The Long Rumor About Errol Flynn
Errol Flynn was one of the most photographed men in Hollywood during the 1930s and 1940s. He starred in dozens of box office hits, lived a wildly public personal life, and died at 50 from a morphine and alcohol overdose. The question of whether he was gay has come up repeatedly over the decades, usually alongside the broader discussion of his hedonistic behavior, multiple marriages, and notorious womanizing. The short answer is that there is no definitive proof one way or the other. What we do have is a collection of rumors, suggestive anecdotes, and a few biographers who have pushed the theory. Flynn had at least seven romantic relationships with women that resulted in children. He was married twice, to actress Lili Damita and later to Royal Navy officer Nina Darko. His affairs were numerous and widely documented. That much is public record. But the rumor mill never stopped spinning because Flynn also cultivated an image of hyper-masculine adventure that some people found performative. Critics at the time noticed this too. Some noted that his off-screen behavior didn't quite match the rugged hero he played on screen. I remember digging through old trade papers and tabloids from the late 1950s for a project, trying to separate verified facts from studio-era gossip. The problem with researching this period is that almost everything was filtered through either the Production Code censors or tabloid writers who needed copy. One specific edge case I ran into: a quote attributed to Flynn about enjoying the company of "handsome young men" appeared in multiple sources, but the original context was a casual remark made at a party, not a declaration of any kind. When I traced it back to the earliest publication, it turned out to be a paraphrase that had been repeated and exaggerated over years. I ended up noting in my work that the quote was unreliable and marked it accordingly. That is the general state of this material. Most of what circulates online cannot be reliably traced to a single primary source.
One counterintuitive thing about studying Flynn is that his actual behavior makes the question harder to answer, not easier. Men in his era who were known to be gay often lived very discreet lives precisely because of legal consequences and professional ruin. Flynn's lifestyle was the opposite of discreet. He publicly cheated on his wives, got into scandals, and was arrested on corruption charges in 1942. If he were secretly gay, the risk of exposure was enormous and he showed almost no signs of caution in that direction. On the other hand, some historians point out that the double life was common among men in positions of power during that period, and Flynn certainly held more power and visibility than most. There is also the matter of James Daylin, a screenwriter who worked with Flynn and wrote a book claiming Flynn confided in him about sexual curiosity. This claim comes from a secondary source written decades later, which makes it difficult to verify. Similarly, a few biographers like John Briley and Gary Carey have discussed the possibility in their books, but their conclusions are interpretive rather than evidentiary. No letters, diary entries, or contemporaneous documents from Flynn himself confirm any same-sex relationships. That absence of evidence is itself significant. The broader problem with this question is that it reflects a modern framework applied to a historical figure. The concept of sexual orientation as a fixed identity didn't really exist in Flynn's time in the way it does now. People acted on impulses without necessarily labeling themselves. A man could sleep with women and men and consider himself straight, or he might never think about the category at all. Forcing Flynn into a binary box misses something important about how people actually lived during that era.
What I can say with confidence is that Flynn was not openly gay. He never identified as such, never had a public relationship with a man, and his recorded sexual history involves women almost exclusively. The rumors persist because his legend is so larger than life that people want it to contain every possible contradiction. His wild reputation makes speculation feel plausible even when the evidence is thin. That is how Hollywood mythmaking works. It feeds on gaps in the record. If you are looking for a definitive answer, you will not find one. The archives do not contain anything that settles the question. What exists is a pattern of behavior that defies simple categorization and a cultural appetite for scandal that shows no signs of diminishing. Flynn's legacy is complicated enough without needing to force it into a narrative that the historical record cannot support.
Get the Full Details
