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Showdown [First Printing]
The barbarous South Sea Islands--where a choice of two loves is made.
Shamus O'Thames, skipper of the tramp ship Maski, chartered to take a cargo of Hollywood actors to a location shoot finds himself fighting hurricanes, the savage sea and even a shipwreck while trying to decide between 2 very different women.
Shamus O'Thames, skipper of the tramp ship Maski, chartered to take a cargo of Hollywood actors to a location shoot finds himself fighting hurricanes, the savage sea and even a shipwreck while trying to decide between 2 very different women.
Paperback
First published September 20, 1946
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About the author
Errol Flynn
18 books35 followersErrol Flynn appeared in some 60 films from 1933 to the late 1950s and gained the reputation of being the quintessential Hollywood swashbuckling sword-wielding adventure hero. His private life was a different matter altogether, and he was involved in a number of scandal-laden Hollywood incidents.
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
September 4, 2013
Errol Flynn once said, “By instinct I’m an adventurer; by choice I’d like to be a writer; by pure, unadulterated luck, I’m an actor.” Above all else the man wanted to be recognized as a writer. It's a shame. There are over 30,000 ratings on his film "Adventures of Robin Hood" yet his two lone works of fiction (Showdown and Beam Ends) cannot even garner 30 ratings on goodreads and amazon combined.
There is nothing inadequate about Errol Flynn the writer. For "Showdown" in particular, all he needed was a better editor and the novel might have enjoyed relative success in its day. His prose is above par and his character development is impressive.
Reluctantly I admit if you are unfamiliar with Errol Flynn the immortal legend, the novel is nothing more than an easy read on a summer's day. But if you are familiar with Mr. Flynn and his womanizing, amoral ways, everything about the book becomes increasingly more interesting.
In the beginning he establishes Granice, a beacon of purity. The protaganist , Shamus O'Thames, pines for the purity Granice exudes under her white veil. But she is off limits; she is a nun. He leaves the island they were both residing on in order to spare her the conflict of his primal urges. Her image and all that she represented stays with him for the remainder of the novel. He tries maintain a certain level of celibacy in order to remain faithful to that image.
But that image blurs when he meets, and subsequently falls for, quasi-harlot Cleo. Their night of consummation is a titillating passage yet, filled with more heart than you would expect a womanizer like Flynn to have.
The Granice-Shamus-Cleo triangle has a strong freudian mother/father theme. When I get a chance, I might re-read the novel to delve deeper into it.
Overall I'd give this novel 3.5 stars. Great Character development, interesting and surprising for Errol Flynn fans but nothing very original in the basic story line (sea voyage, savages, and shipwrecks)
There is nothing inadequate about Errol Flynn the writer. For "Showdown" in particular, all he needed was a better editor and the novel might have enjoyed relative success in its day. His prose is above par and his character development is impressive.
Reluctantly I admit if you are unfamiliar with Errol Flynn the immortal legend, the novel is nothing more than an easy read on a summer's day. But if you are familiar with Mr. Flynn and his womanizing, amoral ways, everything about the book becomes increasingly more interesting.
In the beginning he establishes Granice, a beacon of purity. The protaganist , Shamus O'Thames, pines for the purity Granice exudes under her white veil. But she is off limits; she is a nun. He leaves the island they were both residing on in order to spare her the conflict of his primal urges. Her image and all that she represented stays with him for the remainder of the novel. He tries maintain a certain level of celibacy in order to remain faithful to that image.
But that image blurs when he meets, and subsequently falls for, quasi-harlot Cleo. Their night of consummation is a titillating passage yet, filled with more heart than you would expect a womanizer like Flynn to have.
The Granice-Shamus-Cleo triangle has a strong freudian mother/father theme. When I get a chance, I might re-read the novel to delve deeper into it.
Overall I'd give this novel 3.5 stars. Great Character development, interesting and surprising for Errol Flynn fans but nothing very original in the basic story line (sea voyage, savages, and shipwrecks)
December 16, 2017
Can't help but see Flynn himself as the main character. The story does play out like one of his films - perhaps an expanded "Special Edition" type DVD. Passionate, brooding Shamus(Flynn's choice for a name) sails troubled waters, desires two different women and fights the elements and enemies. You can almost see his real-life chum Alan Hale Sr as one of the characters as well.
A nice yarn.
A nice yarn.
May 3, 2024
Quite good, really. This tale of South Seas adventure reveals the great star as a talented writer with a vivid eye for detail and surprising empathy for many of his characters, even the New Guinea tribesmen. I couldn’t quite escape the feeling that Flynn may well have missed his calling.
November 14, 2024
Errol Flynn died shortly after the completion of his only two books -- an autobiography, MY WICKED, WICKED WAYS and this novel, SHOWDOWN, a semi-autobiographical tale set in the South Seas circa the 1930s. Both works showed incredible promise: not merely intelligence and talent, but actual ability to smith words in pleasing ways, especially when dealing with subjects he knew and understood well. Had he lived another ten or even five years, he might have become a writer of some repute.
SHOWDOWN is the story of Shamus O'Thames, a sexually naive, rigidly principled, highly resourceful English sea captain who washes ashore on a South Seas island following a disastrous encounter with "natives." Rescued by a German missionary named Kirschner who effectively adopts him as a son, O'Thames falls in love with a beautiful young nun named Ganice, and largely to escape the impossibility of the situation, agrees to take a camera crew and some Hollywood actors up the Sepik, the most dangerous river in the most dangerous place in the world, New Guinea. The voyage is fraught with trouble, not the least of which comes in the form of Cleo, an alluring and morally enigmatic actress who tempts the stern young skipper away from his chaste love for the nun with the possibility of more fleshly pleasures. At the same time, stormy seas, a hostile local tribe, and the secret agenda of those chartering the voyage come to a head on shore.
SHOWDOWN is admittedly a strange novel and obviously the work of an amateur, albeit one with great life experience and talent. Flynn knew the South Seas very well indeed, having been born in Tasmania and spent much time in New Guinea running plantations and panning for gold. He was also an expert sailor and his love -- and respect -- for the sea, and his knowledge of seacraft are remarkable. Like George Orwell, who reconstructed Burma so vividly in BURMESE DAYS the reader feels as if he is physically present, Flynn brings the landscape and the water to life. The sequences where Shamus is fighting the storm from the wheel of the "Maski" are beautifully crafted. Likewise, he can explain the incredibly complex racial, ethnic, and tribal dynamics of the colonial era in a way no modern writer would dare. And the book reflects the wry, somewhat cynical wit for which Flynn was well known in his personal life: "Father Kirschner's life was consecrated to the idea of peace on earth and goodwill to mankind, but the principle did not include letting the oil dry out on his gun barrel." This is gold. So too is Flynn's construction of the character of Shamus, a man of stern morals and unyielding principles founded on a sexually scarring experience that occurred in his youth. Shamus seems to reflect the man Flynn might have become, and that Flynn wished he had become, rather than a sexually degenerate, alcoholic actor whose personal life was so notorious it's still commented upon today, generations after his demise. But Shamus is not idealized, not Sir Galahad on a boat. He feels real because Flynn contained elements of the man within him even into the last phases of his life, when he discovered what might have been his true calling -- sailing, shooting documentaries, writing...in other words, real rather than cinematic adventure. (Kind of Ernest Hemingway, but somewhat less inclined to lie.) I find it amusing that Hemingway seems to have disliked Flynn (notwithstanding Flynn's performance in "The Sun Also Rises," which everyone liked), perhaps sensing that Flynn had within him the elements of real greatness that he displayed here.
The main issue come with the book's pacing. We are 156 pages into a 250 page novel before Flynn stops his stage-setting and character introductions and finally gets the plot going. And despite being only 250 pages, the book feels heavily overwritten: it could have come in at 200 without any loss and with considerable gain. Flynn writes often beautiful prose, but he has a love of lanuage that a better editor would have restrained more vigorously, and he introduces important characters very late in the game and shifts points of view with little regard for structure.
That having been said, I enjoyed SHOWDOWN. Hemingway once declared that "A man shouldn't write what he doesn't know," and in this novel Flynn stands firmly on ground, and water, he knew extremely well. I just wish Errol had stuck around to come to literary maturity. I think he was capable of producing a minor classic.
SHOWDOWN is the story of Shamus O'Thames, a sexually naive, rigidly principled, highly resourceful English sea captain who washes ashore on a South Seas island following a disastrous encounter with "natives." Rescued by a German missionary named Kirschner who effectively adopts him as a son, O'Thames falls in love with a beautiful young nun named Ganice, and largely to escape the impossibility of the situation, agrees to take a camera crew and some Hollywood actors up the Sepik, the most dangerous river in the most dangerous place in the world, New Guinea. The voyage is fraught with trouble, not the least of which comes in the form of Cleo, an alluring and morally enigmatic actress who tempts the stern young skipper away from his chaste love for the nun with the possibility of more fleshly pleasures. At the same time, stormy seas, a hostile local tribe, and the secret agenda of those chartering the voyage come to a head on shore.
SHOWDOWN is admittedly a strange novel and obviously the work of an amateur, albeit one with great life experience and talent. Flynn knew the South Seas very well indeed, having been born in Tasmania and spent much time in New Guinea running plantations and panning for gold. He was also an expert sailor and his love -- and respect -- for the sea, and his knowledge of seacraft are remarkable. Like George Orwell, who reconstructed Burma so vividly in BURMESE DAYS the reader feels as if he is physically present, Flynn brings the landscape and the water to life. The sequences where Shamus is fighting the storm from the wheel of the "Maski" are beautifully crafted. Likewise, he can explain the incredibly complex racial, ethnic, and tribal dynamics of the colonial era in a way no modern writer would dare. And the book reflects the wry, somewhat cynical wit for which Flynn was well known in his personal life: "Father Kirschner's life was consecrated to the idea of peace on earth and goodwill to mankind, but the principle did not include letting the oil dry out on his gun barrel." This is gold. So too is Flynn's construction of the character of Shamus, a man of stern morals and unyielding principles founded on a sexually scarring experience that occurred in his youth. Shamus seems to reflect the man Flynn might have become, and that Flynn wished he had become, rather than a sexually degenerate, alcoholic actor whose personal life was so notorious it's still commented upon today, generations after his demise. But Shamus is not idealized, not Sir Galahad on a boat. He feels real because Flynn contained elements of the man within him even into the last phases of his life, when he discovered what might have been his true calling -- sailing, shooting documentaries, writing...in other words, real rather than cinematic adventure. (Kind of Ernest Hemingway, but somewhat less inclined to lie.) I find it amusing that Hemingway seems to have disliked Flynn (notwithstanding Flynn's performance in "The Sun Also Rises," which everyone liked), perhaps sensing that Flynn had within him the elements of real greatness that he displayed here.
The main issue come with the book's pacing. We are 156 pages into a 250 page novel before Flynn stops his stage-setting and character introductions and finally gets the plot going. And despite being only 250 pages, the book feels heavily overwritten: it could have come in at 200 without any loss and with considerable gain. Flynn writes often beautiful prose, but he has a love of lanuage that a better editor would have restrained more vigorously, and he introduces important characters very late in the game and shifts points of view with little regard for structure.
That having been said, I enjoyed SHOWDOWN. Hemingway once declared that "A man shouldn't write what he doesn't know," and in this novel Flynn stands firmly on ground, and water, he knew extremely well. I just wish Errol had stuck around to come to literary maturity. I think he was capable of producing a minor classic.
July 2, 2013
Shamus escaped the dreary life of England and kicked around in the South Pacific. Flynn's own experience in the South Seas must have made the authentic background for this story easy. It is surprising that he portrays a priest in such a good light and that he even quotes Ecclesiastes! Since swashbuckling Errol Flynn was notoriously immoral, it is surprising that this story is not. But then, actor Flynn was a likeable rogue, and he had a good side. (He made a great Robin Hood!)
March 27, 2013
A delightful adventure in the tradition of 1930s and 40s men's adventure magazines. Although less outrageous. Flynn chose his setting well, his familiarity with the wilderness north of the Australian coast shines through.
January 30, 2017
Flynn's semi-autobiographical 1946 novel of a sailor/shipowner/adventurer in New Guinea between WW I and WW II. A pretty good tale, but I preferred Flynn's 1937 "non-fiction" "Beam Ends," which covers some of the same ground -- "non-fiction" in quotes because "Beam Ends" is obviously embellished.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews