Charisma Breakdown: Errol Flynn

Welcome to the third installment in this Charisma Breakdown series.

For the series, I've been breaking down the mannerisms and behaviors of wildly charismatic individuals, along the lines of the four Charismatic Archetypes we discuss in greater depth in my soon-to-be-rereleased course, Charisma in a Bottle.

You can see the previous two installments here:

1. Charisma Breakdown: John Wayne (King Archetype)

2. Charisma Breakdown: Russell Brand (Savior Archetype)

It was my intention to do the Father Archetype next, then the Hero, but it's been a bit of a challenge finding good Father Archetype charismatics who also fit a seductive role. I think I'll most likely do Sean Connery for that, who fits the Father Archetype, and for whom I've promised to do a charisma breakdown for a while.

Meantime though, I'm just too eager to get to Errol Flynn... so we're going to jump ahead here to do the Hero.

Today we cover cinema's most legendary swashbuckler and Hollywood's biggest ever real-life charismatic womanizer: the magnetic, the charming, the irresistible Errol Flynn.

 

The Most Seductive Charmer Hollywood Ever Produced

Errol Flynn was not a man who became a movie star and then, on the back of fame and fortune, became an inveterate scoundrel and seducer.

He is of the opposite cast: Flynn was a man who was already an inveterate scoundrel and seducer, who then happened to become a movie star (and just about laid every woman in Hollywood). He is the real deal; the realest deal Hollywood's ever put forth.

If you've never watched an Errol Flynn movie, watch this 3.5-minute clip and tell me there's ever been an actor more compellingly seductive and charismatic than Flynn:

Errol Flynn is the paragon of the Heroic Charismatic Archetype.

But more than that, he is the best and most authentically charismatic seducer Hollywood ever produced.

 

Who Was Errol Flynn?

While perhaps not as known among younger generations today, Errol Flynn was one of the biggest stars of the Golden Age of Hollywood, and almost certainly its most colorful.

Flynn was a glib, fast-living, seductively charming actor who bedded many of Hollywood's leading ladies, and ranks near the top of lists of men with the highest claimed all-time numbers of lays (Flynn's professed notch count was 14,000; Russell Brand, our last breakdown example, by contrast, has only managed 1,000). That puts him at the fourth highest count of any man I know of in history off-hand; Wilt Chamberlain claimed 20,000, Fidel Castro 35,000, and Genghis Khan is alleged to have bedded north of 50,000 (when you rule the world, I guess you can do that), the only three with more than Flynn. Casanova, by comparison, bedded a mere 120.

Eventually Flynn's hard living caught up with him, as he descended into drug- and drink-fueled benders that ruined his career and led to the former top Hollywood draw making B-films in Europe. By the time he began his Hollywood comeback in the late 1950s, it was too late, and he died of health complications from his many years of dissolution. When he died, he was broke, on the run from the IRS, trying to lease his boat in Canada so the IRS couldn't seize it in the US.

While he was alive, however, Errol Flynn produced dazzling films filled with derring-do that packed theaters and are still great fun today. His 1935 film Captain Blood introduced him to audiences in a big way. His 1938 film The Adventures of Robin Hood is a better action flick than just about anything Hollywood's produced in decades, and it's clear when you watch it how much fun he and the rest of the cast had filming it. The 1942 boxing movie Gentleman Jim is a real knock-em-out joy (Flynn wasn't just acting there either; he frequently bareknuckle-brawled in lulls at his house parties, too).

By the time of his 1948 swashbuckler Adventures of Don Juan, he had lost much of his gusto, deep in the bottle, though despite the somewhat phoned-in performance still puts some of his seductive prowess on display, with typical Hero Archetype wit, charm, and antics.

Flynn's films are great pleasures to watch; the man himself is plucky, dashing, and magnetic; and it's easy to see how he waded through as many women as he did.

One note of interest is that something not showcased in his films is his knack for telling tales, which doubtless played a role in his real life seductions. Here's an excerpt from an article that details this a bit:

Errol was the principal architect of his own myth, and in a ghost-written 1959 memoir, My Wicked, Wicked Ways, he claimed to have indulged in piracy on the South Seas, killed a man in Papua New Guinea, smoked opium in Hong Kong and engaged with the Nazis while smuggling guns to the Spanish Civil War. And all of this before he hit the big time in Hollywood and started merrily sowing his seed. How verifiable all of that is is open to debate, but almost beside the point, because all of Flynn's Hollywood friends attest to the fact that he was a wonderful barroom spinner of tales which, if not exactly true, really ought to have been. And he was a genuinely adventurous soul, destined to live fast and die young.

Fun fact: Errol Flynn was good friends with another actor we've seen on Girls Chase before, David Niven, who played the role of seducer David Slater in a film I reviewed last year, The Moon Is Blue. The two actors rented a house on the California coast, which Niven nicknamed 'Cirrhosis-by-the-Sea', due to the wild, alcohol-fueled house parties they threw there (guests at one party claimed Errol Flynn played a song on the piano with his penis). The house was also full of peep-holes, microphones, and one-way mirrors Flynn used to voyeur his female guests.

At one point, Flynn caught himself a couple of statutory rape accusations from a pair of (unrelated) 17-year-old girls, both of which he was ultimately acquitted on. While these didn't do his career in, his drugs and boozing (and how impossible it made to have him on a production) ultimately did. Before his Hollywood career more or less died, Flynn twice won the Golden Apple Awards' Sour Apple for 'Least Cooperative Actor' (in 1943 and again in 1948).

The expression 'in like Flynn' is supposed by some to have come from the ease Flynn had of getting women into bed (Flynn was reportedly very pleased with both the phrase and its popularity).

Aside from seduction, Flynn's real life was every bit as chaotic as his on-screen performances. He was kicked out of one school after another over fighting and trouble-making -- though the last time he was expelled, it was due to an affair with a school maid (this affair caused his then-fiancée to call it quits with him). He killed a native in self-defense on an ill-fated gold mining expedition to Papua New Guinea, and was reported dead outside Madrid when he went visiting in the midst of the Spanish Civil War (turned out he wasn't dead; he'd just received a few grazes from bullets is all). When he was banned from bringing alcohol onto set due to his binging and ranting at the film crew and production bosses, he took to injecting booze into oranges to bring with him instead.

Flynn had four (known) children with three wives. He ran away during the births of his first two children. While his first child was being born in the US (to his French first wife), he dashed off on a trip to Brazil. His second child was born in Mexico (to his second wife, an American) -- meanwhile he was up visiting in New York City. He did come to visit her once the baby was born, but took a break from the hospital, hit up a nearby bar, ran into one of his wife's girlfriends, and proceeded to bed the friend.

Aside from the children known to him, he had multiple other women claiming he'd fathered their children; one of them showed up at his place with a gun. Considering the host of venereal diseases Flynn had (so many, in fact, that along with other hard-partying-induced health issues they disqualified him from serving in World War II), he didn't seem to be overly fond of safe sex... so odds are some of those claims of him fathering other children may well have been true.

His adventurous and self-destructive streaks ran in his blood; Flynn's photojournalist son Sean disappeared in Cambodia in 1970 after being stopped by the Viet Cong, and his fashion model daughter Arnella, like her father, descended into booze and drugs, and died strung out and emaciated in Jamaica (that said, Flynn's other two daughters seem to have done fine; and his grandson by Arenlla, named Luke Flynn, looks just like him, and even helped write the 2018 biopic on him).

Tangentially, Flynn also has, in my opinion, one of the funniest lines in outtake history, when he candidly remarks (commenting on a scene in The Sisters; the line was not part of the movie), "Who the hell is happy about getting a wife back, for Christ's sake?" He's the original "I don't chase 'em, I replace 'em."

While we sadly can't watch documented Errol Flynn partying, storytelling, and womanizing in action, we can get a glimpse with the next best thing: scenes from his many charismatic turns in Hollywood blockbusters.

 

Charisma Breakdown: Errol Flynn

Now that I've wetted your whistle a bit for Errol Flynn, let's have a look at just how his charisma works.

There aren't any good Errol Flynn compilations on YouTube aside from the one I began the article with (that one, however, is excellent).

We'll begin then by highlighting some of his nonverbal behaviors showcased in that earlier clip montage.

After that, I'll present a selection of clips I've taken from his film Gentleman Jim that showcase various aspects of Flynn's fetching charisma.

 

Charisma Displayed in the Montage

In that montage at the start of this article, we had a great selection of charismatic nonverbals.

I'll list just a few of them, and where in the clip you can see them:

• Up-down checkout, then smile. At 00:27, Flynn's eyes scan down, then back up, checking out the other party, and he smiles. The checkout is an attractive, charismatic, and confident act, especially when it's backed up with strong eye contact after and a smile that follows the checkout (the smile says "I like you"). It can be used with a woman you're seducing to show her you're interested, or with a man who's challenging you to show him you're already thinking about how you might take him down.

• Wistful look while speaking. At 00:35, while dancing with a woman, when she asks him something, he speaks, smiling his sly grin, his eyebrows raised in an open way, and he looks up and over her into the distance thoughtfully, wistfully, as he replies, before his eyes return to hers. The communication here is that he is stepping away from the present to think of something else for a moment, trusting he can distract himself from the woman (who is totally focused on him) for a moment and not have her run off.

• Charismatic head swivels for emphasis. At 00:40, Flynn uses a series of charismatic nods and grins while speaking. He darts his head from left to right then brings it back slower as a smile spreads across his face; he then does a more minute version of this same gesture again two seconds later, while also knitting his brow a bit. It seems a small thing, but you will notice the most charismatic men and women use this gesture to put extra emphasis on points they're making. Do it with women at the right times and you will be able to feel their focus tighten on you.

• How he walks with two women. Watch how Flynn walks with two women at 00:44; he's very practiced at it. This is not a regular arm-in-arm; he actually has one hand clutching the upper arms of each of the women, giving him greater control and dissuading them from withdrawing from his grasp. He gives most of his attention to the girl on the right, who is staring at him hard, and very flirtatiously, but he also gives some attention to the girl on the left, and jerks her back in when she tries to move off (when you're pulling two girls, you need them both to come along! Don't need one to pull away, then the other to announce she has to go with her).

• "You got me." Flynn deliberately overreacts nonverbally in a charismatic way to something the woman says to him at 00:51, looking down as if losing interest, then suddenly looking back with a surprised look on his face, followed by another up-down checkout, then smile (as at 00:27). What's he doing here? He is letting the girl know she's affected him a bit to raise his attainability, then making it not overly serious with the checkout-and-smile right after.

• Underlook. At 00:54, Flynn uses the underlook, one of the facial expressions we highlighted in "7 Facial Expressions That Drive Women Wild." He uses it after a downward cast look and chuckle following something a woman has said to him, then proceeds into a grinning nod and retort.

• Seductive glances. At 1:07, Flynn is seated with his head tilted (the sexiest head position), glancing at the other party out of the corner of his eyes (the sexiest eye position), with a playful, sexy grin on his face, and he plays with a pipe, cigar, or pen about his mouth in a sexually suggestive way. All very sexy stuff. Worth noting here: while usually putting things in the mouth would be considered feminine, when a man is doing it playfully toward a woman like this it still serves its purpose of being very suggestive, and the femininity of it can take her off her guard a bit too.

• Presenter's wave in casual spot. At 01:29, Flynn uses a wave you'd use in a formal presentation or bow, but he does so sprawled out on a bough while grinning. This mix of formality with casualness lends a distinctive charm.

• Dual-arm close pull. At 01:44, Flynn grabs both upper arms of the woman he's talking to, pulls her right up against her as if he's about to kiss her, but doesn't kiss her; he continues talking. This is a bold, masculine, seductively charismatic move that gets her blood pumping and has her thinking about kissing you, but adds a cushion in there (where you continue talking instead of kissing) where you can either make an emphatic point you are making to her and, if she melts while up against you, then you can kiss her.

• Wink. Flynn gives a wink at 01:56 (along with a grin and a fist pump). Winks are very charismatic behaviors, because they nonverbally communicate a secret connection between you and another person. Surprisingly few folks use them regularly and confidently, but they're very powerful.

• Slow-spreading smile before laugh. At 02:16, Flynn allows a smile to spread slowly across his face while holding eye contact with one of the two men he's with before erupting into laughter. The slow spreading smile plus eye contact draws the other person into it, and when his laughter erupts it's a lot more likely to be mutual. Flynn also throws his arms around the shoulders of both the men he's with as he laughs, which is both dominant and builds camaraderie -- and it's unlikely to be opposed because everyone's laughing, and you can get away with a whole lot while people are laughing.

• Quick kiss then chat. At 02:18 Flynn moves in to kiss a girl, holding the kiss for two seconds, before leaning back, while still in her personal space, to talk with her. This is the preferred way to kiss girls it's not clear it's totally on with yet, or girls who are a bit too innocent or oblivious and don't know you're close to kissing; it works because it kisses her in a bold way, but then gives her space to process the kiss with the short chat after.

• Turn her head with a finger. Flynn turns a distracted girl to face him at 02:57, using his forefinger on her chin to turn her face toward his. He's focused on her; she's distracted; by turning her face this way, he's telling her, "Hey. Focus on me." It takes confidence to this and a clear grip on what the situation is (her mind is on something else, but whatever it is it's not so important or engrossing she'll resent being refocused on you), not to mention it makes the woman comply -- all of these make it charismatic indeed.

• Graduated look up. At 03:03 Flynn does what is best called a 'graduated look up'. You can do this undirected at anyone to come across as thoughtful, or you can do it to someone (with the final step being your eyes resting on the other person's) as a way to add some buildup to your eye contact and make it more momentous and less sudden. Notice how it works: first his eyes are looking down; then they move up a bit, but are still staring off; then they look up knowingly, searching a bit, before resting on a target.

Good stuff, no?

One other thing I will point out, and it's probably Errol Flynn's #1 most charismatic quality:

The man is constantly having a good time, grinning a playful grin, joking around, and laughing -- except when he's not (i.e., when a moment calls for seriousness).

 

Seducing a Disinterested Woman

Let's have a look at some longer clips with dialogue.

I've selected these scenes from Flynn's 1942 boxing biopic Gentleman Jim. The film's about a plucky bank teller who comes from a family of backyard bareknuckle fighters, who then talks his way into a gentleman's club and onto its boxing roster and begins to rise through the ranks of the boxing world. Like all Flynn films, this one's a joy to watch.

A little set-up: Flynn's character Gentleman Jim Corbett has an ongoing flirtation with Victoria Ware (played here by Alexis Smith), who is a rather haughty member of the new rich. This seduction is a great example of how you can seduce closed off or difficult girls by drawing them in and leading them to chase you for information or flipping dynamics to ones where they are complying with you.

Here're the clips:

We can see how Flynn's Corbett charismatically deals with the challenges Miss Ware presents him below:

• Clip 1: Meeting the boyfriend (00:00). Corbett talked his way into an exclusive gentleman's club and persuaded Miss Ware to give him a tour. His excuse for this was carrying her bag. At 00:21, Ware calls him "very kind" for carrying her bag; watch how Corbett (Flynn) handles this compliment, basically dismissing it by smiling and nodding down and away, to avoid nice guy territory. At 00:25, Ware's boyfriend tries to take over the guided tour and show Corbett around, but Corbett doesn't want that, he wants to stay with the attractive daughter of the owner of the club. Corbett cheerfully dismisses this idea, telling him, "Oh, no thanks; don't bother!" and adds "Miss Ware's doing fine!" Once the boyfriend leaves, Corbett immediately checks the relationship status between the two, and showcases how he knew when asked. One last little bit to keep an eye on: at 00:53, Miss Ware spools off the list of places she'll show Corbett, while he just listens, breaking eye contact as she goes on -- she is taking the lead at this point, but if she leads too much for too long it'll be very difficult for him to build attraction. So what does Corbett/Flynn do as soon as she's done? He says, "All right!" and immediately starts walking ahead of her, retaking the lead.

• Clip 2: Gymnasium (01:00). Now in the gym, Corbett gets to use other people and the situation to press the somewhat haughty Victoria Ware into holding his belongings for him and pushing back her schedule to wait on him as he goes for a quick bout with the boxing instructor. Things to note: how Corbett talks his way into a quick bout (beginning at 01:27): very gracious, mentions he boxes, but self-deprecates, flatters the instructor ("Could certainly learn a lot from an expert like you, sir"), and when the instructor takes the bait and compliments him back, Corbett tells him he'd "sure like to put those gloves on with you for a minute", setting him up to get better acquainted with several key members and to turn Miss Ware into his attendant. That leads to the other men inviting Corbett to join. He hands his hat to Miss Ware, then his jacket, telling her "Hold this will ya, Miss Ware?", dismissing her attempts to hurry along ("This'll just take a moment"), instructing her to "Lace that, will ya?" his right glove, returning to talking to the instructor, then makes a little joke at Miss Ware's expense to the group (remember a couple months back when we talked about teasing a girl to her friends?) before handing her his cigar and asking her, "Hold this, will ya?" And now he has fully transitioned from following her in, carrying her bag for her, to making her wait for him, adjust her schedule for him, and hold far more things for him (while also cracking jokes at her expense).

• Clip 3: Ballroom dance (02:13). The first line of conversation in this clip is interest bait ("You know Miss Ware, here's something I can't understand"), a line used to bait the other party in and pique her interest in what's to come. He then launches into callback humor, teasing her about her earlier prediction of his defeat in the boxing ring. Notice how often Flynn laughs at his own jokes; this is considered a no-no in polite society, but the best natural seducer I've known did the same thing... he'd make sex jokes with women, laugh at his own jokes, and later the girls would end up in bed with him. When she tells him he's getting a swollen head (i.e., a big ego), he corrects her by telling her she's "wrong about that" and disagrees with her and corrects her in a charming way. Later, when she gets one over on him, he graciously hands her his flower and tells her it's for being "so right", an attainable down-to-earth gesture after his earlier series of jokes and boasts.

• Clip 4: Miss Ware's unavailability (03:16). Corbett runs into Miss Ware in New York City, where he's at first very pleased to see her, basically gushing. He immediately says he wants to talk to her and asks where they should go or what they should do (going straight to feeling her out to move her or venue change her). As they sit, Ware tells Corbett she needs to go change for dinner, but Corbett ignores her prior plans and invites her to go to a play with him, then when she's booked he asks her to dinner, but she's booked for that too. His mood sours as she turns out to be booked up every day for the next three weeks, not hiding his displeasure at her having no time for him. He says it's "Too bad" she's fully booked; she says it's "nice to have seen" him, and gets up to go, but he's not going to let her go like that. Instead he sucks her in by asking how long she's been in New York (more interest bait), and when she asks why he wants to know, he continues to bait her, saying she should not stick around much longer because it doesn't agree with her, forcing her to ask him what he means a second time. Notice how she was trying to walk away, having framed him as wanting her time but her not having any availability, and now once again he's flipped the dynamic, forcing her to pry out what he's getting at from him? This is a very charismatic 'control the dynamic' behavior I've watched a good friend of mine use again and again; A2daMIR was a constant user of it in his seductions as well -- it's one vein of a style of game I call confusion game, perfect for distracted or disinterested girls, which Miss Ware certainly is. Corbett then manages to get under Ware's skin, kicking off a little spat between the two, and a spat is a much better place to be than being dismissed as someone she simply doesn't have time for (hate is much closer to love than indifference is; while it's advanced game, if you can get girls angry at you, it's often fairly straightforward to seduce them if you know what you're doing from there).

• Clip 5: Garden scene (05:20). Ware is confessing her feelings for Corbett here, after long denying them. Watch how Corbett handles her confessions. She's been standoffish toward him, so he can't perk up immediately just because she starts showing some vulnerability. He needs to shake his head and laugh it off as "well, yes, that's just women" when she talks about a woman "just knowing all at once." He then pauses, to see if she'll continue, but like most women she doesn't know how to progress things herself, so he then takes the lead. He starts with more interest bait ("Look, if you're so smart, tell me this:"), getting her buy-in, then asks her whether they like each other. When he thinks she's about to make another cutting remark at his expense, he jumps in to head her off, but she corrects him and continues. He responds to her correction by shrugging his eyebrows and smiling charmingly and saying "Well, all right!" and glancing away briefly before returning to look at her, which in my opinion is the single best way to handle an annoyed woman telling you off on something (I've had occasion to use that one many times!), and instructing her to talk and tell him how the two of them stand. Once she confesses her love, he knows he has her, and takes some time to tease her a bit first for good measure, before he pulls her in and reassures and kisses her. As the cherry on top, Gentleman Jim confirms he is "no gentleman." Fade to black.

Flynn's behaviors and his way of dealing with the disinterested, haughty Miss Ware are on-point. They're pitch perfect for each situation he finds himself in with her, and they're completely magnetic.

If you enjoyed the clips, by the way, make sure you go and watch the full movie; it's a blast.

 

Wrap Up

This was just a taste of some of the charisma Errol Flynn puts on display.

If you're the 'lone warrior', 'leap into the fray', 'devil may care' Heroic Archetype seducer, Flynn may well be the ultimate role model for you... heck, even if you're one of the other archetypes, Flynn's dashing charm and suave mannerisms and adroit use of verbal tactics like interest bait and confusion game can help you add to your game.

There's never been another Errol Flynn. While he led a turbulent life, his charisma was absorbing; men loved his heroics, and he mesmerized women.

Give a few Flynn flicks a watch when you've got some downtime on your hands. They're as good as anything coming out of Hollywood these days, and in most cases a good shake better.

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