Errol Flynn's Brief Flirtation With Fidel Castro
Actor's Initial Support for Cuban Revolution Leader Later Regretted
Sep 6, 2009
One of the more unusual adventures in the already highly colorful life of Errol Flynn occurred near the end of it. At a time when he was long past the prime of his movie career, the actor met and maintained a brief association with Fidel Castro during and after the Cuban Revolution.
Flynn had a conflicted relationship with Cuba, and apparently later with Castro. Known for his legendary personal life, he initially went to the Caribbean island nation for recreation and subsequent film work. A commentary by Kevin Kusinitz in “The Weekly Standard” of February 26, 2008, “When Errol Met Fidel - Communism on the silver screen,” noted that going back to the 1930s the actor was known to have visited Cuba for the casinos, saloons, and other avenues of enjoyment.
Flynn Seeks Refuge From Pressures of Hollywood Existence in Cuba
In “Errol Flynn and Fidel Castro,” an article in the February 2006 issue of The Monthly, an Australian publication, author Shane Maloney wrote: “By 1958, Hollywood’s most notorious philanderer was washed up. An endless parade of box-office flops, lawsuits, unproven rape charges, drunken brawls, alimony disputes and prying tabloids sent him hunting for somewhere to ‘drown the pains of the world in a few daiquiris’. He found it, temporarily, in Cuba.”
With his love of Havana’s night life, many of his trips were during the era of Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista whose regime Flynn had supported. According to Bret Wood, writing in a Turner Classic Movies (TCM) Web site “Spotlight” profile of Flynn, the one-time Hollywood leading man co-owned a Havana movie theatre during the revolution, was intrigued by the unfolding events, and at some point changed his loyalties. “After charming his way into a reporting gig for the Hearst newspaper chain, Flynn played up El Commandante and his hombres alegres as freedom-fighters worthy of America's support,” Kusinitz wrote in “The Weekly Standard.”
Flynn’s Possible View of Castro as Real-Life Robin Hood Similar to Actor’s Film Persona
As Gaspar González speculated in “Cigar Aficionado” in 2007 in "Flynn's Last Fling": "Might Flynn not have seen in Castro the reflection of his own, younger swashbuckling self—a real-life Robin Hood, complete with his own band of merry men?” Numerous theories abound regarding Flynn’s possible motivations. At the very least, his jet setting and partying way of life were contrary to the revolution.
Thomas McNulty, in his 2004 biography “Errol Flynn: The Life and Career,” wrote: “Like most people, Flynn watched the headlines and when it was apparent that Castro would succeed in deposing Batista, Flynn decided he wanted in on the action. ‘I’ve always been a rebel,’ Flynn said. ‘I’m going to see if Castro is my kind of a rebel.’”
Flynn traveled to Cuba as a Hearst freelance correspondent, interviewed and followed Castro leading his guerrilla army, and also collaborated with independent producer Victor Pahlen to help make a documentary sympathetic to the revolution called “Cuban Story,” for which Flynn provided narration where at one point he cited the complicity of American tourists, as well as his own, in the poverty of Cuba. The film was first shown under its original title, “The Truth About Fidel Castro Revolution,” at a festival in Moscow in the early 1960s but went unseen until it was discovered in 2001 and released on DVD in 2002.
In a review of the DVD release, published May 14, 2002 on the Web site digitallyobsessed.com, Jon Danziger wrote: “There’s a found-object fascination to this film…[in] the extraordinary access that Flynn had, and the images that were captured of the Cuban revolution; many of them have long been unavailable, anywhere.”
Flynn Asked About Castro During 1959 Appearance on Canadian Television Program
In January 1959, Flynn, appearing as a guest on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation news program “Front Page Challenge,” said Castro had “more than superseded my every expectation.” When asked about reports on executions of Castro opponents, Flynn repeated Castro’s assurances to him that they were not being carried out summarily. But he added: “Now the other radical elements in his movement, I suppose, in the time of revolution you cannot control wild people.”
Flynn’s support for Castro ended at some point with his conclusion that the new leader was not greatly different than Batista, as a 2005 TCM program on him, “The Adventures of Errol Flynn, noted. He retracted his enthusiastic reports on Castro filed for American and Canadian newspapers during the fighting. Some saw his answers on the CBC program as a hint of disillusionment with what he had observed in Cuba.
Nonetheless, Flynn returned there in the spring of 1959 to make what proved to be his final screen effort, “Cuban Rebel Girls,” a low-budget—and critically reviled—docudrama on the revolution co-starring his then teenage girlfriend, Beverly Aadland, as an American ingénue swept up in the cause. The movie is thought to have used some of same footage shot for "Cuban Story." Opinion is split on whether it was an anti-Castro exploitation film, one last homage to the revolutionary spirit, or simply an attempted vehicle for Aadland.
In any event, Flynn did not live to see the results of the project when his years of hard living finally took their toll. On October 14, 1959, while the couple was on a trip to Vancouver, British Columbia, he suffered a heart attack and died at age 50.
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