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Errol & Olivia:
Ego & Obsession in Golden Era Hollywood

Did they or didn’t they?

Mention the Golden Era Hollywood love team of Errol Flynn and Olivia de Havilland, and this is the inevitable first question, eagerly asked. Were they lovers offscreen, or weren’t they?

Cover of Errol & Olivia, the first-ever biography devoted to Errol Flynn and Olivia de Havilland.

Their story is dazzling, no matter that Flynn and de Havilland worked together 70 years ago in classics like Captain Blood, The Charge of the Light Brigade, Four’s a Crowd, Dodge City, The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex, and Santa Fe Trail. Celluloid preserves them forever in their physical prime; beautiful people in the hands of makeup artists, wardrobe experts, and lighting specialists. They rehearse each scene until an Academy Award-winning director pronounces that they have romanced perfectly, at which point they move to the next meticulously lit balcony for the next clinch and the next loving gaze. And in both The Adventures of Robin Hood and They Died with Their Boots On, he romanced her on beautiful balconies and she willingly gave in.

Errol & Olivia : Ego & Obsession in Golden Era Hollywood takes you into the lives, homes, and dressing rooms of these two great stars. Robert Matzen, co-author of Errol Flynn Slept Here, hosts the Warner Brothers Studio tour you wish you could get in Burbank. Matzen pieces together the real story of Flynn and de Havilland, on the soundstages and off; a story written in you-are-there style that contains unexpected twists and turns.

And what a story it is! Warner Brothers leading man Errol Flynn soars to fame as an action hero and riding his coattails is studio ingénue Olivia de Havilland...until she tires of playing the heroine and changes the course of her own career by desperately seeking a role in Gone With the Wind, the most anticipated epic in movie history. Studio bosses Jack Warner and Hal Wallis don’t believe she has the talent to pull it off, but she earns an Academy Award nomination and later goes on to earn two Best Actress Oscars. Focused, meticulous, high-strung control freak de Havilland will single-handedly break the stranglehold of studio moguls on Hollywood stars.

And then there’s Flynn, owner of … no Best Actor Oscars. Owner of … no ambition beyond making the next buck to support his lavish lifestyle. Around the time of The Adventures of Robin Hood he tells every reporter in earshot that he’s this close to chucking it all and returning to the South Seas. But his disdain for the craft is itself an act—Flynn shows remarkable natural talent when he steps into frame. Flynn is Flynn, with a personality as easy to figure out as a game of three-card monte. He is equal parts bad boy, intellectual, iconoclast, craftsman, and short-attention-spanned egomaniac.

As different as de Havilland and Flynn are, they are also startlingly similar. Each is prone to depression. Each has a dark side. Each seeks to control their relationship, all the while singing for the other a siren’s song.

Errol & Olivia: Ego & Obsession in Golden Era Hollywood examines the flesh-and-blood people behind the makeup. In the real world, no writers script their entrances and exits. No character dossiers provide their motivation. No convenient plot points steer these lovers to the right path. When they step off the soundstage, they are human beings with all the foibles, vices, and weaknesses of the rest of us. They smoke, they drink, and they fall into and out of bed with inappropriate people. Will they fall into bed with each other? That is left for the readers of Errol & Olivia to learn.

FADE OUT. FLASH BACK TO BURBANK CALIFORNIA, JUNE 1935…