The Not Enough Time Reading List - "Aaronsohn's Maps"

"Aaronsohn's Maps: The Untold Story of the Man Who Might Have Created Peace in the Middle East" by Patricia Goldstone.

This might take a while. And a few entries.

OK - I'll cut to the chase. Aaron Aaronsohn died in a plane crash from Britain en route to the to the post-WWI Paris talks in 1919. Goldstone does a lot more than hint - in fact, she pretty much slaps you in the face - with the outrageous theory that Zionist leader Chaim Weizmann and the British Government conspired to assassinate Aaronsohn by having a airborne British military assassination team kill Aaronsohn and his British military pilot (a known hero for having recently beat the London-Paris speed record with T.E Lawrence in tow). By somehow shooting the pilot mid-flight, from another 1918-era biplane, without a machine gun (which might have attracted attention, since the whole drama played out directly over a an English coastal sea town).

Goldstone's theory apparently, is that Chaim Weizmann convinced the British government to assassinate Aaronsohn (her proof - Felix Frankfurter's comment years later that there was "blood" on Aaronsohn's death somehow). So they arranged to have Aaronsohn go up in a plane. With a well known British military hero as his pilot. And convinced other British military pilots to kill him. By shooting him not with a machine gun. No, but by somehow shooting him with a pistol or rifle shot from a second 1918s-era biplane flying at 75 MPH over the coast of England. Puuuhhhllease! Why not just kill Aaronsohn in a car crash? Or even yet, don't let him fly to Paris by saying the weather is bad or there are no pilots available. And don't even get me started on Goldstone's "cover-up" of the pilot's death. I could go on and on. And on. And on. And on.

Before I go for today. Early on, a great resource for the early history of Zionism and the nascent Israeli state. Fairly good factually, though many Jews and Israelis have pointed out that Goldstone is pretty flippant with her history and understanding of historical Judaism.

Oh, by the way. Everything in the Middle East between Israel and the Arabs could have been cured by Aaronsohn's ideas on shared water rights and river usage. That Arabs hate Jews, and Jews in the Middle East haven't historically make politics any easier for themselves - not a factor. Yeah.

OK. To be continued later. I'm all verklumppt. Talk amongst yourselves.

Flynnfest On Overdrive - The Big Boodle

It took me four hours to watch this 83 minute movie. Sorry, but it really is that bad. Errol looks bloated and tired. Released in 1957, he had less than two years to live. There can only be two reasons why Errol agreed to make this film. First, he needed the cash. Second, it was an excuse for him to hang out in his beloved Cuba.

Cuba, it turns out, is the actual star of the movie. The B&W footage of 1957, pre-revolution Havana is better stuff than any documentary footage you'd run across - especially the extensive scenes filmed at El Morro fortress. Irony indeed. One of the lines in The Big Boodle, related to Errol's character, Ned Sherwood, relying on the police for protection from criminals,is "We have a good government now." That "good government", of course, being the Batista regime that Errol, at the time, loved more for it's casinos and nightlife than for it's social programs. Two years later, in The Truth About The Fidel Castro Revolution, Errol was unapologetic when Castro's revolutionaries lined up Batista loyalists against the walls at El Morro and executed them by firing squad. Not much of a Velvet Revolution there, eh?

OK, back to the movie. Pretty bad. A meandering, and frankly pretty uninteresting, story line about an innocent schmo croupier (Errol) in a Havana casino who innocently get wrapped up in a counterfeiting scam. Ok, should I go into a further explanation? Well, no. This movie isn't worth it. One of Errol's last films, this movie was just so emblematic of his decline. On the road to a sad end.

How silly was this movie? There are two female leads, both playing Cuban/Latin beauties. Problem - the two actresses are Gia Scala and Rossana Rory, who were both Italian. For some reason, Rosanna Rory got top billing over Errol, though he's obviously the lead and has 95% of the screen time. Could have been worse, though. At least Rory decided to retire from movies in 1962, five years after The Big Boodle (after a few minor roles in mainly Italian movies). Gia Scala, on the other hand, didn't end her career quite so nicely. After her breakout role in The Guns of Navarone a few years later, her career collapsed when a series of personal problems led her to a life of chronic alcoholism, resulting in her being fired from the studio, a bitter divorce, a series of nasty, public legal problems. She hadn't had any acting roles in over three years (and even then, bit parts in TV shows) when her life ended in suicide by pills and alcohol in 1972. Very sad.

Co-star Pedro Armendariz also killed himself in 1963 after being diagnosed with cancer. He was one of the 91 people thought to have been exposed to nuclear radiation while making the movie The Conquerer with John Wayne.

You could say that Errol killed himself as well. In a Dylan Thomas sort of way. The end was near.

Flynnfest #35 - Mara Maru

Raymond Burr was gay? Who knew?

While working with Errol Flynn in their only film together, Flynn told Raymond Burr that if he died with ten dollars in his pocket he hadn't done a good job. This inspired Burr to always share his wealth, and he spent the rest of giving away vast amounts of money to charity.

Mara Maru also starred Ruth Roman, a pretty actress whose career never really took off. Too bad. The movie actually isn't too bad, all things considered. This was Flynn's last Hollywood movie for Warner Brothers before heading off to do films in Europe and Cuba for the next six years. At this point in his career, Flynn's relationship with Jack Warner was so caustic that it seemed as if Warner was practically going out of his way to give Flynn lousy roles in second-rate pictures. In Mara Maru, the story actually isn't too bad, though it's typical of the cheaper, "second movie of the twin bill" of the early 1950s (Mara Maru was released in 1952).

As for Flynn's nasty relationship with the studio head, here's an anecdote:

Every day during filming Errol Flynn would drive on the Warner Bros. lot wearing a windbreaker with no shirt, slacks with no underwear and shoes with no socks. The wardrobe people would provide him with a shirt, underwear and socks, and at the end of the day's filming he would wear them home. The next day he would arrive on the lot, again with no shirt, underwear or socks, and again he would be supplied those items by wardrobe. Co-star 'Paul Picerni (I)' noticed it after several days, and asked Flynn what he did with all the shirts, socks and underwear he'd accumulated after several weeks of filming. Flynn replied that he threw them in a closet when he got home. Picerni asked, "But what do you do with them?" Flynn replied, "Nothing. It just gives me pleasure to steal from Jack Warner."

There's also an urban legend that the film bombed in Japan because the name Mara Maru translates into Japanese as "shit boat", but I doubt that's really true - although "mara" is one expression in Japanese for "penis" apparently (I joke Errol surely would have loved if he'd known it).

Errol looks a little worn around the edges in Mara Maru, showing some wrinkles and not exactly looking too fit and trim. The film is B-movie stuff, for certain. But not too bad, and certainly not deserving the bad reviews it generally received from critics. Not all that bad, but it could of been so much better.

All Hail ScorpioTV!!!

ScorpioTV, a Canadian purveyor of rare film DVDs, came through with the Errol Flynn motherload.Here's what I got in the mail yesterday:

1. The Adventures of Captain Fabian
2. Cuban Rebel Girls (perhaps thew worst movie ever made)
3. Northern Pursuit
4. Uncertain Glory
5. The Dark Avenger
6. Never Say Goodbye
7. Escape Me Never
8. Edge of Darkness (one of my favorites)
9. Too Much, Too Soon
10. Istanbul
11. The Perfect Specimen
12. Cry Wolf
13. The Big Boodle
14. That Forsythe Woman
15. Mara Maru (rare, and very hard to find)

With these 15 Errol movies to watch, and Objective Burma on hand, I will hit 50 movies knocked down in Flynnfest 2010. That will give me a good chunk of the year to knock out the rest, some of which are pretty easy to find, while others are probably impossible. The remaining Errol movies include:

1. I Adore You (thought to be a lost movie, with no prints in existence)
2. Murder at Monte Carlo (another lost movie)
3. Don't Bet on Blondes (kinda hard to find, but out there somewhere)
4. Green Light (ditto)
5. The Dawn Patrol (an easy one, seen it many times)
6. Dive Bomber (easy)
7. Kim (easy)
8. Hello God (probably lost, though it's rumored a single 35mm print exists in Europe somethere)
9. The Story of William Tell (never finished, with about 30 minutes filmed)
10. The Sun Also Rises (should be rather easy, but it's been hard to find)
11. Cruise of the Zaca (possible)
12. Deep Sea Fishing (possible)
13. Always Together (cameo role, but don't know if it's available)

Half of these are either easy to find or at least possible. The other half? Who knows?

nce

#34 - Footsteps In The Dark

Footsteps In The Dark. Kind of a mixed bag of tricks. Made in 1941, the movie was an attempt by Warners to diversify Errol in films that were less swashbuckly (Is that a word? Hmmm. No. It's not) and, apparently, cash in on the formula and success of the Thin Man series. Overall, not too bad. Errol did have a real flare for comedy, and there's a good supporting cast here, including William Bellamy, Alan Hale, William Frawley, and a en exceptionally pretty Brenda Marshall. Had the movie had better success, it's evident from the last scene in the movie that the studia planned a series of "Nick and Nora"-type movies. Unfortunately the script is pretty wooden, and the story seems forced and pretty artificial. Flynn's fine grasp of humor is lost in a lot of pretty humorless scenes. Oh well. Anyway, #34 is down and I'be got a stack of movies to watch.

Flynnfest Renewed - Crossed Swords

Released in 1954 in Italy as Il Maestro di Don Giovanni (released in the U.S. as Crossed Swords), this movie is a mixed bag of tricks. It was written and directed by Milton Klims, a talented writer who wrote the screenplays for Green Light and The Sisters. The story is a silly Adventures of Don Juan knockoff based in Italy, but done thoroughly farce-heavy and tongue-in-cheek. You get the idea that everyone involved, and mostly Flynn, had a fun time making it. Downside - the movie was filmed in a version of Pathe Color, an inferior color film method that was decades obsolete by the mid-1950s, and not used at all in the U.S. by then. For this Italian-made movie, the actors (all Italian, except Errol) spoke their lines in heavily accented English; then the entire film was then dubbbed with clearer-speaking native English speakers (all except Errol, and possibly Gina Lollobrigida, who spoke English fairly well). Overall, though, the quality of the dubbing is really quite poor, as were most other production values for the movie, with the exception of the fantastic castle and Italian countryside scenery, unfortunately squandered by the poor color film technique (what a stunning movie visually it would have been if filmed in Technicolor!).

Errol shows some age, and at times looks a bit haggard and tired - but certainly looks more spry and healthier than some of his other 50s movies. He seems to have really enjoyed making it. And the final fencing scene at the end of the movie shows Errol displaying both excellent fencing form and not-too-shabby physical prowess. And, I suppose if you're starring in a movie next to Gina Lollobrigida, what's not to enjoy?

Finally, history of the movie. This was one of three movies Errol made as part of his own Errol Flynn Productions company in Europe, the other two being the finished but not released Hello God, and the unfinished Story of William Tell. Flynn always did well in Europe, and the movie made some money there. Flynn complained that United Artists didn't release it adequately in the U.S. so it failed to make money here. I suppose you can see UA's point, though - the Pathe Color was far too outmoded for American audiences by the 1950s. Anyway, when Errol died, the rights to the movies made by Errol Flynn Productions reverted to wife Patrice Wymore. Roddy McDowell bought all the rights to William Tell, and donated the footage to Boston University upon his death, with the strange stipulation that it could never be shown commercially. The story behind Hello God is even more strange, though it's rumored that at least one 35mm print exists in Europe somewhere. As for Crossed Swords, it was considered by most devotees to be the "Holy Grail" of rare Errol Flynn movies (that reasonably still exist). No VHS copy existed, nor was there a DVD. 35mm prints are exceptionally rare. Someone found a rare, complete copy of the 35mm English version (who? who knows? who cares?) and transferred it to DVD (I don't think an Italian version has ever been located). It is available for purchase online, which is where I got it, for a very reasonably cost, no less. The quality of the original 35mm print was pretty scratchy and beat up, and it's hard to say if the heavy sepia toning of the DVD image is a result of Pathe Color, or the decaying 35mm film. You'd need a second 35mm copy to figure that out, and it's unclear if an available one (other than one possibly possessed and not distributed by Patrice Wymore) exists.

Anyway, this is #33 in my 2010 Errol Flynn Filmfest, and I've located a source online for rare DVDs, so I've got another 15 en route (all rare, and impossible to get through places like TMC or Amazon). And I'm still holding off on Objective Burma.