And set therein an arrow;

He shot through his green kirtle,

His heart he cleft in two.

"Now shall you never boast,

Wrennok,

At ale nor at wine,

That you have slain good Robin,

And his knave Gandelyn."

"Now shall you never boast,

Wrennok,

At wine nor at ale,

That you have slain good Robin,

And Gandelyn his servant."

Robin lies in the greenwood wrapped in a shroud.

No matter how many times I read this ballad- or carol as it sometimes called, I see something different in it. There is certainly an intoxicating mixture of elements. I love it. It takes us right back to our medieval past and possibly earlier. There are many who link it with the ancient ritual of hunting the Wren. Robert Graves (English and Scottish Ballads, 1957, pp. 149-50) thought that: 'Although this seems to be a ballad about Robin Hood the Archer, its real subject is the ‘New Year's hunting of the wren in vengeance of the robin murdered at midsummer'

The ‘Annual Wren Hunt’ is an ancient tradition wrapped in folk-lore and mythology, best described thus:

“At Yule, the Robin, symbolic of the waxing year, Kills the Wren, the bird symbolic of the waning year, A wren used to be sacrificed at midwinter solstice. It would be carried on a bed of holly and taken from house to house to ask for money. (To bury the wren) meaning to bury winter.”

So the wren was the symbol of the old year, a tradition that has possibly descended from Celtic mythology, killed by the robin, representing the new year. In Ireland, the men would hunt the wren on St. Stephen's Day, the day after Christmas. Christian legend said that the wren gave away the Christian martyr, St. Stephen as he hid in the furze from the Jews. This mythological association with treachery is a probable reason why in past times the bird was hunted by Wrenboys on St. Stephen's Day.

The boys would chase down the birds, beating them from bushes with long sticks and general carousing. Once the bird was dead, the boys would carry it around the town, singing. The song, of which there are many variations, asked for donations from the townspeople. Often, the young men gave a feather from the bird to patrons for good luck. The money was used to host a dance for the town, held that night. The Wren was then put on top of a pole which was decorated with ribbons, wreaths, and flowers and was the centre of the dance.

So in this haunting ritualistic piece I believe we can not only see glimpses of our ancient past, but also-from the shrouded ‘ good and honorable’ Robin, poaching deer in the forest with his ‘jolly bow’ -we also witness the evolution of the legend of the outlaw Robin Hood.

What do you think?

Russell Crowe - Too Merry, But Kind To Those In Need!

According to the press Russell Crowe has been making a little too ‘merry’ in the taverns near to where the forthcoming £200 million Robin Hood epic is being filmed. It seems that the film star has been banned from The Brickmakers pub in Windlesham, Surrey.

A local resident reported that Crowe offered money to be allowed to keep drinking after closing time, but he was refused. According to a duty manager he eventually left, but not before smashing a plate on the way out. Crowe was told never to return!

This apparently is not the only local pub the Hollywood star has been barred from-at least two other drinking establishments in the area have ‘outlawed’ the next Robin Hood!

But like the hero of legend, Russell Crowe has been extremely kind to the people in need and reports of a big charity donation have made the local newspapers. Julia Deane, the branch manager of the Cancer Research shop in Sunningdale, Berkshire, said Crowe had been drinking in a cafe next door then decided to come in and take a look around. He asked a volunteer how he could go about making a donation. She took him to the back of the store and he kindly gave the very generous sum of £1,000. But the volunteer hadn’t recognised the Hollywood star, so she asked what name she could put into the donation book. When he replied ‘Crowe’, she asked: ‘As in Russell Crowe?’

Then the penny dropped!

Locals say that Russell Crowe was furious after news of his charity donation was leaked to the press, but Cancer Research UK said his publicity agents had approved the gesture being made public.

To read more about Russell Crowe and the filming of the new blockbuster ‘Nottingham’ please click on the label Robin Hood Movies.