Errol, Fidel and the Cuban Rebel Girls
Boyd Anderson
Errol, Fidel and the Cuban Rebel Girls
Boyd Anderson
Based on actual events, the unlikely friendship between Errol Flynn and Fidel Castro is one of the 20th century’s great untold stories.
Cuba, 1959- In the final year of Errol Flynn’s life, he found time for one last adventure. The dashing star of many Hollywood films had always longed to be a real hero. Fidel Castro was the genuine article, and now he was looking for fame. What each man had the other wanted, and as revolution raged around them, the stage was set for an explosive encounter.
Cuba is on the brink of revolution and Errol Flynn is there making what will be his final film. When Flynn and Castro meet, the weapons they use aren’t guns and grenades, but words and women. Errol is involved in the latest in a long line of relationships with under-age women. Fidel is ready to march triumphantly into Havana after overthrowing the Batista government. Within days of the coup, Errol is chased out of Cuba with the firing squad and Fidel hot on his heels.
Featuring a full cast of Hollywood movie stars, beautiful women, Cuban revolutionaries and New York mobsters, Errol & Fidel and the Cuban Rebel Girls is the story of two men at the opposite ends of astonishing careers. It is a story with two heroes … but there is only ever room for one.
Review
Ann Standish, freelance reviewer
It’s 1958. Hollywood star Errol Flynn is past his prime, living out life in Jamaica propped up by vodka, morphine and his underage companion, Beverley Aadland. A young Fidel Castro is on the verge of taking power in nearby Cuba, fighting the Batista regime with his band of guerrilla rebels. Improbably, each has something to offer the other. Flynn seizes on the cinematic potential of the revolution to conceive a film – the hopelessly B-grade Assault of the Rebel Girls, written and directed by Flynn and starring Beverley – and descends on the Cuban hills to shoot it among real fighting and real rebels. Castro’s support is essential, and Castro in turn takes the opportunity to exploit Flynn and to learn how to come across as a national hero.
Australian author Boyd Anderson’s novel is a fast-paced – though never facile – imagining of these events; a self-aware exploration of artificial and genuine heroism. Anderson convincingly captures the voice of a celluloid swashbuckler on the way out and the symmetry of the main characters’ trajectory is pleasing, but what fascinates most about this novel are the events it depicts – implausible, but true.
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