Errol Flynn Slept Here (GoodKnight) is a voyage into a dark past.

It documents the house on Mulholland Drive that was built by Errol Flynn and later bought by Rick Nelson, who lived there until he died. Although the house has since been demolished, in the late 1980s authors Robert Matzen and Michael Mazzone pored over the place as it lay derelict, taking hundreds of photos of what was left of Flynn’s estate.

Filling in their own efforts with archival photographs of Flynn at the house, interviews with some people who knew Flynn, as well as the sons of Rick Nelson, the authors have come up with a surprisingly palatable left- field biography of the Last Swashbuckler and the bad karma he left behind. What’s surprising about the house is how ordinary it was — in essence, a sprawling but fairly unprepossessing ranch house built on a premier mountain top. After Flynn bailed out of America in the mid-50s, the house was repossessed by his first wife, Lily Damita, for back alimony. (Damita lived in Palm Beach for the last 30-odd years of her life.)

And yes, the stories about a two-way mirror in the ceiling of the guest bedroom, through which Flynn could observe his guests going at it, is absolutely true — the book offers the photos to prove it. Not only that, but the authors discovered a peephole in the ladies’ bathroom. (Flynn was an authentic voluptuary, but he was also something of a sniggering little boy, and not always a charming one.) A fascinating, and thoroughly unexpected slice of cultural history.

— Scott Eyman, book editor of the Palm Beach Post and
author of Louis B. Mayer: Lion of Hollywood and
Print the Legend: The Life and Times of John Ford
in a review posted on the Palm Beach Post web site,
September 10, 2009