In October 1942, Errol Flynn was one of the world’s biggest movie stars. When two teenage girls accused him of rape, his trial became a public spectacle and an insight into sexual double standards.
The public spectacle also brings to mind Johnny Depp’s defamation case against Amber Heard. The legal issues in this recent trial were completely different – Depp was suing for defamation. But the case mobilised legions of Depp fans around the courthouse and on the internet who heaped scorn on Heard. Depp’s most beloved film role is the swashbuckling pirate, Jack Sparrow.
Errol Flynn was one of the first film stars to contend with fame on a mass and intense scale. His trial was a media circus, in which his male privilege was preserved. He had defeated what he termed, in echoes of colonial New Guinea, “the head-hunters of California”. His teenage accusers, lured to Hollywood’s bright lights, were compelled to participate in a traumatic court case in which the industry’s exploitation of young women was briefly exposed.
Though they were cast as scheming predators, the two girls tried to return to obscurity and rebuild their lives after the trial. It would take the #MeToo movement in 2017 – 75 years later – for the systematic abused embedded in Hollywood’s structures of power to be taken seriously.