Something I rarely see mentioned these days:
Errol Flynn first wife was the very beautiful French actress Lili Damita, and they had a son, named Sean Flynn, after which they immediately divorced and Sean grew up not really knowing his father. Sean resembled his father physically and became an actor, but wanted more from life than dress up and pretend stuff. So he started working as a freelance photojournalist in the 1960s. He did several tours covering the war in Vietnam for various media outlets. On his last tour in 1970, he and another photojournalist named Dana Stone took off on motorbikes with the aim of interviewing some Viet Cong guerillas at a checkpoint where other foriegn journalists had already been disappeared. This was a bad idea, as they were immediately taken at gunpoint and marched into the woods, and from that point until this day, neither were seen or heard from ever again. Both are believed to have been murdered, with reports that they were held as prisoners by the Viet Cong then turned over to the Cambodian Khmer Rouge who killed them.
Last photo of Flynn (left) and Stone on the day they were taken by the Viet Cong:
There's a really great write-up about Sean Flynn's life and death here:
THE SEAN FLYNN I KNEW (pythiapress.com)
Lily Damita apparently spent endless money trying to find her son after his disappearance and had him declared legally dead 14 years later in 1984. Occasionally someone in Cambodia turfs up a body of a westerner and stories go around that it's Sean Flynn or Dana Stone. Genetic testing has ruled this out every time.
According to Francis Coppola, in his film Apocalypse Now, Dennis Hopper's photojournalist character was based on Sean Flynn.
Errol Flynn first wife was the very beautiful French actress Lili Damita, and they had a son, named Sean Flynn, after which they immediately divorced and Sean grew up not really knowing his father. Sean resembled his father physically and became an actor, but wanted more from life than dress up and pretend stuff. So he started working as a freelance photojournalist in the 1960s. He did several tours covering the war in Vietnam for various media outlets. On his last tour in 1970, he and another photojournalist named Dana Stone took off on motorbikes with the aim of interviewing some Viet Cong guerillas at a checkpoint where other foriegn journalists had already been disappeared. This was a bad idea, as they were immediately taken at gunpoint and marched into the woods, and from that point until this day, neither were seen or heard from ever again. Both are believed to have been murdered, with reports that they were held as prisoners by the Viet Cong then turned over to the Cambodian Khmer Rouge who killed them.
Last photo of Flynn (left) and Stone on the day they were taken by the Viet Cong:
There's a really great write-up about Sean Flynn's life and death here:
THE SEAN FLYNN I KNEW (pythiapress.com)
Lily Damita apparently spent endless money trying to find her son after his disappearance and had him declared legally dead 14 years later in 1984. Occasionally someone in Cambodia turfs up a body of a westerner and stories go around that it's Sean Flynn or Dana Stone. Genetic testing has ruled this out every time.
According to Francis Coppola, in his film Apocalypse Now, Dennis Hopper's photojournalist character was based on Sean Flynn.
oh Sebastian!
. Don't know how much truth there is in that though
