Damita, Lili (c. 1901–1994)

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Damita, Lili (c. 1901–1994)

French-born leading lady who, though celebrated as a popular movie actress, achieved even greater celebrity as a result of her tempestuous marriage to the swashbuckling Errol Flynn. Born Liliane Marie Madeleine Carré in Bordeaux, France, on July 19, 1901 (some sources state she was born in Paris on July 10, 1904); died in Miami Beach, Florida, on March 21, 1994; married Errol Flynn (an actor), in 1935; married Allen Loomis; children: (first marriage) Sean Flynn.

Born in Bordeaux, France, Liliane Carré was a beautiful girl who became a music-hall star at age 16 at the Folies Bergere, soon succeeding the famous Mistinguett as the star of the Casino de Paris revue. Educated at convent schools in Portugal, Spain and Greece, she studied dancing in Belgium and entertained Allied troops during World War I. Her name change took place when King Alphonso XIII of Spain, a notorious womanizer, saw her in a red bathing suit on the beach in Biarritz, and asked who the "damita del maillo rojo" (girl in the red bathing suit) was. Liliane Carré was now Lili Damita, and her acting career flourished in the mid-1920s in French, German, Austrian, and British silent films.

Damita spoke five languages, but it was for her stunning looks, not her linguistic talents, that Samuel Goldwyn summoned her from Berlin to Hollywood in 1928 to play opposite Ronald Colman in the movie version of Joseph Conrad's "Rescue." The film was a success, prompting the New York Times reviewer to describe her as an actress who was "fascinatingly handsome and gives an intelligent performance" in a role generally regarded as being difficult. The films she starred in during the next few years included The Bridge of San Luis Rey (1929), based on the Thornton Wilder novel, The Cockeyed World (1929), one of Holly-wood's last silent films, and Fighting Caravans (1931), a lively adventure comedy in which she shared top billing with Gary Cooper. She was also in 1931's Friends and Lovers, with Adolphe Menjou, Laurence Olivier, and Erich von Stroheim. Two more hit films followed in 1932: The Match King, based on the life of Swedish "match king" Ivar Kreuger, and This is the Night, with Cary Grant, in which she starred as a philandering married woman.

Lili Damita found herself increasingly at the center of the American cult of celebrity during the ensuing years. Fan magazines and newspapers alike chronicled every detail of her life, her rumored or genuine love affairs, changes of hairdo, and new film roles. By the mid-1930s, she was an established superstar and had been romantically linked with many men, including Prince Louis Ferdinand of Prussia, grandson of German ex-Kaiser Wilhelm II and great-great-grandson of Queen Victoria . In 1929, the prince spent several years in the United States, working for Henry Ford in Detroit, obtaining a pilot's license, and meeting Franklin D. Roosevelt and Charlie Chaplin. In Hollywood, Louis Ferdinand met and fell in love with Damita. He planned to elope with her to Tijuana but decided at the last moment that she had been exploiting their relationship for publicity reasons and broke off the affair. Damita's comment on the episode was curt, noting simply that "I will never marry royalty, they are too self-centered, and so am I." Louis Ferdinand would marry Kira of Russia in 1938.

In 1935, Damita completed work on what turned out to be her last film, the farce Brew-ster's Millions. That same year, she married the Tasmanian-born actor Errol Flynn, who had pursued her with great ardor after spotting her in the company of Merle Oberon on a transatlantic liner. Damita soon discovered that Flynn's charms were superficial. He was a compulsive womanizer, an alcoholic, and spent his income as fast as it was acquired, compelling him to earn money by carrying out spy missions against the U.S. for a Nazi agent, Austrian-born Dr. Hermann Erben.

But Damita and Flynn were suited to each other in at least some ways. Both enjoyed music, dancing, and social life, and both were endowed with enough intelligence and intellectual curiosity to enjoy good books. She taught him about French wines and French cooking, while he instructed her in the basics of English cookery. Yet from the outset, their union was doomed. Emotionally insecure, Flynn needed constant praise, something Damita was not willing to do. Soon, minor tensions turned into major clashes. Tempers flared, and years later Flynn recalled that "Only by great nimbleness of foot did I avoid a weekly fractured skull." Both Flynn and Damita broke their marriage vows, and some in Hollywood believed that both actors were bisexual.

The Damita-Flynn marriage, punctuated by quarrels, separations, and acrimonious attempts at reconciliation, somehow lasted until 1941, the same year Damita gave birth to her only child, a son named Sean. After Sean's birth, she began divorce proceedings against Flynn, who found himself accused at the time of statutory rape by two adolescent members of his fan club. Although he was acquitted of the rape charges, in 1942 the divorce judge awarded Damita half of Flynn's property and $1,500 a month. The dissipated Flynn died in October 1959. Damita remarried in 1962, her second husband being Allen B. Loomis, a wealthy Iowan. This marriage would also end in divorce.

Her son Sean attempted an acting career in the 1960s but was drawn to the war in Vietnam as a photographer. He disappeared in Cambodia in 1970 and was declared legally dead by a Palm Beach court in 1984. It was not until almost three decades after his disappearance that the mystery of what happened to him was explained. Declassified CIA documents released in the 1990s told how Sean Flynn and another photojournalist, Dana Stone, were captured near the Vietnamese-Cambodian border. They were held in a small village for months, marched north with the villagers into Cambodia, then taken back to Vietnam and finally, when they pressed

for their release by going on a hunger strike, Flynn and Stone were beaten to death with hoes by a squad sent in by the Khmer Rouge.

Despite her determined efforts over many years to find out, Lili Damita never knew what happened to her son. She died of Alzheimer's disease in Palm Beach, Florida, on March 21, 1994, too late to comprehend any CIA report.