Errol Flynn returned to the Garden of Allah in mid-1950s, two decades after making it his first home in Hollywood. Once a handsome rogue and movie idol, he was ravaged and bloated by drink, and his star power had been tarnished by scandal. During a cost-cutting frenzy in 1950, Warner Bros. had released him from his contract. He was twice-divorced, burdened with alimony and child support.
He sold his Mulholland estate and returned to the Garden, where he settled into a daily ritual of champagne by the pool and flirtations with young women. “My child, will you have a glass of champagne?” he’d ask, more often than not enticing the aspiring starlet into his villa for a midday romp.
In 1957, Flynn appeared on NBC’s game show The Big Surprise, winning $32,000. When Frank Erhart, the Garden’s owner, asked him why he didn’t go for the top prize, Flynn spilled the beans: “They guaranteed me the entire amount… half of it under the table. It was all fixed”.
That same year, Flynn began a scandalous affair with Beverly Aadland, a 15-year-old dancer he met on the Warner Bros. lot. Despite his prior statutory rape charges, Flynn pursued her. He called her “darling Woodsie,” and together they traveled through Jamaica, Africa, and Europe, living out a fantasy that blurred the line between performance and reality. Flynn tried to launch Beverly’s career, even pitching them as leads in Kubrick’s Lolita, roles that went to James Mason and Sue Lyon. He wrote and directed Cuban Rebel Girls (1959), casting Beverly as the lead. Shot in post-revolution Cuba, the film was timely but poorly made. It flopped, and Woodsie’s career never took off.
In October 1959, Flynn and Woodsie traveled to Vancouver to sell his yacht, the Zaca. Days later, he collapsed and died at a party. His body bore the toll of excess: heart disease, liver failure, and colon damage. He was 50.