Luck of the Irish

Dominion, Volume 29, Issue 138, 6 March 1936, Page 16

Luck of the Irish

r | 1 ALK about the luck of the Irish! This young fellow Errol Flynn, who plays the title role in Warner Brothers’ “Captain Blood,” soon to be seen in New Zealand, seems to have been born with his full share of it. Furthermore. he knows how to make use of it. Here is a man who, six months ago, was one of the “Great Unknown.” That is, lie wasn't even a name to the general public, though he had done very well in one or two motion pictures made in England. Warner Bros, took him to Hollywood under contract,_ just as an experiment; for he is a strikingly handsome specimen, and one of the studio scouts pronounced him a promising actor.

What happened to him in Hollywood? Well, the first spectacular thing he did was to get married to Lili Damita, who bad been a fellow-passenger on the ship that took him to America. Not long after that, it was decided that “Captain Blood,” from the famous Rafael Sabatini romance of pirate days, was to be made as a Cosmopolitan special production for First National release. A dozen well-known actors were tested for the part—also young Mr. Flynn, not a well-known actor at all. And Mr. Flynn outshone them all in buccaneer costume and got the role.

He is as Irish as his name. He hails from the northern end of the Emerald Isle, where his father is a very distinguished professor of biology at Queen’s College, Belfast. And he not only has a romantic appearance, but he has lived romantically since boy-hood—pearl-iishing in Tahiti, prospecting for gold in New Guinea, operating a freight schooner in the South Sea Islands, acting in Australian movies, and doing all sorts of other interesting things. One of those films made at the antipodes dealt with the mutiny of tlie Bounty; and, by a strange coincidence, Errol Flynn is a direct descendant on his mother’s side of the very .Fletcher Christian who was so prominently involved in that dramatic story of real life.