Well, now. It seems that even rotting my brain with swashbucklers can be educational. :)
For one (and here's the race issue coming up again, oddly)-- it seems that the brief bio I read of Alexandre Dumas, père in the foreword of Three Musketeers, which mentioned that although he had popular fame he never achieved great recognition until the modern day, left out the "why." He was a quadroon-- his grandmother was a slave from Haiti, and the disapproval of his "mixed blood" haunted him his entire life.
And for another... I keep falling for Aussie guys. ::sigh:: It seems Errol Flynn was not (as I thought) English, but Australian by birth. And he was a near-unknown when he was cast in the lead role of Captain Blood-- Robert Donat (The Count of Monte Cristo,The 39 Steps, and (later) Goodbye, Mr. Chips) was originally cast as the good doctor, but when he didn't show up on the first day of shooting, Warner Brothers had to scramble for another lead. (And the young Errol wasn't their first choice, even then.)
His first film role (a mere 18 months earlier) was playing Fletcher Christian in an Australian-made film called In the Wake of the Bounty-- the *first* movie ever made based on the story of the famous mutiny. Amusingly enough, Flynn was, himself, a descendant of the HMS Bounty mutineers-- his mother was Lily Mary "Marrelle" Young, descendant of both Edward Young (a midshipman on the Bounty) and Fletcher Christian. And Fletcher Christian's ancestry can be traced back to the Plantagenets (as in, Edward I, Henry II, etc). And lest these not be enough swashy coincidences for you-- Flynn is also reputedly related (distantly) to Robert De Vere, one of many names bandied about as a candidate for the "real" Robin Hood.
Perhaps swashing really *is* in the blood...?
Posted by gris at August 21, 2004 09:02 PM