Voyage en Birmanie

After production of Errol Flynn's financial debacle, WILLIAM TELL, was halted, the actor discovered that he not only had lost the money he'd invested in the project, but that his long-time business manager had been swindling him for years, as well. Fighting bankruptcy, the aging one-time 'King' of Hollywood swashbucklers found himself desperately in need of work, to stave off an army of creditors. Fortunately, legendary British producer/director Herbert Wilcox liked the high-living star, and, realizing that Flynn's name still had marquee value in England, cast him opposite his wife, popular British actress Anna Neagle, in the filming of her recent stage success, 'The Glorious Days', retitled LILACS IN THE SPRING.

A sentimental tale told largely in flashback, Neagle portrays an English stage star who is injured in a WWII air raid. Flying from Hollywood, her long-estranged father, film star John Beaumont (Flynn, with silver hair) must deal with an army of the press, and her would-be beau, British army officer Charles King (David Farrar). Meanwhile, Neagle, unconscious, hallucinates herself as being legendary star Nell Gywn, and Queen Victoria. Upon seeing her father, she relives her mother's early life, when she was 'discovered' by Beaumont in his days as a vaudevillian song-and-dance man (Flynn gets a chance to do a bit of soft shoe, singing 'Lily of Laguna', and making up for his limited musical ability with abundant charm). As her star ascends, his declines, and after leaving the stage to fight in WWI, he returns to find himself a forgotten man. Hollywood beckons, however, and he sees an opportunity to strike it rich as an actor in motion pictures. She refuses to leave England, and the couple separate. Achieving stardom in America, Beaumont is far too involved in his career to get to know his daughter...until her injury reminds him of how much he loved her mother, and needed to know her.

Maudlin, yes, but British audiences loved this kind of tearjerker, which offered several well-choreographed production numbers with Neagle...and, if you look carefully among the silhouetted male dancers during a tango, you'll find 24-year old Sean Connery, unbilled, and fresh from the chorus of a London stage revival of 'South Pacific'.

While the film bombed in the U.S. (under the title LET'S MAKE UP), it was popular enough in the U.K. to keep Errol Flynn working, and his creditors at bay for a little longer. Next on his agenda would be his very last swashbuckler, THE DARK AVENGER...

Late Flynn, when he took almost any work he could get to pay off alimony. He turns in a sincere, believable performance, occasionally lampooning himself, and does a creditable song and dance number. Other points of interest include Peter Graves as Prince Albert (if you didn't know, you'd never guess) and Sean Connery is supposedly in there somewhere as an extra, but I haven't found him.

"Let's Make Up" is the American title of the British film I watched on DVD, "Lilacs in the Spring." Some people may see this sort of film as sappy, but the British audiences of the early 1950s like it. One other reviewer mentioned that the English generally like this sort of film.

Well this is a combination comedy, romance and musical, with some fantasy and drama, and set on the edge of the Second World War. The fantasy is imaginary scenes dreamed by Anna Neagle's Carole Beaumont during her lapses or periods of unconscious after having suffered a blow on the head during London bombing inn WW II. The plot is a little complicated with her father, John Beaumont, played by Errol Flynn, who has bene living in America where he is a major cinema star in Hollywood. He went there after WW I when his stage star faded in England and that of his wife (also Carole Beaumont and played by Neagle), rose. Beau had taken her under his wing to make her a star, but she then didn't wanted to leave the British stage to go to American with her husband.

There's more to this love story as well; but then skipping to WW II and the young girl's rise under another actor/director, Charles King (played by David Farrar). Eventually, Beau travels to England to see his daughter whom he has seen for years, and King is about to head out with a show troupe for Burma to entertain the British and Allied forces there. Will love win out this time, or show business again break up another couple? Perhaps the vice of experience in the person of another successful actor and father, Beau Beaumont will help the decision.

The dancing, music and show numbers in this film are very good and the main reason to see this film. Neagle does more dancing with some very good variety that I had seen in any other film of hers that I've watched. And Flynn gets in some nice soft shoe. It's a nice period film of the times, history, customs, and people and what they enjoyed in entertainment.

... part musical, part old fashioned nostalgic drama, and Flynn is barely in the first half of the production. You keep waiting for him to appear. But the film improves noticeably in its second half when Errol is in it. The story takes on aspects (never fully explored, unfortunately) of A Star Is Born, with Flynn as a faded stage star whose wife's show business career is on the rise. It allows Errol to show some vulnerability.

His finest moment of acting in the film is set on a Hollywood sound stage. Flynn's character by this time has had a comeback as a costume action film star (obviously based on the actor himself) and he is dressed up in uniform for what appears to be a Charge of the Light Brigade-type adventure.

By this time his character is divorced from Anna Neagle but it's apparent that he still carries a torch for her. He receives word on the sound stage just as they are about to shoot a scene that Neagle will be re-marrying. Flynn tries to act breezy and stoic as an aggressive reporter peppers him with questions about the upcoming wedding but you can see that he is bothered by the questions. He gives the reporter a boot in the rear (pure real life Flynn) and when the reporter tries to punch him in response an angry Flynn knocks him down.

Then he has to shoot the scene for the film he is making. It is here that Flynn has an unexpectedly touching moment as an actor. He's having a dialogue exchange with another actor and there is a closeup of Flynn's face. His mind starts to wander back to his wife and the good times they had once had as he says a few words related to her not in the script. In this closeup Flynn's eyes show the faintest signs of starting to water and his chin begins to slightly quiver.

The director yells "Cut!" and Flynn snaps back into reality once again. But in that brief four or five second closeup there genuinely appears to be pain in his eyes. It's a beautifully understated moment, and, brief as it is, reflects the often unrealized potential Errol had as an actor. I only wish Lilacs in the Spring had allowed him more opportunities this good but, at least, it does have this one touching moment.

When the producing/acting team of Herbert Wilcox and Anna Neagle got Errol Flynn he was willing to work for just about anything in Lilacs In The Spring. He owed the US government a lot of back taxes and was abroad so he couldn't be arrested for same and his epic William Tell had gone belly up. So the Wilcoxes were able to get Flynn for a fraction of his asking price from a decade ago for this Neagle film.

In it Anna Neagle plays a musical comedy star and her own daughter, in addition to reprising two of her previous screen roles in dream sequences, Queen Victoria and Nell Gwynn. The frequent use of flashbacks and imaginary sequences is going to leave the viewer quite a bit confused.

As for Errol Flynn he's both husband and father to Anna Neagle in her two different guises. The young Anna Neagle is caught between two suitors, producer David Farrar and stagedoor johnny Peter Graves. That is not the Peter Graves of Mission Impossible.

Neagle sings beautifully of course, she was one of the United Kingdom's premier musical comedy stars as well as a film star. As for Flynn he does a nice song and dance to Lily Of Laguna, but compare it to the number he did in Thank Your Lucky Stars with Warner Brothers during World War II, That's What You Jolly Well Get. Errol's aged quite considerably and it shows.

I wish both of these stars had teamed years earlier because they're a bit long in the tooth for this material, especially Flynn.