'The Last of Robin Hood' Tells the Story of a Scandal That Rocked Hollywood

Hollywood screen idol Errol Flynn courted scandal throughout his life, and his death was no different. In 1959, the 50-year-old Robin Hood star died in the arms of his teenage protégée Beverly Aadland; the event revealed their illicit affair to the world.

The Last of Robin Hood tells the story — both glamorous and unsavory — of that relationship, which began when Aadland was only 15. Kevin Kline (who bears a startling resemblance to Flynn) stars as the past-his-prime swashbuckler, opposite Dakota Fanning as his chorus girl–actress girlfriend. Susan Sarandon plays Florence Aadland, the stage mother who helped hide her underage daughter’s secret and, years later, penned a tell-all memoir.

Filmmakers Richard Glatzer and Wash Westmoreland — who share directing and writing credits on the movie — based their story largely on conversations they had with Beverly Aadland before her death in 2010. Though she remembers Flynn fondly, an article Aadland wrote for People in 1988 describes the beginnings of their affair as anything but romantic: the actor picked her out of a chorus line and invited her to a private “audition,” later forcing himself on the terrified fifteen-year-old virgin.

In the months that followed, the two became inseparable, with the aging actor bringing his young lover to film shoots and giving her a co-starring role in his final movie, 1959’s Cuban Rebel Girls. Flynn encouraged Beverly’s mother to accompany her daughter everywhere, hoping to avoid another statutory rape charge like the two he’d faced in 1942. (He was acquitted after a well-publicized trial.) All the while, Flynn remained married to actress Patrice Wymore, his wife from 1950 until his death. After Flynn’s death, it was Aadland who faced the repercussions of the affair; in the rocky years that followed, she was hounded by the press, implicated in a shooting, and removed from her mother’s care. Theirs may not have been a great romance, but it certainly had the hallmarks of a great Old Hollywood scandal – the kind that modern filmmakers love to adapt.

The casting of Kevin Kline — who hasn’t taken a role this juicy in years — seems perfect. And while the right guy to bring Flynn to the big screen, he’s not the first. The Golden Age star was played by Jude Law in The Aviator and by Guy Pearce in the 1993 biopic Flynn. Peter O’Toole played a clearly Flynn-inspired character in the 1982 comedy My Favorite Year.

The Last of Robin Hood opens in theaters on August 29.