Sean Flynn

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This article is about the actor and photojournalist presumed killed in Cambodia. For the young actor, see Sean Flynn-Amir.

Sean Leslie Flynn, photo from an identification card.

Sean Leslie Flynn (born May 31, 1941, believed killed 1971, Bei Met, Cambodia) was an American actor and freelance photojournalist best-known for his coverage of the Vietnam War. He started a news service in Saigon with John Steinbeck IV, son of the American author.

Flynn was the only child from the marriage of actors Errol Flynn and Lili Damita, and after a brief enrollment at Duke University he became a freelance photo journalist under contract to Time Magazine. In the search for exceptional images, he teamed up with elite Special Forces units and irregulars operating in the remotest areas. His taste for adventure was to have tragic consequences, however. On April 6, 1970, he and fellow journalist Dana Stone (working for CBS) left Phnom Penh on rented Honda motorbikes to find the front lines of fighting in Cambodia. Traveling southeast on Route One near a eucalyptus plantation in eastern Cambodia, the two men were stopped at a check point at grid coordinates XT171209 in Svay Rieng Province, Cambodia, and led away by elements of the Viet Cong Tay Ninh Armed Forces and elements of the combined North Vietnamese-Viet Cong Ningh Division based in Cambodia.

Information obtained from indigenous sources indicated that Stone and Flynn were executed in mid-1971 in Kampong Cham Province, Cambodia. Various sources, including an intercepted radio message from COSUN, the Viet Cong high command, indicated that Flynn and Stone survived. One source reported that he had seen a group of very long haired, bearded, tall prisoners near Minot, Cambodia who were identified as 'imperialist journalists'.

In the years that followed, occasional reports emerged from isolated Cambodian villages of a "movie star" who was being held prisoner by the Khmer Rouge. Although his mother Lili Damita spent an enormous amount of money searching for him, he was never found. In the 1980's, a vagrant claimed to have been recently in Mexico having been drinking buddies with a man who claimed to be the son of Errol Flynn. This was never verified or substantiated. In 1984 he was declared legally dead, and one of 22 international journalists missing in Southeast Asia, most known to have been captured.

Important evidence concerning Flynn's fate was uncovered in 1991 by his former photojournalist colleague Tim Page. According to a report published in the UK Sunday Times on 24 March 1991, Page returned to Cambodia in November 1990, determined to resolve the mystery. He began his search at Sangke Kaong, the first village where the Flynn and Stone were known to have been held captive for several months according to documents released by the CIA. Page tracked down one former villager who identified Flynn from a contemporary photograph, and recalled that the American had told her that both his parents were movie actors.

According to the report, Flynn and Stone were moved north in early 1971 by their captors to Rokar Knor and then Peus, following the advance of US forces into Cambodia. Following a hunger strike, they were moved again, and eventually handed over to the Khmer Rouge. Investigations by Page and a TV documentary maker led them to a village known as Bei Met, and to an empty grave that had allegedly been the final resting place of two foreigners. Forensic examination of the few remains left in the grave suggested they belonged to a tall man and a short man, and that both had met a violent end.

[edit] Acting Career

Flynn accepted a contract to appear in a sequel to his father's hit film Captain Blood (film), The Son of Captain Blood also known as Figlio del capitano Blood, Il (1962) being a European production. He made a few more films in Europe also including, The Sign of Zorro (1963) (aka "Duel at the Rio Gande"). He became bored with acting and then went to Africa in 1965 to start his career in journalism. In 1966, in need of money he made a brief return to acting to star in the French-Italian action film, "Cinq Gars Pour Singapour" (aka "Five Ashore in Singapore" filmed in that city), his eighth and final starring film. After its completion he returned to Vietnam and his newfound career as a photojournalist.

[edit] Trivia

The story of Sean Flynn was immortalized by The Clash in the song "Sean Flynn" from the album Combat Rock.
Sean Flynn is a major character in Michael Herr's Dispatches, one of the most acclaimed American literary treatments of the Vietnam War. Herr's friendship with Flynn during his years in Vietnam is vividly described.
Portayed by Kevin Dillon in 1992 mini-series Frankie's House.