Beverly Elaine Aadland (September 16, 1942 - January 5, 2010) was an American film actress.
She appeared in films including South Pacific. As a teenager, she co-starred in the Errol Flynn film Cuban Rebel Girls, and had a relationship with him.
Early years
Aadland was born in the Hollywood neighborhood of Los Angeles. She entered show business as a child, appearing in the film Death of a Salesman (1951).
Biography
Beverly Elaine Aadland was 17 when she was with actor Errol Flynn as he died of a heart attack on October 14, 1959, in Vancouver, British Columbia at the age of 50. In 1961, Aadland's mother, Florence Aadland, alleged in the book The Big Love that actor Flynn had a sexual relationship with her daughter starting at age 15, yet there is also speculation he was led to believe she was 18. The book would be turned into a one-woman Broadway show starring Tracey Ullman as Florence. The memoir was reissued in 2018 by Spurl Editions. Beverly Aadland gave an account of her relationship with Flynn in People in 1988, confirming that she had had a sexual relationship with Flynn in her teens and that she was with him at the time of his death. Her relationship with Flynn was the subject of the 2013 movie The Last of Robin Hood, in which Aadland was played by Dakota Fanning.
Personal life
In 1960, William Stanciu, her then boyfriend, died in her apartment after being shot in a struggle between the two. That event led to her being a ward of the court for the following year.
Aadland was married and divorced twice before she married Ronald Fisher in the late 1960s. The couple had a daughter.
Beverly Aadland Fisher died on January 5, 2010, at the Lancaster Community Hospital from complications of diabetes and congestive heart failure. She was 67 years old.
Death of a Salesman (1951) as girl (uncredited)
You Bet Your Life - Groucho Marx - Performing Contestant, sang and danced "All Shook Up"
South Pacific (1958) as Nurse in Thanksgiving Show
Cuban Rebel Girls (1959) as Beverly Woods
The Red Skelton Show (1959) as Beatnik Girl
Errol Leslie Thomson Flynn (20 June 1909 - 14 October 1959) was an Australian actor who achieved worldwide fame during the Golden Age of Hollywood. He was known for his romantic swashbuckler roles, frequent partnerships with Olivia de Havilland, and reputation for his womanising and hedonistic personal life. His most notable roles include Robin Hood in The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938), which was later named by the American Film Institute as the 18th greatest hero in American film history, the lead role in Captain Blood (1935), Major Geoffrey Vickers in The Charge of the Light Brigade (1936), and the hero in a number of Westerns such as Dodge City (1939), Santa Fe Trail, Virginia City (both 1940), and San Antonio (1945).
In late 1942, two 17-year-old girls, Betty Hansen and Peggy Satterlee, separately accused Flynn of statutory rape at the Bel Air home of Flynn's friend Frederick McEvoy, and on board Flynn's yacht Sirocco, respectively.
Flynn was acquitted, but the trial's widespread coverage and lurid overtones permanently damaged his carefully cultivated screen image as an idealised romantic leading player.
By 1959, Flynn's financial difficulties had become so serious that he flew on 9 October to Vancouver, British Columbia, to negotiate the lease of his yacht Zaca to the businessman George Caldough. As Caldough was driving Flynn and the 17-year-old actress Beverly Aadland, who had accompanied him on the trip, to the airport on 14 October for a Los Angeles-bound flight, Flynn began complaining of severe pain in his back and legs.
Grant Gould then performed a leg massage in the apartment's bedroom and advised Flynn to rest there before resuming his journey. Flynn responded that he felt "ever so much better." After 20 minutes Aadland checked on Flynn and discovered him unresponsive. Despite immediate emergency medical treatment from Gould and a swift transfer by ambulance to Vancouver General Hospital, he did not regain consciousness and was pronounced dead that evening.
In 1961, Beverly Aadland's mother, Florence, co-wrote The Big Love with Tedd Thomey, alleging that Flynn had been involved in a sexual relationship with her daughter, who was 15 when it began.[112][113] The memoir was adapted in 1991 by Jay Presson Allen and her daughter Brooke Allen into a one-woman play, The Big Love, which starred Tracey Ullman as Florence Aadland in its New York premiere.[114][115]
In 1996, Beverly Aadland gave an interview to Britain's Channel 4 documentary series Secret Lives corroborating the sexual relationship, and claiming that the first time she and Flynn had sex, he had "forced himself" on her. She also said she loved him and wished they had more time together.[116] "I was very lucky. He could have had any woman he wanted. Why it was me, I have no idea. Never will."