The Sheila Variations

Dean Stockwell: 3 stories about Errol Flynn

Speaking of Errol Flynn ...

In 1950, Stockwell appeared in Kim - with Errol Flynn. Stockwell was about 12 or 13 when they filmed it - and nearing the end of his run as a child-actor. He is here, in this movie, on the brink of adolescence - and he's described how he, unlike other normal kids, YEARNED for acne and awkwardness - because that meant he wouldn't have to be a "child actor" anymore. He's great in Kim - it's an enormous part, he's in almost every scene - and the movie wouldn't work without him. It could have been an insufferable bore with the wrong kid in that part - but as it is, it's a ton of fun (to this day). Errol Flynn, naturally, was a huge star - and you just have to overlook the fact that he's supposed to be from Afghanistan, and just go with it. The rapport between Stockwell and Flynn seems quite genuine - Flynn's terrific with him, and you really believe that these two - one a kid, one a grown man - are buddies. It's fun to watch them together.

Stockwell, as always, has enough talent to go toe to toe with anybody - it has nothing to do with age, or even experience. It's like him practically stealing Anchors Aweigh away (ha) from Gene Kelly and Frank Sinatra - and also how he strolls away with Gentleman's Agreement - and Gregory Peck, in all of his ponderous self-righteousness, barely even notices that the kid is walking away with the picture. With one hand tied behind his back. Seriously, Stockwell is TINY in that film, a small child, and easily, easily, steals the whole thing. Just by listening, talking, and seeming like a real little person, as opposed to a plot device. So Stockwell had that THING. He never (to my eyes) seems "precocious" - meaning one of those little show-biz kids, who never takes off their tap shoes, and doesn't seem quite like a real child. Stockwell always just seems like a little boy, alive on screen. Natural, unselfconscious, confident - it's lovely to watch. You realize how rare it is when you see it.

Stockwell's dad had never really been around when he was a kid - and I believe his parents got divorced when he was quite little. He was raised by his mother, a single woman - and he basically grew up on the studio where he was under contract. A surreal life, to be sure.

Dick Moore (or "Dickie Moore") - wrote a book about what it was like for children actors of that era (he should know - he was a huge star as a youngun) - and the book is called Twinkle Twinkle Little Star (but don't have sex or take the car). I've had the book for years - since I was a teenager myself ... because I always kind of wished I had grown up in that era, in the heyday of child movie stars. Shirley Temple, Mickey Rooney, Margaret O'Brien, etc. etc. blah blah blah. The book is great, though, because Dickie Moore tracks down all of his old friends - all the kids who are now adults - and asks about their experiences. So some (like Rooney) were like, "It was delightful!" and some, like Stockwell, were like, "Yeah, uhm, it was NOT so delightful." I like the book because it's honest about the pressures those kids were under - and yet it's not a diatribe against it either. Everyone has a different story. Stockwell has been quite honest about how horrible his education was - how he basically had to teach himself how to read, as in - not just learn your lines - when he was in his 20s, because his education had been so spotty. He loved his teachers (all of these kids went to the studio school called The Little Red Schoolhouse - there are pictures in the book of Elizabeth Taylor and Roddy McDowall and Stockwell - sitting at their little desks, all smiling, as they read or write - but classes were held in the hour or so between takes, it was insane.) Anyway, Stockwell looks back fondly on those teachers - even though he never actually learned anything.

He says, in an interview in Twinkle Twinkle Little Star:

When we graduated from MGM, we had to do a magazine layout of a graduation party: Rusty Tamblyn, me, Claude Jarman, Jr., Elizabeth Taylor, and Jane Powell. They wanted a photo with all of us outside in front of the schoolhouse. Elizabeth was so happy she threw her books in the air, and Miss McDonald [the principal] came running out, screaming at the photographers, "Don't have her throw her books like that."

Mary McDonald intimidated me. She didn't have the most beautiful visage in the world. She didn't teach me shit. But in retrospect, I love her because I feel she was intent upon educating us. In some way - a way she didn't realize consciously - she sensed that she was dealing with kids that were out of place in time and ties and culture. I tend to revere her.

So now we're coming back to Errol Flynn - and what he meant to Dean Stockwell. Stockwell was a little child, an alien from the rest of boyhood - he had adult responsibilities, he was carrying movies, he made tons of money - and basically spent most of his time wishing he was playing football and going to a regular school. He had no father figure in his life, and was, for the most part, surrounded by women. His mother, his teachers - all of whom loved him, but ... You know. A boy needs a father.

In walks swashbuckling sex-crazed Errol Flynn.

I read some interview with Stockwell - it was recently - and he was asked, "So who taught you about sex?" He said, "I did a movie with Errol Flynn when I was 13. I got quite an education."

Many of these stories might be deemed inappropriate - and probably Mrs. Stockwell would have been horrified if she had known what Flynn was telling her young son. But that's just a matter of perception. From Stockwell's point of view, Errol Flynn was essential. Children actors are always a rare and odd entity ... easy to forget that they are, after all, just children. (A good friend of mine is a casting agent here in New York and the stories she tells of the kids who come in to audition ... and how horrible the parents can be ... She said she was coaching one little boy, he was about 4 or 5, and he had to take a waffle out of the toaster oven, take a bite, and say "Yum"! Something simple like that. My friend has two kids of her own, she loves kids and is very sympathetic to the young phenoms who come in and out of her office. This little boy sat down in the chair, legs dangling - and she told him what she wanted him to do. He thought a little bit, and then said, "I don't want to." They talked a bit - and he basically "didn't feel like it" that day ... He was only 4 so he couldn't give her any reasons - but DUH. He's 4. He shouldn't have to give a treatise about why he doesn't want to audition for a Lego My Eggo commercial. He wasn't a brat, but he was telling her he didn't want to do it. My friend brought him back outside and said to the mother, "He's not really in the mood for this today." And the mother was having NONE of it. "What? No! He has to go back in there and do what he's supposed to do!" My friend was gentle and firm. "No, I really don't think he wants to do it today. Okay?" Etc. The child is 4 years old - and not ready for all that responsiblity - and he said it as clearly as he could. Sadly, his mother was unwilling to deal with that fact - but my friend took it upon herself to at least LISTEN to the small child and get him off the hook. You should never have to do something you don't want to do. If you don't want to be an actor - then you don't have to be one!!) It's a tough line to walk - because naturally there are some little kids who want nothing more than to traipse into an audition room and say their lines and try to get a job. Parents/adults must LISTEN to their young ones. It's okay if a 4 year old doesn't 'feel like' auditioning for something. When Stockwell was 15, 16, his contract was up - and he told his mother he didn't feel like acting anymore and he wanted to go to college. She was surprised - but she also let him go. He had to choose his own way. He had been trapped in that profession long enough.

Stockwell was so good at what he did - that people forgot, sometimes, he was a child.

Stockwell talks about Errol Flynn and what it meant to Stockwell to work with him and be in his presence at this particular adolescent moment in his life:

I'm not saying I'd recommend him for the rest of society. It just so happened that at that time of my life - I was twelve or something - he was what he was: a truly profound, nonsuperficial sex symbol. He was the fucking male.

Funny (and, to me, moving) stories below.

Dean Stockwell:

Flynn was a maniac practical joker. I had a horror looming up, one of those crying scenes - a real toughy - with Paul Lukas. He's a dying lama. The scene is a master shot inside a tent in India and I'm there with the lama and Flynn comes through the tent flaps and gives me food for the lama in a rice bowl, and I'm supposed to be - as the character Kim - on the job and I can't let the lama eat maggots. So I check the bowl. Flynn has a line and leaves. Then I have this big crying scene with the lama.

So we rehearse and do a take. I'm talking to the lama and in comes Flynn and hands me the bowl, piled high with fresh camel dung, still steaming. Now I'm supposed to look at it and say, "Is this okay for the lama to eat?" And he's supposed to say, "Yes, of course. I promise it's good."

I looked at the mess and said my line and he backed out. I played the rest of the scene and it cost Flynn five hundred dollars. He had bet everyone on the crew that he would break me up.

haha - I love that Flynn assumed Stockwell would crack up ... but Dean Stockwell, already a seasoned professional, kept going. Ha!!

Dean Stockwell (this one makes me laugh!!):

I had a hell of a good time shooting that picture.

Errol Flynn came onto the set one morning a little blurry-eyed, and told me about picking up a girl the night before, a waitress. He really liked waitresses and working girls - secretaries.

So he took this waitress to his place. Next morning, he said, "You know what she did? As I'm fucking her, she said, 'Oh, fuck me, Errol Flynn! Fuck me, Errol Flynn!' I mean, that really tells you where it's at. 'Fuck me, Errol Flynn.' Not 'Fuck me, Errol.'"

hahahahaha

Inappropriate to tell this to a 13 year old boy? Yes.

But amusing and human and appreciated by said 13 year old boy? Hell yes. Stockwell had grown up in the hothouse atmosphere of the studio which had a vested interest in keeping the kids innocent (sometimes to a fault - most of the girls interviewed in Dick Moore's book - Jane Withers, Margaret O'Brien, many others - say that they hadn't even been warned about menstruation - they just randomly began bleeding one day and were like: AHHHH, WHAT IS HAPPENING TO ME!) Granted this was also the time ... but the studios were particularly intent on shielding their little child stars from the realities of adolescence.

Errol Flynn was like: FUCK THAT. (In more ways than one.)

Dean Stockwell:

Okay, so I'm going to play this little Indian kid in Rudyard Kipling's tale of Kim and Errol Flynn is going to play the other guy. While they're building the sets, I come onto the sound stage with my mother and the studio teacher, the perfect Norman Rockwell portrait of middle America - sixty-three years old, sweet, giving, a long-suffering spinster with the rimless glasses and high lace collar. She was terrific with her rosy cheeks. Didn't even have to blue her hair; she had her own natural white hair. She and my mother were flanking me.

Errol Flynn came up to me. Somebody said, "This is Dean Stockwell." Of course, he's bigger than me, and with this gleam in his eye, he looked down at me. He stuck out his hand and said, "Hi. Have you had your first fuck yet?"

There was a moment, it lasted an eternity, where both my mother and the teacher were going "Brrrr," like pigeons with a gnat up their ass, blushing and doing everything but bleeding on either side of me. Flynn is still staring at me, waiting for me to answer him, but I didn't know what the word meant. I'm just looking at this guy, thinking, I finally found a friend, a father.

Obviously, he knew I hadn't had my first fuck yet, or he figured that out right after he asked me. Still, he gave me one of the special lapel buttons he'd had made. It had beautiful hand-carved wings. In the center were three F's, interlocked. It was "Flynn's Flying Fucker" club, and the part that went into your lapel had a huge erect cock and balls to hold it in. I had it hidden in my top drawer for four years. My mother finally found it. She didn't tell me until two years after she threw it out.

Dean Stockwell:

"There were uglies and there were beauties. For me, Errol Flynn was the best... He was the ultimate father figure for me."

All Dean Stockwell stuff here

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