Jeffrey Meyers - Inherited Risk: Errol and Sean Flynn in Hollywood and Vietnam.

On April 6, 1970 the war photographer Sean Flynnthe brave, charismatic son of Errol Flynnrode his motorcycle into a roadblock, was captured by the Vietcong and vanished forever into the jungle. When Errol died at the age of fifty in 1959, Sean was eighteen years old. He was brought up by his mother, the French actress Lili Damita, and rarely saw his father, whom Lili divorced when Sean was an infant. Errol became a remote, even mythical figure, yet his dynamic personality and notorious reputation had a great influence on Seans life. Like his father, Sean was handsome, charming, athletic, courageous and artistically talented. He inspired the friendship of men and the adoration of women. Sean also inherited his fathers love of risk, and in adult life he tried to free himself from Errols overpowering legacy by establishing his own heroic reputation.

Errol rebelled against the puritanism and hypocrisy of the 1930s, 40s and 50s. Sean, a privileged child of his generation, became part of the 60s hippy rebellion. He wore long hair, listened to rock music, was influenced by Eastern religion, smoked pot, took hallucinatory drugs and had a free-wheeling sex life. But Sean was not a mere hedonist. He constantly searched for extreme experiences and became part of an elite group of journalists who risked their lives to record the battles in Vietnam. For Sean, the greatest high was danger, the thrill of risk an end in itself.

Errol and Sean Flynn both had a daring, rebellious approach to life and epitomized reckless romanticism. Like Errol, Sean left home to travel the world and became an actor and journalist. Sean went to New Guinea because Errol had lived there. Like their mutinous Bounty ancestor Edward Young with his Tahitian girl and Errol with his teenage wood nymph in Jamaica, Sean planned to flee civilization and establish an idyllic life on the tropical island of Bali. Sean inherited Errols belief in his own invincibility and escalated the level of risk. The young Errol was accused of murder; Sean actually killed a man in combat.

Their family drama concerns image-making and moral corruption in Hollywood and Vietnam. It portrays the overwhelming urge to self-destruction by a father who didnt give a damn about anything, including himself, and a son who felt compelled to follow in his footsteps. In a revealing autobiographical moment in The Dawn Patrol (1938), one of his better films, the character played by Errol observes: My father, a professor of biology at Queens University, says: Man is a savage animal who, to relieve his nervous tension, tries to destroy himself. Being Errols son propelled Sean toward his fate, and his final, gallant, suicidal gesture carried the Flynn tradition to its inevitable conclusion.

The unusual circumstances of Seans birth and the mutual hatred of his parents complicated the troubled relations of father and son. Errols best moments with Lili Damita were over before they married. At thirty-nine, fearful that time was running out, she tricked him into getting her pregnant after theyd been estranged for many years and burdened him with the responsibility of an unwanted child. Insisting that he should pay for his pleasures, she exclaimed: Fleen, you think youve screwed every dame in Hollywood, but now Ive screwed you, my friend. You will have a child! Lilis deception and Seans close ties to a woman Errol hated made the father resent his son. Lilistill in love with Errol and always very jealousremained bitterly vindictive after hed rejected her and shattered her ego. She devoted many years of her life to pursuing him through the divorce courts and trying to destroy him.

Wanting to protect her son from the malign influence of his father and the movie world, Lili moved across the country to Palm Beach, Florida, when Sean was still a baby. She called Errol despicable and, by frequently changing her mind and canceling the arrangements, made it difficult for him to visit the child. Though Errol put pressure on her by withholding money, she made sure that her impressionable son saw very little of his father when he was growing up.

Sean was deeply attached to Lili, who became a powerful presence in his life. She provided a solid bourgeois background: taught him polite behavior, gave him a good education and supplied him with money. But Sean also had a lot of Errol in him. Despite Lilis efforts, he naturally identified with and admired his godlike father, who seemed all the more appealing during Seans visits to Errols glamorous surroundings. They went to night clubs in New York and sailed in the Mediterranean and the Caribbean. Like most boys, Sean saw himself as a replica of his father. But Errol had been demonized in the eyes of his mother and the press.

Errol was never able to establish with Sean the same strong bond he had with his own father. A paradoxically indifferent yet devoted parent, he was incapable of looking after Sean, but saddened to lose him. When estranged from his second wife, Nora Eddington, he struggled for the possession of his younger daughter, Rory. He told Nora: You cant take my two kids away from me. You must leave me one. Lili took Sean away. I wont have it happen again. When Sean was ten Errol invited him to the set of Kim and, as if he were acting in the movie, dressed him up as a little Indian boy, complete with dark skin, turban and a little Errol-like mustache. Fascinated by guns and playing with a pistol in a desk drawer, the young Sean once fired an accidental shot at Errol. As a teenager, Sean spent a month or two of his summer holidays aboard Flynns yacht, the Zaca . After a typical brawl on the boat, Sean suddenly appeared from below with a revolver and reassured Errol: You didnt have a thing to worry about, Pop. I had them covered all the time.

The sophisticated and worldly Errol taught Sean in his own way. He gave him boxes of condoms and, as a rite of passage, took him to classy brothels in France and Italy. The actor George Hamilton, Seans school friend, noted how the good manners hed learned from Lili merged with Errols eagerness to give him sexual experience. Hamilton once met father and son at Errols favorite New York nightclub, El Morocco. Sean was sitting with a hooker his dad had picked up for him and was always the perfect gentleman, even with a whore.

When Errol introduced him to his teenage girlfriend Beverly Aadland, only a year younger than his son, Sean thought Beverly was supposed to be his date. When Beverly provoked a wrestling match between father and son, Errol was keen to show off. He pinned Sean to the floor, but as Sean tried to throw him off he knocked Errols weak left knee out of commission. Errol loved to tease Sean about Beverly. He laughed and scolded: Dont talk that way to your mother! Dont look so amazed, son. This little girl may well be your mother some day!

Despite the glamorous surroundings, Sean saw his father in the bad years. Inwardly torn, profoundly unhappy about his career and fearing he was a total failure, Errol drank heavily, took drugs and became a physical wreck. He tried to be a groovy dad, but didnt want Sean to follow in his footsteps or become stained by his notorious public image. He admitted that he wasnt much of a parent and hardly knew his children. But when Sean became old enough to be a good companion, Errolthen living in Europe and Jamaicatried to spend as much time with him as he could. He rather optimistically concluded that Sean and I were destined to become close pals and he now looks like me but better. Alluding to his unhappy relations with Lili, he added: Out of this impossible snarl of two volatile people there came something good anyway.