Regehr gets on the good side of Flynn in “Wicked Ways”
By Bart Mills The Plain Dealer TV Week
Everybody in Hollywood has an Errol Flynn story. Few actors are remembered so fondly, for Flynn was the kind of person who knew how to enjoy being a star.
Nowadays, many stars end up as timid recluses.
The hit comedy, “My First Year,” two years ago, was no more than an embellished Flynn anecdote.
Robert Stack, who lives in a very nice house on the spot where Flynn once garaged his cars, will gladly tell tales of Flynn’s riotous partying. You can almost hear the laughter and the champagne fizz.
Hollywood has made many a TV biography movie in the last few years, but somehow Errol Flynn has been ignored until now. The omission will be repaired when “My Wicked, Wicked Ways...the Legend of Errol Flynn” airs on Monday at 8 p.m. on WJKW Channel 8. The film is based on Flynn’s autobiography, “My Wicked, Wicked Ways.
“Flynn did the things others wanted to do but were afraid to,” says Duncan Regehr, the Canadian actor who plays the Australian Flynn.
“Flynn intended to live life to the fullest and he intended to do it while he was young, never mind the second half.”
The TV biography covers the years, 1935-43, starting with Flynn’s arrival in Hollywood.” The movie ends with the event that triggered his downfall, his highly publicized trial and eventual acquittal on a statutory rape charge.
“We’re showing the best part of his life, the part he’s best remembered for. We’re not covering the sharp decline that followed,” Regehr says.
The co-producer of “My Wicked, Wicked Ways,” Doris Keating, says, “Our show recalls that period the way he would have wanted it shown and the way everybody else wants it shown.”
Keating is closer to the subject than most producers – her father was Flynn’s manager and she was Flynn’s god-daughter.
“When I was growing up, Flynn was my male role model. To me, he was what a man should be, though I knew he had his foibles and faults. He wasn’t a saint, and we’re not presenting him that way.
“There’s a lot of ‘Robin Hood’ in our story, but there’s also something of ‘Lenny,’” she says about a film of another show biz decline and fall.
“Wicked, Wicked Ways” director Don Taylor was a young actor at Warner Bros. during Flynn’s heyday at the studio. Taylor recalls, “I was introduced to Flynn, but he never paid any particular attention to me. I used to sit quietly at the writer’s table at the commissary and listen to him. He held everybody spellbound with his tales, some of which may even have been true.”
In casting Regehr as Flynn, CBS found a startlingly close likeness. He seems a throwback to the days when being tall, dark and smoothly handsome wasn’t a drawback for an actor. Even the crisp Flynnish moustache looks right on Regehr.
Dressed in the height of late ‘30s fashion for a scene set in the backyard of studio magnate Jack Warner’s mansion, Regehr cuts a fine figure dancing to a big-band playing swing.
Regehr also has to box, fence and sail to complete a convincing portrayal of the fun-loving Flynn.
Speaking in the very same theatrically British accent that Flynn used, Regehr says, “Playing this part is no picnic, but it’s the kind of thing actors thrive on. ‘You must be tired,’ people say to me. ‘Nonsense,’ I say back to them, ‘I’m having a ball. Flynn had a ball and I’m going to have one too,”
“Flynn flew. He really did. As for what people thought, he didn’t care a jot. For him, making movies was a sideline and having fun was the main thing. He sailed seas deep and wide, just for the hell of it.”
Regehr professes interest in many of the pastimes that occupied Flynn, “but I appreciate things from a bit more distance and with a lot more control. At parties, for instance, I get bored very quickly.”
Regehr is perhaps closer to Flynn in acting style than personality.
“I love actors who fly. Today so many actors are afraid to let go. They play the close-up all the time. Some actors today simply subtle themselves out of the picture. They feel exactly the right emotion, but the audience can’t see it.”
Like Flynn, Regehr arrived in Hollywood with an unusual background.
He hadn’t hacked through the jungles of New Guinea or run slave ships through the South Seas, as Flynn had – or claimed he had. But Regehr has boxed seriously (50 amateur bouts) and won figure-skating championships in his early teens. He had his own talk show on Canadian television when he was 14.
“I did the show for two years and I did very well with it. I was so bad that people tuned in to see if I could really be that bad. I was terrible, but I knew it and had a sense of humor about it. I got the job because I’d become used to audiences during my figure-skating career. I was the ice star of the area. I looked older than I was and my voice was deep.
“I always had a love of literature and the theater. When I was 16, I auditioned at the local repertory theater in Victoria, B.C. I got the part. I got very serious about the theater and eventually learned to walk and talk at the same time, and I’ve been at it ever since.
Regehr spent several years on the stage in western Canada and appeared in a number of Canadian TV dramas.
“I worked and saved toward coming to America. Three years ago, it was time to come. So I left. I just left.”
Regehr’s first big Hollywood job was playing the villainous Prince Blackpool in a short-lived fantasy series, “Wizards and Warriors” last year.
He also won a lead role in “The Last Days of Pompeii” playing a reluctant but deadly gladiator. He’s been seen this month in a continuing role on “V,” playing the Supreme Leader of the Aliens.
Isn’t Regehr in danger of being pigeonholed as an actor who plays only larger-than-life parts?
“People do tend to categorize actors, don’t’ they?” he says. “I’ve got a surprise for them. I’ll fight for the chance to play diverse parts in quality productions. I really will fight, just for the hell of fighting.”