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Show The Newspaper Wednesday, November 26, 1980 Page 19 Keel WawrM by Hick Brough "WW nn Errol Flynn Was a Nazi? Star Images Crack and Shatter "Why not be a movie critic?" I told myself years ago after a disillusioning period in politics. "At least a movie hero won't let you down." Of course, that was before I found out Errol Flynn was a bisexual Nazi spy. Movie-star biographies in the last four or five years have concentrated on finding one sordid secret about the subject, and then rattling it around for two, three hundred hun-dred pages. Charles Laugh-ton Laugh-ton was a homosexual, one book discloses. Gary Cooper is revealed as a bed-hopping coeksman in a book by Hector Arce, who later penned a volume on Tyrone Power with the subtitle "A bisexual in the spotlight." It's become the "T and A" of the movie book world, and in some cases, it keeps more serious works off the market. mar-ket. I spoke a few years ago with a Salt Lake writer who had written a comprehensive biography of Peter Lorre. The story, as he saw it, largely revolved around Lorre's artistic descent, from a respected stage star in Europe, to a Hollywood actor playing the same little pop-eyed villain again and again. He almost had a deal to publish the book, but it fell through when he refused to pander to popular taste and play up the few years in Lorre's life when he was addicted to drugs. The Flynn book by Charles Higham is not subtle (the cover is a swastika superimposed super-imposed over the star's profile) , but it is not ordinary sensationalism. Higham is a respected biographer, and he backs up his case against Flynn with a long list of declassified documents. The Flynn case is a bit warmed over, granted. Let's just say, in brief, it shows that Flynn befriended, accommodated, ac-commodated, and abetted a known Nazi agent named Dr. Hermann Erben. Higham also says Flynn arranged for Warners studio to shoot one of his military-hero pictures "Dive Bomber" on location at Pearl Harbor in 1941. Flynn then arranged for the film, with its vital footage of Pearl, to be sent to the Japanese government. One doesn't know quite what to make of the Higham book. It's part political thriller, part standard biography, bio-graphy, and part scandal sheet. The prologue even begins with Higham's bizarre bi-zarre story of waking in his bed one stormy night to see Flynn's ghost grinning at him: "Well, old sport,' he seemed to say, 'so you've blown my cover.'" He also uses one story that fits quintessential Hollywood legend: Flynn, the young unknown actor, was feeling up the ladies at a party. Host Victor Jory, the well-known movie villain, brought him to heel, and Flynn challenged him to settle it out on the lawn. "I should tell you I boxed as a light heavyweight on the Irish Olympic Team," Flynn lied. Responded Jory, "Well get your ass out on the lawn because I'm British Columbia light heavyweight champ." Jory pounded Flynn into the ground, Higham wrote. In the movies, Flynn would have shot him out of the saddle and in fact, he did, in "Dodge City." But in real life, hero becomes heel; villain becomes blustery hero. The role-reversal appeals to us for some reason. While we idolize the stars on the huge screen, larger than life, we also love to read about their tortured love lives, their foibles, the way they destroyed themselves with drugs, booze or sex. The behind-the-scenes accounts ac-counts appeal to us on ,aIi Wrd by Jack Rash I was just hustling back from the Annual Retail Earthmovers Convention with my Kodak full of flash-photos of the Backhoe Queen posed in the hydraulic-mounted lift-bucket of a Loadex Capitan Hemp Plow when I intercepted a call from the TV 10 Take It or Leave It Newsprobe to my Affiliate Subeditor under contract to seriously ego-thwart ego-thwart any incoming drub calls. Normally Kip Witherly heads the crank list but he has recently developed an interesting hate-connection hate-connection with the City Hall Anti-Press Hack Non-Cooperation Commission as their star hack representative and victim of choice. They have him earmarked for resurrection at the Moscow, Pa. high school sports desk. "Kip," I said, "how's the Trophy Room?" Kip has this highly-garnished hate-suite situated next door to the film-lab-and pore-enlargement pore-enlargement studio down. ,a tt t , the. fV 10 Political Harrassment and Revenge HQ. The ex-mayor's vial of sweat crowns the TV 10 moose-hatchet as their Sweeping Indictment promo device and letterhead. "The ex-mayor fired a rancid Red Chief dumdum at my lapel last week so we've got it on the men's room wall. As a matter of fact I was wondering if you're up for an impromptu gouge-session in front of the ex-mayor's tax-redecorated villa. We've had our camouflage camou-flage van parked there for 24 hours waiting for him to walk his breed-hound shipped TWA expense-account lounge-class from Montevideo Monte-video in the last year of his manifold-corrupt administration." "What's your pre-attack premise?" "Round the clock police protection at the taxpayer's expense for ex-city officials with hate-inspired reputations. With his world-rude world-rude pugilistic tactics the ex-mavor has won a lot of hate-kill-maim fans and we like to be at the forefront with the TV 10 Up Close-and-Personal warp-heckle and informational blitz." "Why don't you take your complaint to the current mayor and city council?" "None of those guys has anything colorful, irreverent or rage-provoking to say. They just sit there in their string ties and refer you to the Book of Upheld City Statutes. No ratings. We need split newsteam blood and mace-club reasoning." "I just got a really nice blow-dry at Style Remote." "You print guys are so tragically laydown. No wonder Woodward and Bernstein never revealed Deep Throat to the crude light of TV rampant-speculation and ensuing vile-and-obnoxious public scorn. Meet me in front of the third burnout sapling." And sure enough along came the ex-mayor with his stone-kidney Brazilian jute-hound. "Sir," said Kip pulling up in a kamikazee hell-dive at the ex-mayor's knees three guerilla film-commandoes tumbling out of the van after him. "Sir we'd like to grill-and-mortify you for a moment if we could. If you'd just throw a reverse rage-fit for our cameras..." "Get out of here you Crum." "Sir, is it true you conspired to hallucinate federal census takers into a patently corruptive..." "Get out of here you Crum Creep." "Sir, are reports of your defection to the Central American heathen drug mass-distribution consortium..." Heaving stertorously , the ex-mayor hove an on-camera nerve-belch into the TV 10 Mobile-Fink Mobile-Fink Mini-Mike and broke a shoulder-mounted shoulder-mounted force-loaded TV 10 Goon Lens Tank Cam into three roughly equal pieces and threw them to the dog like living human freak-meat. "We appreciate your typical inspiring candor sir. I'm sure our viewers would like to know..." Frankly I couldn't see this shaping up to an indepth interview of any real moral worth and headed uptown for a blast of Paradise brandy. I was still at my desk when the evening news came on. "This is Kip Witherly," said Kip supine in the ex-mayor's dog yard, "for TV 10 Riot Control Central on the grassy strip in front of..." I told my Affiliate Subeditor to hold all calls. several counts. We're not surprised to read that Abbott and Costello often hated each other; their antagonistic relationship re-lationship was always hinted at on screen, and the biographies bio-graphies just confirm our suspicions. Our sense of irony is gratified to find that Joan Crawford, who was victimized by a bratty daughter in "Mildred Pierce." actually crucified her own children. We're titilated by Dick Darling's or Sue Sensual's kinky sex habits. Only occasionally are we brought to an intelligent, profound sense of loss. The Robert LaGuardia book on Montgomery Clift, which firmly p'aces his bisexuality within a clear picture of his personal and artistic torments, tor-ments, is perhaps the best of the scandal biographies. The stars images are tarnished in these books, and it is only afterward that one thinks about the incredible skill it took in the first place to establish those images. When critics said Gary Cooper was just playing himself, he said, "They don't know how hard it is to play me." But he wasn't playing himself at least not playing the Gary Cooper who received re-ceived much of his education in British schools. It's considered an insult to be a "star" rather than an "actor." Stars are not as "creative." But they have the gift, whether by skill or instinct, to relate to the collection of nuts, bolts, and metal called a camera, and to project on a screen an incandescent image of Virtue, Vir-tue, Love, or Bravery. The light they cast is so bright, it hypnotizes us, and we often wish someone would shatter it. Thus our fascination with the deflated myths of Flynn or Tyrone Power. In a few cases, a star can perform creative work with the screen persona he's molded; he can show the sides of his characters that are cruel, or weak, or wrong-headed. In "Red River" and "The Searchers," Search-ers," John Wayne worked with directors Howard Hawks and John Ford, respectively, and portrayed characters who literally were psychotic versions of the macho cowboy he always played. Flynn also showed the dark side of his carefree image; toward the end of his life, in films like "The Sun Also Rises," he portrayed dissolute, bitter drunks. And while those performances gave him only a beginning respectability as an actor, they were a fitting end to his legend. In Flynn's "Nazi connection" connec-tion" is true, the public may never forgive him. But they have long ago accepted his other excesses. If his candle burnt quickly, they figure, at least it was bright. J That's how we create such love-hate affairs with those people in the dark. CHRISTMAS CARDS Featuring you in your Old Time Photo Call or just stop by. 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