Once Again On The
Legend-Busting Trail-This Time One Don Juan-With Errol Flynn’s The Adventures
Of Don Juan (1948) In Mind-A Film Review-Of Sorts
DVD Review
BY Will Bradley
The Adventures of Don Juan,
starring Errol Flynn, Vivica Lindsfor, 1948
[Seth Garth reminded me
recently that in this journalism business, this writing for publication, you
have to find some niche, some “hook” as he said not only for the piece itself
but for you to gain recognition for some particular aspect of the realm of
ideas. It seems that as of late I am becoming the “go-to” guy to debunk or
clarify various legends that have come down to us and which get accepted fairly
easily by those who thrill to legends, myths and religious expressions. Greg
Green has given me the “green light” to pursue this work as he believes that
this looks like my niche- and my “ticket” to a by-line. So be it. W.B.]
*********
Apparently I am the
debunker-in chief of various legends and other signs of humankind’s inability
to get past legends, myths and other religious expressions for explanation of
the ton of stuff even now we don’t know, whether consciously or not, the
unknown. At least I hold that position at this publication it seems after
having to take fellow writer Lance Lawrence to task for telling the tale about
Johnny Cielo, the so-called legendary aviator whom he touted based on the
memories of some rum-dum he met in a bar in Miami who led him by the nose maybe
for just a few drinks when he was hard-up for a story. You can see my retort in
the archives here for September 30, 2018. (Lance was on the bum after busting
up on a big drug cartel story when the informants never showed up probably
re-thinking their options in the light of their probably fates if they were
exposed. In any case Lance was hungry for copy having been on the sidelines for
a while with a threat of losing his by-line if he didn’t come up with something.
I have been there myself although I don’t have a by-line yet but may get one in
this goddam cutthroat business at Lance’s expense.)
I have a certain history on
this subject of fake legends having exposed a modern- day so-called Robin Hood
from around where I grew up by the name of Pretty James Preston (real name
except the “Pretty” since he was very good-looking even in his police mug and
had more than one gal swooning over him, and protecting him with hide-outs and
alibis) whose claim to fame was that he robbed banks and other places where
hard cash was located like department stores in those days in the time-honored
tradition except alone and in broad
daylight. Of course it is easy to break the legend of modern day figures since
there is a fair amount of paper trail involved. In James’ case he had been
touted by his voluntary press agent Scott Allan who worked as a reporter for
the North Adamsville Ledger who had
known Pretty as a young man, as a schoolboy, and who was also tired of the dead-beat
police beat for the newspaper and so got carried away with his reportage. Let
Pretty James off the hook and let him become some later day Robin Hood based on
what had been his leaving a fifty-cent tip for some sullen waitress who he had
an eye on, maybe didn’t jackroll some old guy when cash was tight and who
didn’t pistol whip some poor bank clerk. His exploits like paying rent for
those who lived in “the projects” where he grew up, sending milk and food to
elementary school kids and sending dough along to Sacred Heart parish was all
hooey, all made-up bullshit. By the way this has nothing to do with his
so-called legend but the real Pretty Boy blew away four bank customers for no
good reason except they were in the way on his last caper before going down in
a hail of bullets. Even Scott Allan couldn’t pretty up Pretty Boy on that
one.
Like I said modern-day
legends are easier to bust than the old hoary ones like Robin Hood and the
subject of this piece one Don Juan, or maybe not “one” since my investigations
to be detailed below point to multiple sightings-and sighings. Take Lance’s
fatal pitch on behalf of Johnny Cielo. He egged on the legend created by a
drunken sot met one hard-scrabble night in a gin mill in Miami after falling
down on another more important piece when his people didn’t show. His source
Billy just unwound on him, probably gaining steam as the evening wore on and
they both got drunker. Lance made the cardinal error, strangely not uncommon in
this damn cutthroat business and which I had to my own regret did one time as
well, of not checking sources, of not seeing what was myth and what was true if
anything.
In a capsule Johnny Cielo’s
legend centered on two key points-his “affair” with 1930s and 1940s Hollywood
glamour queen and World War II G.I. wet dream pin-up girl Rita Haywood who
allegedly in a period when she was not seen around Hollywood for a while before
marrying the Aga Khan had followed Johnny down to Central America, to Barranca
after he had run out of options in the States (had had a no-no reputation for
drug smuggling). Never happened, and Lance should have seen that from minute
one, and bells should have rung, rung loudly. What really happened beside
Johnny probably like every other red-blooded guy at the time having Rita’s
photo in his locker, that is about how close he came to her, was he brought
some tramp, some bar girl or whorehouse denizen met who knows where who was
beautiful and looked like Rita and Johnny promoted her as the real deal. The
other later long after he ditched “Rita” legend was that he had run guns to
Fidel and his guys in the Sierra Madres in the late 1950s and had fallen into
the deep blue sea in the Caribbean on some mission. Reality: Johnny had ditched
his plane and passengers while he was doing his real job of ferrying tourists
between Key West and Naples down in Florida. See where things get out of
hand.
As I said previously
breaking down old-time legends, here the Robin Hood legend from the12th century
is a much tougher matter. Really a
thankless task since even with all kinds of at least circumstantial evidence
the vast majority of humankind will still take the legend as good coin. Still
if one can one has to set the record as straight as possible. The big storyline
on this Robin Hood, or whatever his name was since he worked under many aliases
in his business, he “robbed from the rich and gave to the poor.” Pure fantasy
both before and after King Richard’s return and grant of land and other goodies
which according to church and manor records made him one of the richest and
greediest men in England. The records tell it all on the after side and Robin
would not be the first to go from decent guy to bum of the month as he aged and
grew fatter in many ways but he early side is more problematic. The only
official record is Friar Tuck’s monastery record which shows one Robert
Woodson, Hood’s real name, giving the equivalent of two buck to the place. Not
exactly a big hand out considering he is estimated to have robbed every wealthy
traveler who dared to come within twenty miles of his Sherwood Forest base of
operations.
Okay on to today’s balloon
bursting. The busting of the Don Juan legend. First off try as I might I could
find no listing for one Don Juan de la Marca, the name of the person the legend
goes under. The Spanish in that period kept excellent records, remember these
were the guys who ran the Inquisition and recorded every goddam sound cried out
in terror and pain so that made me think that maybe he was working under
another name or that there were several Don Juans, not improbable. The story
goes, at least the cinematic story, that he was a caddish love them and leave
them guy galivanting around Europe, leaving his seed, until his home country queen
knocked him for a loop (for a while) and he became something of a Spanish
patriot against the likes of the mysterious and sinister Duke of Lorca who had
the King’s ear and kept the Queen at bay. Enter Don Juan into the lists in
defense of Queen and realm. Don Juan allegedly was a great swordsman (of the
steel kind not of the kind the prurient reader might think) and was said to
have been permitted to run the academy at court producing young swordsmen
defenders of the realm. Through that connection he was able to rouse the better
elements and make short work of the Duke and his paid mercenaries. Putting
country above self, Don Juan who was supposedly a lover of the Queen, platonic
of course, left the court shortly thereafter rather than tempting the Queen in
some senseless love affair. Off to other romantic conquests.
Reality hits one in the
face hard on this one since it involved some coerced confessions from young
women who were not very world wary or wise. As mentioned earlier there is no
record of a Don Juan de la Marca which after exhaustive research now makes
sense because the whole legend was a hoax, a figment of the imagination of a
bunch of young women who would probably swear to this day they had been
ravished by-somebody. Seemingly it all started at the Convent of Saint Mary’s
(English translation) in rural Cordoba. The young women there, boarders, were
not headed for the nunnery but were being farmed off by their parents for
reasons ranging from keeping them out of temptation’s way to getting rid of
unwanted witnesses to their debaucheries.
A very curious lot of mainly
teenage girls with time on their hands and many dreamy moments. According to
the accounts from the investigation team, the Inquisition boys, one girl, Dona
Maria, spied a lightly-bearded slender young man crossing a field and called
out to him. He answered and went away, only to show up again a day later
walking that same field. Same call out, same walk away. Truth: the young man on
closer inspection was a lout, a youth with warts and all so as he approached the
convent Dona Maria screamed out she had been ravished by the lad. She needed
some back-up for her bogus accusations and enlisted some of her convent mates
into claiming the young bearded lad had ravished them as well. That was how the
rumor got started and the hysterics began as young girls and women in similar
isolated desperately hormonal situations, not always in cloistered convents,
started clamoring the same set of lies about this long gone and who knows what
happened to him youth. The long and short of it was that every Tom, Dick and
Harry (English translations) used that bit as his calling card among his
friends that they were the Don Juan figures even if they were not from Cordoba,
or Spain for that matter. Whoever claimed to be saving the Queen at court from
the intrigues of Don Lorca is just another holy goof impostor, a con man. You
heard it hear for all the good it will for those many young women today who have
their imaginations tweaked by a good-looking guy.
[Postscript: one of my
fellow reporters at another publication whose name I will not mention but who
is known to take particular pleasure in skewering her fellow reviewers has
taken me to task for not checking the Spanish Court Record Almanac where I
would find one Don Juan de la Marco’s name prominently described as master of
the sword (again of the steel variety) and as having been given various awards
for bravery. A look at this ancient dusty book does show such a name but if
that hard-pressed fellow reporter had read further to the man’s age of
sixty-two she might have saved herself some embarrassment trying to skewer me
in this cutthroat business. Moreover, Madame Reviewer might have put her
eyeglasses on to find that the person listed was not only sixty-two years of
age but the name listed was Don Juan de la Marlo, a very different person, and
no threat to that youthful lightly-bearded youth crossing some forlorn field of
some young maiden’s sex-starved imagination legend. W.B.]
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