Customer Reviews

My Wicked, Wicked Ways

5 star:		(31)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

For a generation or two of eager young men, he was the epitome of adventure and accomplishment, especially with the opposite sex, and Errol Flynn's autobiography doesn't disappoint. "My Wicked, Wicked Ways" is a remarkably candid and eloquent account of the star's life as he saw it that reads like you are there spending a besotted long evening in the company of the screen world's Tasmanian Devil.

Errol Flynn won little critical acclaim in his lifetime. His only Academy Award nomination, if you can call it that, was bestowed on Peter O'Toole for playing a thinly-disguised Flynn in the 1982 film "My Favorite Year," where O'Toole plays a character named Alan Swann with an affinity for cognac rather than vodka but otherwise is an obvious parallel for Flynn.

Was Alan Swann the real thing? Was Errol Flynn? "My Wicked, Wicked Ways" leaves room for doubt. He tells some improbably tall tales of fighting natives in New Guinea and sailing through hurricanes in the Caribbean. I think I believe the slapping story about Bette Davis, though, since I read it in a couple of other places. The post-mortem story about John Barrymore is legendary, too, and it's especially fascinating reading Flynn's account since he was the victim of one of Hollywood's most legendary heartless pranks, a punking that Ashton Kutcher would have blanched at.

Flynn was an odd screen star, as he makes clear, starting out a gold prospector on the other side of the Pacific from Hollywood with no thought of movie acting until he found himself virtually drafted by a director making a movie about the mutiny on the Bounty, in which young Flynn played Fletcher Christian.

Later, he recalls his time with another actor who also played Christian in a better-known production, Clark Gable: "If anyone should ask 'What do two actors talk about when they meet?' the answer is Themselves.'"

Yet Flynn isn't quite as full of himself as that. As "My Wicked, Wicked Ways" makes clear, the last thing he really cared about was his screen image. That's actually a negative for me reading the book; I hoped to read more about his on-screen work. Alas, he barely mentions "The Adventures Of Robin Hood," his greatest screen role, and less than that of other screen performances like George Armstrong Custer in "They Died With Their Boots On" and the title role in his breakout film, "Captain Blood."

Flynn claims here he hated his cinematic roles enough to contemplate suicide after a time faced with the repetitiveness of one swashbuckler after another. He found sanctuary in booze instead. If there's one message in "My Wicked, Wicked Ways," it was that Flynn was a serious person, with an interest in science and literature, though all that was drowned out in the public imagining by his attraction for the opposite sex.

This is actually a point of obvious, repetitive bitterness for Flynn or his ghostwriter, I suspect both: "A man who for a woman fits the bill is the one who pays the bill."

The poormouthing does grate after a while. Reading Flynn complain about divorce lawyers is like hearing Charles Manson whine about police officers. He brought it on himself, as he's the first to admit, unable to understand monogamy in the abstract or in practice. But he seems unwilling to make the connection between the life he led and the inevitable results.

Still, this is an engaging, intelligent book that at times reads like Joseph Conrad and at times like a deposition at the Los Angeles district attorney's office. Never less than entertaining, it never quite gels into something coherent. If nothing else, it shows Flynn nearing the end of his days still displaying real wit and self-awareness. "There's out, and then there's out," Alan Swann says. Errol Flynn seems far from out here, and indeed, he comes across more alive from reading this than many actors on the screen today.

By the time Errol Flynn got around to the task of putting his incredibly adventurous life on paper, booze, drugs and a life of dissipation had caught up with him. At 50, he was a wasted shadow of the once beautiful, vibrant movie idol who had captured a nation's imagination in such glorious screen epics as "Captain Blood" and "The Adventures of Robin Hood." No longer capable of the sustained concentration and commitment necessary to write an autobiography, Putnam and Sons assigned Flynn to a ghost writer by the name of Earl Conrad. Conrad spent many hours interviewing Flynn, and the result is "My Wicked, Wicked Ways." While the book was not written by Flynn, Conrad tried to duplicate the actor's unique way of expressing himself so that it was, in a way, spoken with Flynn's voice. The reader of "My Wicked, Wicked Ways" should be aware that a great deal of its contents has, since its publication, been discovered to be false. Flynn either made things up as he went along -- he was a notorious and gifted liar -- or he was confused thanks to the two quarts of vodka he tossed down every day of his life, and simply got some things wrong. Whatever the case may be, Errol Flynn did not tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth in "his" autobiography. However, "My Wicked, Wicked Ways" is still a rousing look at a rousing life...at one of the most visually stunning men of his or any other day...at a man who could seemingly generate screen magic without effort...at a man whose demons drove him, at the age of 50, into his grave with the body of an 85-year-old man. For those reasons it is worth reading.

l first read this book at 12.l have read it once a year ever since.It just has that way of making you feel alive.Adventure,action,fun and zest.This book is greatly under rated simply because it was written by the legendary hell-raiser himself.Do yourself a favour,buy this book,read it and feel the excitement rush from the pages.

I'm currently reading, and having a helluva great time enjoying, My Wicked, Wicked Ways: The Autobiography of Errol Flynn. Good heavens, what a read. Is anything he says true? Well, maybe. Probably, at least some of it. But that's not really the point, not for me.

It reads as if it's the transcript of a recording of a great raconteur, a teller of tall-tales whose favourite tale is his own life. You get the sense of a man who is totally self-absorbed but, somehow, has such a winning personality you love him for it.

I originally picked up the book because I was interested in finding a unique character I might make use of in a story, a model for a supporting player. Well, geez ... did I ever get my money's worth in Flynn. It's not simply a matter of a long, episodic tale but also one of style. The words, syntax ... everything that goes into creating a "voice" in writing, is here.

It's the breezy voice of a kid who never grew up.

For me, the incidents are less important than the personality that comes across (although the incidents are quite remarkable). Together, personality and incidents, it makes for an incredibly entertaining book.

Flynn is a character, in the truest sense. He's marvellous and if I had known him, I don't think I would have trusted him any further than I could throw him.

(By the way, it sounds as if the writing of My Wicked, Wicked Ways was a great story too, or so the book's introduction suggests.)

Here in the Rocky Mountain region, we used to call them "rounders" which meant men who were a little wild on the inside. Flynn was a rounder. No, I didn't care if the book was entirely, 100% true. Yes, I think 90% of what he said was true, and the embellishments are easily forgiven.

Flynn was the real deal, regardless of what anyone says.

People who criticize him for recounting his exploits overseas say less about Flynn and say more about their own, sheltered, inexperience of the real world.

If I had to make a judgment call, I would say that this is a book for men. If you are a young man in your 20's or 30's, still lusting for adventure on the inside, but forced to conform to the corporate world on the outside, you will discover a kindred spirit in dear Brother Errol.

This autobiographical account of the life of the flamboyant bon vivant, actor Errol Flynn makes the old addage, "Truth is stranger than fiction", an understatement. The life of this quintessential soldier of fortune as told in his own understated renderings of prose is a virtual buffet from which men of more restricted conventions can feast as they cruise vicariously upon Flynn's yacht through the steamy rivers of his life. Float on Flynn's buoyant charisma as you travel the world and taste the fruits of social non-convention and fearless "you-only-live-once'ness". A bold biography for every man who wants to free himself, if only vicariously, from the self-imposed bonds of correctness and indulge himself in the sensual delights of a world far removed from computers, gridlock, CNN, polyesther and other destroyers of life's sensuality. A bio for the woman who wants to indulge herself in a wet, creamy fantacy safely out of view of her feminists peers.

This life story offers the reader a rare glimpse of a character that was in reality more facsinating than that of those he portrayed on screen. A lady's man; a man's man. A pretty face that would risk broken noses and scars in defense of honor. An athlete of unusual ability in the manly art of boxing, the sophisticated genre of tennis, sailing, and womanizing; all without rival. Flynn was a Don Juan in every outpost he manned, be it among the primitives in the jungles of New Ginea or the jungles of New York and Holleywood. If you are hungry for a taste of life, real life, and want to journey ala vicarious licentiousness, take Flynn to bed with you. Smell the frangipani, hear the night birds, see the Southern Cross in the nocturnal skies of the South Pacific, get a look at the heavenly bodies of the Holleywood stars in positions you never expected to find them in. My Wicked, Wicked Ways; a tale of manly strength, perfection of form and face, intelligence and savoir faire unleashed upon an unsuspecting world of convention hungering for relief of itself. A perfect blend of humor, drama, adventure and pathos.

I loved this book. Errol was a great actor and a great adventure. This book takes us to far away lands and brings us to Hollywood. It is is a must read for anyone that enjoys reading travel journals and stories from Hollywood. It incorporates both into a very entertaining book!

It's too bad they didn't allow Errol Flynn to entitle his autobiography, "In Like Me", as he reportedly intended. That would have perfectly captured the wit, humor and unapologetic joie de vivre of this book and of the man himself.

This is an engrossing and very funny book, about a man who drank life to the lees and had a heck of a great time doing so. Although his Hollywood experiences are fascinating, they almost pale next to the other chapters of his life, from being a colonial nabob in New Guinea, to bumming and conning his way acrosss Asia and the South Seas, to the Spanish Civil War, his battles with his parents and ex-wives, his sailing, deep-sea diving, flying and his myriad amorous pursuits. The man was a true adventurer, in the pattern of some of his most famous swashbuckling roles, which is perhaps what made him such a great fit for those parts. However, several notes of bitterness run through his narrative. Flynn considered himself typecast in unchallenging action-movie roles, while he really wanted parts in which he could exhibit his acting skills. He was also resentful about the fact that his inveterate womanizing had rendered him a phallic symbol in the eyes of the public, when he was actually a well-read man with intellectual interests and literary ambitions. His regrets are understandable, although self-inflicted, but in the final tally life was very good to him.

On a side note, as a fan of the Flashman series of historical novels, it was interesting to me how their author- George MacDonald Fraser- has said that Errol Flynn would have made the perfect big screen Flashman. He said that Flynn fit the part like a glove, from the looks and style to the "shifty quality". In reading this autobiography, I was struck by the uncanny resemblance; in very many ways, Errol Flynn_was_Harry Flashman- in his charm and personality, from the exotic adventures to the hijinks and skirt-chasing. The man bought and sold slaves in New Guinea for crying out loud- how much more Flashie can one get? It made me wonder how much influence this book had on the later series of novels, because even in the literary voice of the books, Flashman seems to be an avatar of Flynn, from the saucy turn of phrase to the devious little asides giving advice to "young fellows" about women and BS-ing one's way through the world. Just an observation.

Flynn was a complex man, to be sure. His father was a world-renowned scientist, his mother a descendant of a Bounty mutineer. It somewhat seemed as if those two impulses were at the basis of a lifelong inner conflict. There was a contemplative, intellectual side of him that was at war with the call of the blood to seek out frontiers and cross them, to discover new experiences and embrace them. The man of adventure came out on top at an early age, but the other side of him never died. This is a first rate, extremely entertaining autobiography, which I highly recommend.

This book is the best of the autobiograghies. Flynns magnitude was only matched by a few stars. Although there are a few errors since Flynn was suffering from booze and drugs - this is a true memoir of a man, star who regretted his life and knew he was dying very soon. I personally spoke to the ghost rider Mr. Conrad about his time with Errol. It can be said of Errol Flynn-" He was what every boy prayed to become , but as a man regretted he never achieved".

Noone can put this book down. Its a must read.

Boy! Did this guy do it all! This guy lived more life in one lifetime than most people could only possibly do in a thousand lifetimes. The title is most appropriate, and once you start reading it you won't be able to put it down until you're done. One of the most memorable books I've ever read.