The young Errol : Flynn before Hollywood

Sydney : Angus and Robertson, 1975. First edition. Octavo, lettered wrappers (paperback), light rubbing to edges, short crease, spine faded, pp. [vi]; 154; 16 pp. black and white photographic plates.

The first edition of Moore’s revealing insight into Flynn’s early years, prior to his fame, derived from first hand sources in New Guinea and Australia. Sought after by collectors.

‘A fascinating account of the early life of one of Australia’s most colorful and controversial sons. John Hammond Moore trace film star Errol Flynn’s turbulent career from his birth in sedate Hobart through his eccentric schooldays and his youth in Sydney and cruising the Pacific to his years as a pioneer tobacco planter in Papua and the ‘discovery’ that led to Hollywood and stardom.

The author comments: ‘While his golden age in Hollywood produced some wondrous swashbuckling, Errol Flynn was not really acting at all. He was merely transferring a natural style developed in Sydney, Port Moresby, Rabaul, and London to a much larger audience’.

Anecdotes, quotations from Flynn’s own diaries and from people who knew him in Australia and Papua New Guinea crowd one upon the other to underscore this truth, and to embellish this rollicking tale of a man who in the author’s words: ‘lived for half a century the sort of life adolescents dream of but men dare not attempt’.’ – the back cover.