Cuban Rebel Girls

Errol Flynn and Cuba, a forgotten history

Cuban Rebel Girls or Assault of the Cuban Rebel Girls is a 1959 semi-dramatic documentary and the final on-screen performance of Errol Flynn (1909 – 1959). The script was written and narrated by Flynn, who was sympathetic to the Cuban revolution being led by Fidel Castro in its early phase.

Errol Flynn was a major film star during the “Golden Age of Hollywood whose life was one of womanizing, hard drinking, money problems and trials for statutory rape.¹

Cuban Rebel Girls

There is a funny review of Cuban Rebel Girls as a terrible movie on Uncle Scoopy’s website.²

Here is the movie poster which highlighted Flynn’s 17-year-old “protege” in her first (and last) starring role.

Here is a picture of Flynn with Fidel.

Errol Flynn’s politics

In addition to Cuban Rebel Girls, Flynn appeared in a documentary, The Truth About Fidel Castro Revolution, that was lost for over forty years. The reason that The Truth About Fidel Castro Revolution never saw the light in Cuba or in the United States remains an enigma, but it probably has a lot to do with the evolution of the revolutionary regime (which finally declared its socialist inclination in April 1961) and the changing perception of it around the world, particularly by North Americans.³

Writing in The Journal of Popular Film and Television Alberto Elena notes,

"Without doubt Flynn's last two works are sincere manifestations of a vague left-wing idealism that he had been cultivating since his youth and thus when, in his presentation of The Truth About Fidel Castro Revolution, he calls the Cuban leader “some kind of Giuliano, you know, the man I used to call the Robin Hood of Sicily,” he is not only expressing his admiration for Fidel, but is also relaunching an image of himself as a “democratic hero” something that might earn him, at the twilight of his career, a certain reinstatement in the eyes of audiences and in Hollywood⁴

You can watch Cuban Rebel Girls on You Tube.

1. Flynn, Errol. My Wicked, Wicked Ways: the Autobiography of Errol Flynn. Intro. by Jeffrey Meyers. New York: Cooper Square Press, 2003. Rpt. of My Wicked, Wicked Ways. New York: G.P. Putnam's sons, 1959.

2. Cuban Rebel Girls (scoopy.com)

3. Elena, Alberto. “Cuba Sí! Errol Flynn and the Adventure of Revolution.” The Journal of Popular Film and Television 41, no. 1 (2013): 10–19.

4. Elena, Alberto. “Cuba Sí! Errol Flynn and the Adventure of Revolution.” The Journal of Popular Film and Television 41, no. 1 (2013): 10–19.