The Big Love

The Big Love is a book chronicling the affair between Errol Flynn and Beverly Aadland, as told to Tedd Thomey by Beverly’s mother, Mrs. Florence Aadland. I believe that Thomey faithfully, and without authorial intrusion, presents us with the story that Mrs. Aadland wanted the world to know. But a good bit of reading-between-the-lines is required. We all shape the truth to make it palatable to ourselves and to others. This is especially true if one is placed in a defensive mode — as is the case here, since Mrs. Aadland’s daughter was fifteen and Flynn was forty-eight when their two year affair began.

I sensed that much of the shaping of facts is due to self-deception on the part of Mrs. Aadland. I’m going to give my take on the matter, what I perceive going on behind her words. I’ll look at the three participants, beginning with the one known to the public.

Errol Flynn

At forty-eight he was no longer the handsome, sexy swashbuckler. Photos of him in his final years (he died at age fifty) show him looking old, bloated. And worn out. Worn out from years of excessive drinking and general dissipation. He was famous in Hollywood for both. It’s said that the term “in like Flynn” is based on his success at seducing women. He was a major star in his heyday — a big box office draw. But his status had faded when he met Beverly Aadland. Few roles were coming his way, and he was no longer rolling in money. But there was enough to continue his lavish spending — the man was a true sybarite, indulging himself in all pleasures.

He still retained some of that star aura. He still went after women. Or girls. He had a liking for teenagers. On several occasions he faced charges of the statuatory rape of underage females. But highly paid lawyers can acomplish wonders.

Did he believe Beverly was eighteen when he met her? That’s what she claimed, to get jobs in Hollywood, so it’s likely that was the age she gave Errol — at least initially. And she looked eighteen — not fifteen. Did he rape her? This is what she told her mother, and what her mother told Thomey. But are we getting a true version as to what happened from these two sources? Actually, we can’t know what transpired — beyond the fact that Beverly and Errol had sex.

Still, even eighteen is young. But Flynn had no sense of right and wrong. He prided himself on his wicked, wicked ways. And, of course, in this whole story he’s the one who will have no day of reckoning — death will take him quietly and quickly. During the time with Beverly I’m sure that none of the parties involved divulged her true age. So the public, and even his close acquaintances, considered it just another instance of that old rascal Errol consorting with yet another pretty young thing. 

Was it love that sustained their affair? I doubt if Errol felt more than affection. Beverly’s youthful presence buoyed his spirits. And, since she was impressed by him and by the life style he introduced her to, her adulation pleased his vanity. She was a nice, fresh ornament. They got something from one another.

What else do I know about the relationship (or surmise with some degree of confidence)? Not much. Did the sex continue? Probably, but not at a fever pitch. Errol was, after all, on his last legs. He died two years after the affair with Beverly began, and his autopsy attributed death to heart problems (not helped by a lifetime of chain smoking), and, as a contributing factor, cirrhosis of the liver. So he could no longer have been a sexual athlete. He had a reputation for the kinky, but did he introduce Beverly to practices she should have been spared? I think not. He had four children, three of whom were girls. So he may have felt a degree of protectiveness. May have. Yes, I’m giving him the benefit of the doubt, even though he doesn’t deserve it. A photo shows a sophisticated (and mature) looking Beverly at a restaurant with Errol. She’s smoking a cigarette, and there’s a bottle of wine on the table. Should she have been there?

Flynn was writing an autobiography in his last years (it would be entitled My Wicked, Wicked Ways). The book was published posthumously, and would become a best seller. In it he doesn’t mention Beverly, though he dedicates it “to my little friend.”

As for the love aspect. The issue of Flynn’s will is perplexing. He was (according to Mrs. Aadland) engaged in drawn-out and acrimonious divorce proceedings with his third wife, Patrice Wymore. Yet when he died a will was in place leaving Wymore his various properties, notably a 2,000 acre coconut plantation in Jamaica. Nothing — nada — came to Beverly. The Aadlands produced a handwritten will that, they claimed, Errol had dictated to Beverly; they submitted it in the Surrogate Court in New York. But the last page, with Flynn’s signature, was missing. So, of course, the will was deemed invalid. What was going on? Why didn’t Flynn have a lawyer draw up a valid will providing for the young (and financially needy) young woman he was living with for two years? Is not leaving her anything showing love? Is it even showing basic care and concern?

Those questions may be a proper way to end to my look at a man who led a messy, irresponsible, selfish life.

Beverly Aadland

She was an only child (after two miscarriages), and was considered by her mother to be a precious gift. But a gift, especially a human one, should be cared for and protected. From the time Beverly was two years old she was going to auditions for commercials. This intense promoting of a career in show business would continue undaunted up to the time Beverly met Errol Flynn. Lessons in acting, singing, dancing — these made up her education. I could find no indication that she regularly attended school (though, in her earlier years, she must have). The mother also lavished praise on the young girl — for her beauty, talent, intelligence, maturity. Beverly must have felt she existed on an elevated plane.

On the pages of The Big Love there’s almost nothing about the father besides the fact that it was not a happy marriage, one which ended in divorce. The role he played in his daughter’s life is unknown. But even if he objected to the path she was being steered onto, the force of Florence’s obsession was probably overpowering.

So, at age fifteen (claiming on papers, in order to get work, that she was eighteen), Beverly was kicking up her lovely legs on chorus lines, landing small roles in films, singing and dancing in revues. Did she feel a sense of deprivation? Did she miss not having a normal teenager’s life? I very much doubt it. She probably considered the life she led to be an exciting one, with the possibility of becoming a big Hollywood star on her horizon. She also probably had an inflated idea of her worth, due to all those compliments she got from her mother. It’s likely that she didn’t feel she was being forced into an unnatural situation. She had no adult perspective to judge the life she was leading. 

She was working as a dancer on the set of the film “Marjorie Morningstar” when she caught the eye of Errol Flynn, who was on the same lot making “Too Much Too Soon,” in which he was cast as John Barrymore (Flynn was getting roles as aging lushes). So they were introduced, she had dinner with him. He was considering a script for a stage play and asked her to come to his lodge and read for a part in it.

The mother wasn’t around when this meeting with Flynn transpired; she stayed away from sets and auditions because, since Beverly was posing as an adult, it wouldn’t look right for the mother to be tagging along. So, she claims, she couldn’t warn her daughter that she was being handed a corny old seduction line.

As I stated in the Flynn section, we can’t know what transpired in the lodge. The version of what happened that Beverly told to her mother, months after the event, are suspect. As is Mrs. Aadland’s account. Both could be engaging in falsification. For starters, Beverly surely did know what that corny old line was leading to. Would she have fallen for a similar line from a forty-eight year old car salesman? Not a chance. It was Errol Flynn, for God’s sake. Being around chorus line women — women, not girls — would have educated her on the facts of life and how to get ahead in show biz. But at the same time I get the strong impression that Beverly needed her mother to believe in her virtue. 

At any rate, according to what winds up on the pages of The Big Love, Flynn forced himself on the virginal Beverly, despite her efforts to stop him. On a bearskin rug, no less.

Yes, virginal. Florence Aadland states, in the very first line of the book, that she wants to “make clear right now” that “my baby was a virgin on the day she met Errol Flynn.” And that Beverly “told her everything.” Well, girls don’t always reveal everything to their mothers. Beverly was running in a fast crowd. Hollywood, night clubs, chorus lines — they don’t foster wholesome innocence. And Beverly went out with boys. I’m not trying to cast aspersions on the girl’s character. She was fifteen — can one expect wisdom to guide her actions? She was, in this story, the clear victim of two adults. But she was also no guileless angel. To make her seem like one is falsifying matters.

And about those months that passed before Beverly told her mother what had happened in the lodge. Why months? At the time it occurrred, who was she confiding in? I’d also like to know what transpired between her and Flynn after the purported rape. What line of reasoning determined her actions — or her non-actions? It seems suspiciously convenient that after months had passed no charges of statutory rape could be substantiated.

Of course, it wasn’t a one-night stand. What followed was a two year affair. Much of that time they lived together (minus the mother), they slept in the same bed. So — as I asked in the Errol Flynn section — was it love that kept them together? In Flynn’s case, I thought not. I’m not so certain about Beverly. But her concept of love couldn’t be a mature one. He offered her an exciting and expensive life style. He impressed her with his charm. Not his physical charms (the sex probably died down to next to nothing), but his wit, intelligence, high spirits. These had always been part of what attracted women. Did she get the career she desired? No. The highlight (or lowlight) was a role in a film Flynn made entitled “Cuban Rebel Girls.” Was Beverly disappointed? Surely she was, but there were those compensations. And maybe the future held possibilities. Including marriage — which Mrs. Aadland adamantly believed was to take place as soon as Flynn could disentangle himself from his current wife.

But Flynn died suddenly, and Beverly was left adrift, to fend as best she could.

The Big Love ends with Beverly, a friend and Florence visiting Flynn’s grave in Forest Lawn Cemetery. After the two young people dance and frolic around the grave, Beverly, before leaving, kisses the grass near Flynn’s headstone. Then she says, “Mama! I just heard a big belly laugh down there!” The frivolity of the scene seems to me to reflect a shallowness. Whose? The mother’s or the daughter’s? Or both?

Things turned dark for Beverly. In 1960, when she was seventeen, a boyfriend was killed in her apartment (which she was sharing with her mother). But Florence was in the hospital when the events transpired, so the account she gives Thomey comes from what Beverly supposedly told her; it presents a demented young man engaging in a game of Russian Roulette gone bad. Even if Florence had been a witness, I would be suspicious of her version — after all, this death could, potentially, be seen as a murder. Suffice to say that William Stanciu, a twenty-one-year-old aspiring actor, brought a gun to the apartment, and it went off. Was it suicide, was there a struggle? These are two differing versions that Beverly gave to the police. But possibly she combined the two: he was going to commit suicide, she tried to stop him, and in the ensuing struggle the gun went off. (The police report on the death would be interesting to see.) 

        There was front page newspaper coverage that went nationwide when, in the course of the investigation, her prior relationship with Errol Flynn was revealed. Accusations of prostitution were added to the lurid mix. The public viewed her with either a smirk or a scowl.

        Ultimately, no charges were filed against Beverly, but as a result of this episode she was taken from her mother’s custody and made a ward of the court, in the care of a church chaplain’s wife. She continued her efforts at a singing and dancing career, but they went nowhere. Two brief marriages — and divorces — followed. Both men were young and handsome, possibly also aspiring actors. After the second divorce her efforts at a career ended. 

She was working as a cocktail waitress when she met Ronald Fisher, who sold auto parts. The two stayed married for forty years, until her death at age sixty-seven from diabetes and congestive heart failure. They had one child, Aadlanda Joy. Fisher has stated that he converted Beverly into what she was always meant to be: a housewife. Perhaps he was right. For all the efforts to make her extraordinary (and her two years of glamour), she ended up living a quite ordinary life. I hope she was happy.

Florence Aadland

Florence frequently mentions the loss of her foot — which she refers to as “the tragedy of my leg.” Otherwise, she claims, she was very attractive. Though she never relates how she suffered this loss, some research revealed that it was in a car accident in which her future husband (the father of Beverly) was driving. She must have been fitted with a prosthetic foot. It surely was a traumatic event for a woman in her twenties. For the rest of her life she always wore slacks.

She was working as a barmaid when the accident occurred. Her husband-to-be was a bartender at the same establishment.

She was thirty-three when Beverly was born (two previous pregnancies had resulted in miscarriages). She considered this infant no less than a gift from heaven.

Her claims about the child are wildly extravagant. She relates feats of precociousness. A sampling: at ten months Beverly was walking smoothly, at eighteen months she could sing difficult pieces with a full, clear tone. And she was, besides strangely beautiful and gifted, extremely intelligent. Shakespeare was her favorite author; she had an IQ of 140. She was different, in a way that was mystical. Others saw that quality. A Rosicrucian lady Florence met on the bus told her that the child had “known that she was to fill the emptiness that entered your life when you lost your leg.” And that she “was born for fame and fortune.” When Beverly was five a doctor said, “I think I see a halo on this child.” Then he warned Florence: “Be very careful of this child. She is more precious than even you realize.” A year later the head of an advertising agency issued another warning for Florence: “I think men will be very affected by this girl. I think men are going to kill over this girl. I have the feeling in my heart that she has the scent of musk on her.” Of course, all these endowments, all these comments by others, all these omens, are coming from Florence, as told to Tedd Thomey. And all are suspect.

Beverly was surely overly-praised. Such an outsized attribution of talents and gifts can mislead, can distort a child’s perceptions of herself. That said, Beverly did attain a degree of success in show business. From the time she was a small child she was in commercials. When she was twelve she began dubbing singing voices in major movies. She had small roles in a number of films. She was in Las Vegas chorus lines. Her foot (one that was intact) was in the door to the big time; the door just needed to be pushed open.

The affair with Errol Flynn was the opportunity for fame and fortune. As previously noted, two months had passed before Beverly gives her mother an account of what had taken place in the lodge. Florence’s response — to what is descibed as a rape — is oddly subdued. No outrage. The reason she gives is that in the interval a true love had emerged between the two. A love that negated how the relationship began. 

While this affair proceeded, Florence is relegated to the background of Beverly’s life. There’s no breaking off of contact, but they lived apart. And Florence is not being financially provided for. While Beverly stayed with Flynn at expensive hotels, her mother lived in cheap apartments. She worked at menial, low income jobs — in a ticket booth of a movie theater, as a manicurist, and, again, as a barmaid. Why didn’t Beverly insist that Flynn help out her mother? 

Throughout the book I sensed that Florence had a drinking problem. When she refers to her drinking, it is always “just a little.” Always a disclaimer. Yet the cause of her death, at age fifty-six, was acute alcohol poisoning. After the William Stanciu incident came the court-ordered separation from her daughter (and a brief stay in jail). All this surely accelerated her drinking. 

I asked twice before, in regard to Flynn and Beverly, whether love was a factor that motivated them. The same question has to be asked about Florence Aadland. I believe she did love her daughter, but it took a peculiar — and distorted — form. The child — probably simply a pretty child — was early on burdened with the weight of her mother’s need.  Florence’s efforts to make Beverly into a screen beauty — one with notably beautiful legs — was a way of compensating for her loss, for her entire drab existence. She made her daughter into what she, Florence, wanted to be, made her become the carrier of her dreams for herself.

In this story Beverly is the victim of two people: An ambitious, needy mother and a man who used people all his life. Yet it was a victimization in which she was complicit.

Some readers will laugh at Florence Aadland’s exercise in self delusion. I could not laugh at her. Her story is too sad to laugh at. It’s about emotional deprivation and the aspiring after wealth and fame. It’s about the power people who possess those things exert. It’s about the loss — or the absence — of a moral code to guide decisions.

She had her story written after all her hopes for Beverly — and for herself — had come crashing down. The entire book can be seen as an attempt — by someone embattled and defensive — to raise the tawdry to romantic heights.

Thus the title: The Big Love.