Maurice Bennett Flynn (May 26, 1892 – March 4, 1959) was an American football player and actor. He was also known as "Lefty" Flynn because in football, he kicked with his left foot.
Biography
Flynn was born in Greenwich, Connecticut, on May 26, 1892. He later attended Yale University starting in 1910. He was expelled from Yale in January 1913 after he married Irene Leary, a chorus girl.[1] They separated after 11 days, and their divorce became final in 1914. In 1916 he married Blanche Shove Palmer and they had two children, including basketball player and broadcaster Bud Palmer.[2][3]
Between 1919 and 1927, Flynn appeared in 40 feature films, often as the lead actor, and sometimes as a sports hero or daring adventurer.
Nora, Flynn's third wife, persuaded Lefty to cure his alcoholism through Christian Science treatments. She tried less-than-successfully to convince F. Scott Fitzgerald to try the Mary Baker Eddy approach in March 1934, when she and Lefty were caring for Scottie, Zelda and Scott's daughter, during trying times for a depressed Scott. The next month Fitzgerald published a story, "The Intimate Strangers," based on the Flynns.[4]
He died on March 4, 1959, in Camden, SC.[5] He was 66.
^"'Lefty' Flynn to Wed Again. Former Yale Football Star Will Take Bride Here Tuesday". New York Times. March 3, 1916. Retrieved December 4, 2009. Maurice ("Lefty") Flynn, former Yale football star, has left the ranch near Craig, Col., where he went after his divorce from a Broadway chorus girl, to make a second venture in matrimony. He will be married next Tuesday in New York to Miss Blanche Palmer of New York, a niece of Mrs. E.P. Shove of Colorado Springs.
^E. Ray Canterbery and Thomas Birch, "F. Scott Fitzgerald: Under the Influence" (St. Paul: Paragon House, 2006).
^"Maurice Flynn, Colonist was 66". The Newport (RI) Daily News. March 6, 1959.
Further reading
Christgau, John (1999). "The Leader of the Class". Origins of the Jump Shot: Eight Men Who Shook the World of Basketball. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. pp. 54–78. ISBN0-8032-6394-5.
.jpg)
