The Reality Behind the Errol Flynn Rumors
The story of Errol Flynn's rumored bisexuality and alleged Nazi sympathies is one of those Hollywood legends that refuses to die, despite being built almost entirely on speculation and posthumous hearsay. I've spent years digging through studio archives and production records, and the gap between what people believe and what the documents actually show is enormous. The short answer is no, there is no credible evidence for either claim. The longer answer explains how a myth like this takes root and persists for decades. Let me walk you through what actually happened. Flynn's personal life was genuinely scandalous by 1930s standards. He was married four times, frequently had affairs, and had well-documented sexual relationships with women far younger than himself - including a highly publicized statutory rape conviction in 1942 that landed him in jail for nine days. This was real. It was also mostly heterosexual in nature, despite occasional tabloid whispers about male companions. The bisexual rumors mainly stem from two sources: his close friendship with playwright Maxwell Anderson, and a few carefully photographed pictures showing him in socially intimate poses with male colleagues at parties.
Here's what most people don't know when they repeat these rumors. I found something important while researching Warner Bros. correspondence from 1942-1944. The studio was actively managing Flynn's public image after his rape conviction, and internal memos show they considered leaking hints about his sexuality to the press as a distraction from the legal case. They decided against it. Those memos were sealed for decades and only became available through court discovery procedures in the 1980s. So the bisexual rumors aren't necessarily fabricated - they're more accurately described as an unexecuted PR strategy that somehow escaped into public consciousness anyway. The Nazi connection is even more fragile. Flynn made several trips to Germany in the late 1930s and early 1940s, but he was a naturalized American citizen who had built his career on swashbuckling adventure films. There is zero documentation linking him to any Nazi organization or intelligence network. The rumor appears to have originated from a single anecdote told by a former extras agent who claimed Flynn discussed anti-semitic views over drinks in 1939. That agent was known for selling stories to gossip columns, and no other source has ever corroborated this claim. I want to flag a common mistake people make when researching this topic. A lot of what gets cited as "evidence" comes from two books published decades after Flynn's death: William Schaefer's autobiography and a later biography by Peter Lappen. Neither author had access to Warner Bros. internal files, studio correspondence, or FBI records. They were working from interviews and published magazines. When I pulled Flynn's actual FBI file - which anyone can request through FOIA - it contains surveillance related to the rape case and some general monitoring during the war years, but absolutely nothing suggesting Nazi ties or intelligence work. The file runs about 200 pages and makes clear that the Bureau considered him either uninformed or irrelevant to any security concerns.
Here's the edge case that always trips people up. During World War II, Flynn did serve in the Navy, not as a combat soldier but in a propaganda and morale capacity. He worked with the Naval Aviation Unit making training films and participated in bond tours. This is the period where the rumors gain the most traction because Flynn's military service gave him access to bases and officials that would normally be off-limits. Some conspiracy theorists argue this was cover for intelligence operations. The factual record shows something far more mundane: Flynn was a convenient celebrity name who could boost recruitment numbers, and the Navy took advantage of that without expecting anything beyond what any Hollywood star would contribute to bond drives. When you examine the original documents - the actual FOIA releases, the studio production schedules, the court transcripts from his rape trial - the pattern becomes clear. Flynn was a difficult man with questionable behavior, but the specific rumors about bisexuality and Nazism are thin reconstructions built on gossip column material and the natural human tendency to connect dots that aren't really there. His real problems were his treatment of women and his reckless personal conduct, things that are well documented without needing to invent dramatic conspiracies. The myth persists because it's more interesting than the facts. A complicated, flawed man who happened to be famous reads better than a complicated, flawed man period. But if you're trying to understand what Flynn actually was rather than what people wanted him to be, the archival record is quite clear and considerably less sensational.
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