- Errol Flynn
Errol Flynn has long amused me. I used to enjoy his pirate movies as a kid and grew to love the guys sense of humor when I visited Hearst Castle.
William Randolph Hearst build an amazing mansion with cottages and he loved to invite celebrities to the estate . Often he would have a dozen or so a-list movie stars and singers there at a time.
The purpose of the invite was to collect gossip for Hearst's news papers. To that end, one of the rules was everyone had to be present for dinner. It was a long skinny table and Hearst would sit at the middle instead of one of the heads, and new guests would sit next to him and the longer their stay (or the more boring they were) the further out they would sit each day. Hearst never asked anyone to leave, but the further out you sat, it was a hint that it might be time to go.
Hearst was big on hints.
The other big rule was either no drinking, or at least no drunkenness.
Errol Flynn was invited up to the Castle. In those days it would be a train ride to town and either horse or car to the house. Errol seemed to have spent the whole trip drinking. He was hammered. He got to his cottage and unpacked his bags. He also packed a bunch of women's underwear, with which he very drunkenly went around the estate and put women's undies on all the various statues.
When he got back to his room he found his bags had been repacked for him, and he then left.
For some reason this story amuses me greatly and it's been a dream for a few years to find someway to sneak and put a giant set if lingerie on the Burning Man some year, and then spend the rest of the week drunk acting like a pirate, while silently chuckling to myself as people gossip about who could do such a thing.