The Misadventures of John Barrymore, W.C. Fields, Errol Flynn and "The Bundy Drive Boys"
By Gregory William Mank with Charles Heard & Bill Nelson
(Feral House)
The Bundy Drive Boys drank like they meant it. And no matter how bohemian, heroic or tragic any of us have ever felt, chances are one of The Boys proved himself to be more so.
The true star of this biography is the painter John Decker. A master imitator of the great masters, he had no qualms about selling forgeries to clueless celebrities who'd suddenly decided to invest their movie money in fine art. The story of how Decker got to California deserves its own book.
And Mank makes a convincing case that Decker, not Barrymore or Fields, was the leader of The Bundy Drive Boys -- a collection of movie and media stars who found comfort and encouragement in one another's company.They shared a love of booze, women and bawdy humor, and their meetings consisted primarily of staying up until the dawn, reciting Shakespeare and filthy jokes at Decker's Bundy Drive residence in Los Angeles.
Other Bundy Boys included newsmen-turned-screenwriters Gene Fowler and Ben Hecht as well as junior members John Carradine, Errol Flynn and Anthony Quinn. A fringe member, Sadakichi Hartmann -- equal parts crank, poser and earnestly misguided artist -- behaves almost as a subplot in the book.
Through their stories, first told in rapid, short chapters detailing the adolescence and early adulthood of each member, Mank and his co-authors not only render a vivid picture of the film industry in its infancy, but paint a sordid mural of the now rote narrative arc of American celebrity.
Hollywood's Hellfire Club reminds the reader that these are the magnificent first-generation stars of the talkies, an essential move to earn our sympathies. But it still stings when the text reveals the mania that fueled their creativity -- the women they loved and tormented (and who loved and tormented them); and the excess of vice allowed by too much money and too few boundaries.
