Actor: Errol Flynn

Errol Flynn made Captain Blood, The Adventures of Robin Hood and The Sea Hawk, and no one has bettered him at that particular register of cheerful physical bravado.

He was tried and acquitted of statutory rape in 1943, and the case and the drinking dominated his public image for the rest of his life. He died at fifty. The Robin Hood performance remains the standard against which every subsequent version is measured.

Captain Blood (1935) film posterBasil Rathbone

Captain Blood (1935)

Curtiz's 1935 pirate film that launched both Flynn and Olivia de Havilland. Blood escapes and becomes a pirate captain raiding Spanish vessels in the Caribbean before eventually serving King William III after the Glorious Revolution restores his civil rights.

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