Cocaine? It's just something for my sinuses, said Errol [London Daily Express, 9 December 1998 - By Paul Callan]
Beaver Lad
BY PAUL CALLAN
London Daily Express, 9 December, 1998
A coded letter from Hollywood star Errol Flynn to the Harley Street
doctor who supplied him with cocaine will be auctioned in London
tomorrow.
Flynn, who as well as being a drug addict was an alcoholic able to
drink two or three bottles of vodka a day, called the cocaine "my sinus
stuff".
The letter, sent from Rome in the actor's flowery handwriting and dated
May 25, 1953, reads: "Dear Ellis, Fast note - So good to talk to you
the other day dear boy - although I couldn't hear you! - or almost
couldn't. Chum - when you have my sinus stuff made up will you please
leave out more bicarbonate?
"Will explain when I see you. There's so much bi-carb it somehow
solidifies and doesn't look good and doesn't help.
"See you soon - will wire when I can come. Your friend, Errol."
The once athletic matinee idol - star of such films as Captain Blood,
Robin Hood and Don Juan - was so hooked on the white powder that he had
to receive secret supplies wherever he was in the world. One of his
wives, Nora Eddington, claimed in her autobiography, Errol And Me, that
Flynn regularly snorted cocaine with the excuse that it was "to clear
his sinuses". He explained: "People think it's a narcotic but it really
isn't. You can get this from any doctor if you have trouble with your
sinuses."
Flynn's premature death at the age of 50 in Vancouver on October 14,
1959 - in the company of a 15-year-old girl - was blamed on his dual
addictions to drink and drugs. But in the Hollywood of the 1940s and
50s, drugs were taboo - at least publicly - and Flynn had to resort to
subterfuge to acquire supplies, particularly when abroad.
The letter, expected to be sold at Christie's for £600, belongs to a
private British collector. It shows how straightforward it was to
acquire cocaine, even 40 years ago, from a compliant "showbusiness
doctor".
One of the star's biographers, Lionel Godfrey, wrote in his Life And
Crimes Of Errol Flynn: "One day Nora Eddington saw Errol in the
bathroom with a hypodermic.
"What he was doing was obvious enough, but when she mentioned addiction
he laughed at the idea, defending his right to try 'everything once'."
Godfrey adds sarcastically: "Try everything once - and again and again
and again."
Flynn collapsed and died in the apartment of a doctor friend in the
company of 15-year-old Beverley Aadland. The coroner recorded that
death was caused by a coronary thrombosis, liver degeneration and a
severe intestinal infection. "His body is that of a tired old man - old
before his time."
After his death, friends of the star said he was drinking heavily,
snorting cocaine and injecting himself "right up to the very end".
A final mystery surrounds him. For years Flynn wore round his neck the
key to his safe deposit box in Switzerland which contained share
certificates and half a million dollars in cash. The key vanished from
his neck in the mortuary and when the box was opened three weeks after
his death it was empty. The mystery has never been solved.
© Express Newspapers Ltd