Rob Price
Gutbrain Records
rob + gutbrain.com = email

2019 March 22 • Friday

Well, here's an unusual book. The Big Love by Florence Aadland is the author's account of her underage daughter's affair with Errol Flynn in the late 1950s.

It's kind of a car crash of a read: thoroughly unpleasant but fascinating. Aadland herself isn't a reliable narrator, apparently lying about her age and also coming across as delusional.

She insists that everything that happened to her (and her daughter and to this other guy who kills himself) was preordained. If this is something you genuinely believe, then it follows that nothing that happens can be your fault or responsibility.

She also casually mentions that she joined the Rosicrucian order, "made a detailed study of life and the universe", "obtained all the Rosicrucian degrees", "studied science and telepathy and learned as much about the human nervous system as a doctor does" and "learned about psychic phenomena and discovered by experiments that I myself was an excellent psychic subject".

This is all pretty intriguing. And it sounds like a lot of this knowledge and these skills and abilities could be very useful in life. But strangely, none of it ever comes in handy at all. Aadland doesn't share what these experiments might have been and at no time does she seem to have any special insight or foreknowledge other than her vague assertion that everything was already written by destiny.

She's the proudest of proud mothers, constantly declaring that any quality her daughter Beverly might possess is the most superlative such a quality can be. She doesn't mention that Beverly's initials are the first three letters of "beauty" and this seems out of character, though perhaps crosswords and such aren't her line.

While this is her book, it's presented as "told to" Tedd Thomey, a writer who delivered a book called The Loves of Errol Flynn as well as novels with names like Homicide Honeymoon and The Sadist.

According to Big Love, Errol Flynn violently raped Beverly Aadland when she was fifteen years old. And, also according to Big Love, it was true love.

Florence doesn't hear about this for a while and when Beverly finally tells her about it, at which point she and Errol are very much a thing, Florence is able to get angry at her daughter but somehow never finds the right moment to tell off the rapist.

When Errol Flynn attacked Beverly Aadland, Beverly apparently "hit him", "told him not to" and "tried to get away". She "cried and cried" and "was petrified with fear". "And after it was all over she ran out of there, ran out of the bedroom to get away from him."

Later we learn about some advice Florence had given her daughter. It seems bizarre to me.

Because she was such an unusually attractive child, I taught Beverly the facts of life very early. When she was only two years old, I tried to get it across to her that she should never let any strangers touch her or pick her up. Later, when she was old enough to understand, I told her what to do if she should be molested.

>"Don't get panicky," I said. "Don't say anything foolish like 'Let me go or I'll tell Mama!' That's the worst thing you can say. It just makes a man like that act crazier and wilder. The best thing is just to act like you don't notice what he's doing. Talk to him calmly about something else and you'll probably get away without any trouble."

It's a strangely compelling story, adapted both for the stage (with Tracey Ullman) and as a movie (with Susan Sarandon).

You'll learn that Errol Flynn didn't use underarm deodorant and had a vasectomy. I think there are at least three times when he screens his own movies at home for guests. (Was this a common thing? It seems kind of nuts to me.)

Florence Aadland tries to portray herself as a kind of chaperone but it's hard to believe she was very effective since Errol and Beverly can just take off to Jamaica for a few weeks and leave Florence behind.

Tacked onto the end of the book is a reprint of a fairly snarky article from the August 1960 issue of Master Detective magazine. It's called "Beverly Aadland — Precocious Femme Fatale" and is written by Chris Edwards, who paints a much more sordid picture but also doesn't seem like the most reliable of authorities.

The Big Love is dedicated "To The Swashbuckler, Himself, With All Our Love" and the first line is "There's one thing I want to make clear right off: my baby was a virgin the day she met Errol Flynn".