Errol Flynn Movies

Want to know the best Errol Flynn movies?  How about the worst Errol Flynn movies?  Curious about Errol Flynn’s box office grosses or which Errol Flynn movie picked up the most Oscar® nominations? Need to know which Errol Flynn movie got the best reviews from critics and audiences? Well you have come to the right place.

Even though I consider myself a pretty knowledgeable movie buff, I knew very little about Errol Flynn before researching and writing this page. I basically knew two facts about Errol Flynn. One, he is the most famous Robin Hood of all-time and two, he made some pirate movies.

After a month of reading numerous books, checking out websites and watching a few documentaries on him, I am now much more familiar with the life and career of Errol Flynn. I would highly recommend checking out the Errol Flynn Blog for even more information on the life and times of Errol Flynn….just follow this link….The Errol Flynn Blog.

Errol Flynn (1909-1959) was born in Tasmania. As a child he used to play with a wooden sword that his parents told him had belonged to Fletcher Christian. Many times he would play on his grandfather’s boat…acting out Douglas Fairbanks pirate movies. This training would come in handy when he turned his attention to acting. He would appear in his first film when he was 24. By the time he was 26 he had already secured his first starring role in a big budget movie, Captain Blood. Captain Blood was a huge success and turned Flynn into a star. At 28 he turned into a superstar with his performance as Robin Hood in 1938’s The Adventures of Robin Hood.

From 1935 to 1950 Flynn was one of the most successful actors in Hollywood. However his “playboy lifestyle” began to catch up with him. Starting around 1950 his movie career started to stall as his off screen lifestyle started to impact his health. He would regularly smoke at least a pack of cigarettes a day and drank heavily. Problems with his liver and heart eventually led to a fatal heart attack in 1959.  Errol Flynn has 64 acting credits from 1933-1959. In the table below Ultimate Movie Rankings ranks 50 of his movies in 7 different sortable columns.  Television roles, cameos, and shorts were not included in the rankings.

Errol Flynn in 1938's The Adventures of Robin Hood
Errol Flynn in 1938’s The Adventures of Robin Hood

Errol Flynn Movies Ranked In Chronological Order With Ultimate Movie Rankings Score (1 to 5 UMR Tickets) *Best combo of box office, reviews and awards.

Errol Flynn Movies Can Be Ranked 6 Ways In This Table

The really cool thing about this table is that it is “user-sortable”. Rank the movies anyway you want.

  • Sort Errol Flynn movies by co-stars of her movies
  • Sort Errol Flynn movies by adjusted box office grosses using current movie ticket cost (in millions)
  • Sort Errol Flynn movies by adjusted worldwide box office grosses using current movie ticket cost (in millions)… **** If the domestic totals are the same as the worldwide totals…then worldwide totals are unknown
  • Sort Errol Flynn movies by how they were received by critics and audiences.  60% rating or higher should indicate a good movie.
  • Sort by how many Oscar® nominations and how many Oscar® wins each Errol Flynn movie received.
  • Sort Errol Flynn movies by Ultimate Movie Ranking (UMR) Score.  UMR Score puts box office, reviews and awards into a mathematical equation and gives each movie a score.
  • Blue link in Co-star column takes you to that star’s UMR movie page
Henry Daniell and Errol Flynn in 1940's The Sea Hawk
Henry Daniell and Errol Flynn in 1940’s The Sea Hawk

10 Possibly Interesting Facts About Errol Flynn

1. Errol Flynn was the first actor to play Fletcher Christian in a film that had sound. He played Christian in 1933’s The Wake of the Bounty…..later Clark Gable, Marlon Brando and Mel Gibson would play the same part.

2. Errol Flynn and the Perry Mason connection. One of his first Hollywood movies was The Case of the Curious Bride…which was one of the first ever Perry Mason movies. Flynn got to play the corpse. Later Flynn would co-star with Raymond Burr in Mara Maru….Burr would later go on to fame playing Perry Mason on the television series.

3. Errol Flynn and Olivia de Havilland were one of the screen’s most popular couples. They would appear in 9 movies together from 1935 to 1943. Olivia de Havilland is still very much alive as she approaches the century mark.

4. Errol Flynn was married 3 times in his life. His first marriage to Lila Damita produced a son named Sean. His second marriage to Nora Eddington produced two daughters named Deirdre and Rory. His final marriage to Patrice Wymore produced one daughter named Arnella.

5. His son Sean, followed in his dad’s footsteps and has 10 IMDB credits to his name. His most famous movie role was in The Son Of Captain Blood (1962). The Son of Captain Blood was a sequel to the movie that made Errol Flynn famous, Captain Blood(1935). Later Sean Flynn turned towards a career as a freelance photojournalist. Sadly, Sean Flynn went missing while on assignment in Cambodia in 1970.

6. The saying …”In Like Flynn” became popular when Flynn was tried for statutory rape in 1942 but was acquitted….during the very high profile case, comedians of the day started to use the saying and it caught on.

7. His drinking was legendary.…he would inject oranges with vodka and eat them during his breaks so no one would know he was drinking on the set….during a play in the late 1950s his assistant would stage alcohol throughout the set, so Flynn could drink while performing.

8. Errol Flynn and Alan Hale Sr. (one of my favorite character actors) appeared in 11 movies together. Alan Hale Sr. was the father of Alan Hale Jr….better known as The Skipper on Gilligan’s Island.

9. The movie My Favorite Year is based on Mel Brooks’ encounter with Flynn on a television show in the 1950s….in that movie Peter O’Toole played the Flynn character. Also Jude Law portrayed Errol Flynn in The Aviator.

10. Check out Errol Flynn’s career compared to current and classic actors.  Most 100 Million Dollar Movies of All-Time.

Steve’s Epic Errol Flynn You Tube Video

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143 thoughts on “Errol Flynn Movies”

  1. Errol Flynn appeared in 19 color movies. His first color movie was The Adventures of Robin Hood in 1938. He was also in Dodge City and The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex in 1939. He was in 8 color movies through 1949.

    Flynn was certainly the male star WB wanted to put in color films. Most of their stars were pretty much strangers to color prior to the fifties.

    Reply

    1. So Mr. Flynn comes in close to 40% to 60% color to black and white movies. I am sure the massive success of Flynn as Robin Hood is one of the main reasons WB put him in so many color movies. I will have to share this information at The Errol Flynn blog…..those Flynn fans have made this page would of my most popular pages.

      Reply

  2. Errol Flynn was an interesting character. His private life seemed to be one of continuous rebellion against any one or anything. His films were incredibly glamorous and in my view have stood the test of time especially Robin Hood.

    In between many of Flynns lady loves Olivia De Havilland seems to have been the one that got away. There was clearly an attraction but they never really got it together, probably because Olivia was actually interested in her career but Flynn was not interested in his own, although he enjoyed the money much of which was frittered away by excessive spending, alimony payments and bad investments.

    If you are interested in Olivia listen to the latest episode of my new podcast Classic Hollywood MTC which is all about her life and career. She’s quite a women.

    Classic Hollywood MTC can be found on ITunes, Stitcher and Tunein. It can also be found on the following RSS feed: http://classichollywoodmtc.libsyn.com/rss

    Other episodes cover Doris Day, Jeff Chandler, Sammy Davis Junior and Dorothy Dandridge. Listen and enjoy.

    Reply

    1. Hey Mrs. Tom Cruise. Thanks for a great comment on Errol Flynn. I agree that many of his movies have stood the test of time. I would also include The Sea Hawk, Captain Blood along with Robin Hood as ones that have really aged well. It was probably best that Olivia and Errol never got together off screen…..this way their chemistry remains perfect through their very last movie together. Thanks for the link….I will have to check it out. Thanks for the comment and the visit.

      Reply

  3. The Adventures of Robin Hood grossed nearly $600m worldwide! wow I’m flabbergasted, that’s more than Russell Crowe’s Robin Hood managed a few years ago, who said box office grosses for old movies wasn’t exciting or interesting? eh?

    I didn’t expect the not so great San Antonio to do so well at the box office, his most successful western? Who would have suspected?

    Reply

    1. STEVE:

      1 Today the market seems to have gone the other way at least for action films as if you look at some of Willis’ films in the comprehensive table Our Own Action Hero has provided you will see that overseas grosses often dwarf the domestic ones. That pattern is often the case in other genres as well.

      2 I should have said in my previous post I think that wheres Variety said Beatles were greatest Time went for Frankie as in its 100 Greatest people I seem to recall that Time had 10 people from each of a number of categories and Frankie was ranked above Mumbles, Charlie, Marilyn the Beatles and another 5 entertainers. The list included people from all walks of life and functions such as JFK, Margaret Thatcher, Muhammad Ali, Albert Einstein and even Rosa Parks because of her efforts in ending racial segregation on busses.

      3 Anyway as the Duke said in Rio Bravo if Time’s 10 entertainers and the others you now mention were all measured against each other “I sure wouldn’t like to live on the difference.”

      Reply

  4. 1 If there was ever a more athletic screen sight than Errol Flynn seemingly frolicking about a forest as Robin Hood it was probably only Johnny Weissmuller as Tarzan, so it’s a great pity that Errol’s lifestyle left him a largely spent force by the early 1950s whereas some of his great contemporaries such as Grant, Gable and Tracy remained cinematic forces throughout the fifties and even beyond.

    2 Flynn’s worldwide grosses to which we have now been treated courtesy of the Warner’s ledgers illustrate that his foreign revenues averaged out at about 40% of the total and that was excellent for those days where we have seen the likes of John Garfield attracting an overseas average earnings ratio as low as 23%

    3 Perhaps the larger gap between Flynn and Garfield outside the States demonstrates the greater feel-good appeal of Errol’s movies in contrast to the sometimes bleak albeit thoughtful themes of some of John’s movies.

    4 Errol’s father Theodore who was Professor of Biology at Tasmania University from 1911 later moved to Northern Ireland where he took the Zoology Chair at Queens University Belfast from 1931-1948. Queens University is about 15 mins from where I now live and one of my brothers studied there in the 1960s.

    Reply

    1. Hey peder….I agree with you 100%….there will never be another Flynn…..though in some ways…Orlando Bloom seems to have some things in common with Flynn……thanks for stopping by.

      Reply

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