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After production of Errol Flynn's financial debacle, WILLIAM TELL, was halted, the actor discovered that he not only had lost the money he'd invested in the project, but that his long-time business manager had been swindling him for years, as well. Fighting bankruptcy, the aging one-time 'King' of Hollywood swashbucklers found himself desperately in need of work, to stave off an army of creditors. Fortunately, legendary British producer/director Herbert Wilcox liked the high-living star, and, realizing that Flynn's name still had marquee value in England, cast him opposite his wife, popular British actress Anna Neagle, in the filming of her recent stage success, 'The Glorious Days', retitled LILACS IN THE SPRING.A sentimental tale told largely in flashback, Neagle portrays an English stage star who is injured in a WWII air raid. Flying from Hollywood, her long-estranged father, film star John Beaumont (Flynn, with silver hair) must deal with an army of the press, and her would-be beau, British army officer Charles King (David Farrar). Meanwhile, Neagle, unconscious, hallucinates herself as being legendary star Nell Gywn, and Queen Victoria. Upon seeing her father, she relives her mother's early life, when she was 'discovered' by Beaumont in his days as a vaudevillian song-and-dance man (Flynn gets a chance to do a bit of soft shoe, singing 'Lily of Laguna', and making up for his limited musical ability with abundant charm). As her star ascends, his declines, and after leaving the stage to fight in WWI, he returns to find himself a forgotten man. Hollywood beckons, however, and he sees an opportunity to strike it rich as an actor in motion pictures. She refuses to leave England, and the couple separate. Achieving stardom in America, Beaumont is far too involved in his career to get to know his daughter...until her injury reminds him of how much he loved her mother, and needed to know her.Maudlin, yes, but British audiences loved this kind of tearjerker, which offered several well-choreographed production numbers with Neagle...and, if you look carefully among the silhouetted male dancers during a tango, you'll find 24-year old Sean Connery, unbilled, and fresh from the chorus of a London stage revival of 'South Pacific'.While the film bombed in the U.S. (under the title LET'S MAKE UP), it was popular enough in the U.K. to keep Errol Flynn working, and his creditors at bay for a little longer. Next on his agenda would be his very last swashbuckler, THE DARK AVENGER...
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