The Errol Flynn Conspiracy

The film star Hedy Lamarr enjoyed a long and successful career as a glamorous Hollywood actress, making over twenty-five films during her time there. Even before she arrived in the United States from her native Austria in 1938, she was infamous for her sex scene in the Czech movie Extase. Her final appearance was in The Female Animal which she made 20 years later.

What is less well-known was her incredible intellect.  When she was not acting, she spent much of her time improving existing devices, and inventing new appliances. She developed her most famous invention during World War Two. Along with composer George Antheil, Hedy devised an instrument which thwarted the Axis' ability to jam Allied radio-guided torpedoes.  It is thanks to her and Antheil's pioneering work in radio frequency transmission equipment that we can all enjoy the convenience of mobile phones and internet communication. The U.S. military, however, turned down this device, thus possibly lengthening the conflict by several months, if not longer.

Another celebrity who found fame in Hollywood at the same time as Miss Lamarr was the Australian actor, Errol Flynn, who was born in Tasmania in 1909. He arrived in Hollywood in 1934 and was known for his heroic and swashbuckling roles in such films as The Adventures of Robin Hood and The Sea Hawk . Despite portraying patriotic characters in many of his later movies, what was less evident at the time were his anti-British and pro-Nazi sympathies. He became involved with an Austrian doctor named Hermann Erben, who was a Nazi agent as well as being closely associated with Flynn.

Did Flynn and Erben have any part in the U.S. Navy's refusal to adopt the inventors' equipment? If so, how could they have influenced  such an important decision? Did Hedy Lamarr and George Antheil know of Flynn's duplicity, and if Flynn and Erben were, indeed,  responsible for the U.S. Navy's determination, why were they never exposed?

Errol Flynn passed away in 1959 at the age of fifty, ostensibly from his hard-living lifestyle. Did he die from his own hedonistic excesses, however,  or were more subtle influences at work in hastening his untimely demise...?

This parallel reality novel explores the possibility that Flynn and others conspired to bring America and its allies to their knees at the most crucial part of World War Two, when the fate of the Free World itself was at stake. 

To be published by Black Rose Writing in March 2023

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