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.]