Sean Flynn

American, 1941-1970

BiographySean Leslie Flynn

May 31, 1941 – 1970

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American actor and journalist. Born to famed swashbuckling movie hero Errol Flynn and actress Lili Damita, Sean Flynn was the object of contention between the divorced couple for his entire life. Raised primarily by his mother, he was alternately ignored and fought for by his father, who engaged in a years-long custody battle with Damita. Sean grew up in Palm Beach, Florida and attended Palm Beach Private School and prep school Lawrenceville. Summers he spent with his father in Jamaica or on the elder Flynn's yacht. He enrolled at Duke University, but soon thereafter accepted a contract to appear in a sequel to his father's hit film Captain Blood (1935), Figlio del capitano Blood, Il (1962). He made a few more films in Europe, in all of which he was extraordinarily handsome but not particularly skilled or at ease before the camera. He became bored with acting and then went to Africa in 1965. There he worked for a time as a game warden and hunter in Kenya. The Vietnam war was heating up, and in 1966 Flynn went to cover the war as a photographer-correspondent for Paris-Match. He was wounded in the knee in March He left Vietnam long enough to appear in a final film, Cinq gars pour Singapour (1967), and to cover the Arab-Israeli war of 1967. He then returned to Vietnam in 1968, where he sold photographs and news stories to most of the major news organizations and made plans for a documentary film on the war. His exploits and those of his colleagues made them somewhat legendary figures in military and journalism circles. In April, 1970, while covering the widening of combat to the border areas of Cambodia, Flynn and colleague Dana Stone disappeared. They were captured by elements of the Viet Cong. Although some reports indicated they may have survived as prisoners for as much as another two months, Flynn and Stone were never definitively heard from again after April 6, 1970, and were almost certainly executed by captors.

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