Focus Features

On Saturday, February 6, the swashbuckling actor Errol Flynn was demure and ashen as he stood up in a Los Angeles Court room to hear his verdict on two counts of statutory rape. Several months before, a Nebraska farm girl named Betty Hansen told the police that Flynn had had his way with her -- at dinner party in September of that year, when she was only 17. The Grand Jury was about to decide against bringing charges, when another teen, Peggy Satterlee, came forward a week later. She claimed that in 1941, when she was only 15, Flynn seduced her on his yacht, the Sirocco. Charges were filed, Flynn was arrested, and the case soon rose to the front page of every paper in America. Court transcripts fed a public hungry for lurid tales of depraved Hollywood. It also unfortunately repeated a litany of rape myths. When Defense attorney Jerry Geisler presented a photo of Satterlee in a bathing suit, taken just hours after the attack, a jury member later expressed, “She looked happy and carefree, not at all like a girl who had suffered a harrowing physical experience as she had claimed." A group, The American Boys’ Club for the Defense of Errol Flynn (or ABCDEF), was formed to support the movie star, and included among its ranks conservative pundit William F. Buckley, Jr. In the end, Flynn was found not guilty. And the expression “In like Flynn” came to express both the Lothario’s skill with the ladies and his talent for skating scot-free from any consequences. One element of the trial that ended up having long-term consequences for Flynn was meeting Nora Eddington. The 20-year Eddington, who was manning the snack bar in the Court’s coffee shop, would sneak in to catch glimpses of the movie idol on trial for rape. They eventual met in the lobby, fell in love, and Flynn divorced his first wife Lili Damita, and married Eddington that same year.

On Saturday, February 6, the swashbuckling actor Errol Flynn was demure and ashen as he stood up in a Los Angeles Court room to hear his verdict on two counts of statutory rape. Several months before, a Nebraska farm girl named Betty Hansen told the police that Flynn had had his way with her -- at dinner party in September of that year, when she was only 17. The Grand Jury was about to decide against bringing charges, when another teen, Peggy Satterlee, came forward a week later. She claimed that in 1941, when she was only 15, Flynn seduced her on his yacht, the Sirocco. Charges were filed, Flynn was arrested, and the case soon rose to the front page of every paper in America. Court transcripts fed a public hungry for lurid tales of depraved Hollywood. It also unfortunately repeated a litany of rape myths. When Defense attorney Jerry Geisler presented a photo of Satterlee in a bathing suit, taken just hours after the attack, a jury member later expressed, “She looked happy and carefree, not at all like a girl who had suffered a harrowing physical experience as she had claimed." A group, The American Boys’ Club for the Defense of Errol Flynn (or ABCDEF), was formed to support the movie star, and included among its ranks conservative pundit William F. Buckley, Jr. In the end, Flynn was found not guilty. And the expression “In like Flynn” came to express both the Lothario’s skill with the ladies and his talent for skating scot-free from any consequences. One element of the trial that ended up having long-term consequences for Flynn was meeting Nora Eddington. The 20-year Eddington, who was manning the snack bar in the Court’s coffee shop, would sneak in to catch glimpses of the movie idol on trial for rape. They eventual met in the lobby, fell in love, and Flynn divorced his first wife Lili Damita, and married Eddington that same year.