Craig Daily Press

Centennial

Information about Craig's Centennial

Courtesy

A photo of Maurice “Lefty” Flynn in front of his cabin.

Courtesy

This is the home of Maurice “Lefty” Flynn taken in 1921 in Culver City, Calif,

Not everyone who came to the Yampa Valley in the first part of the 20th century to build a home stayed here.

Many people found that, for many reasons, they needed to move on. For some it was the harsh discovery that farming in northwest Colorado was much more difficult than nearly any other part of the settled United States.

For others, the draw of a very different world was hard to resist.

Maurice Bennett Flynn was born May 26, 1892, in Greenwich, Conn., to Joseph A. and Anna Flynn. He would be joined by a sister, Katherine, in 1897. There isn’t much information available about his early years in the small Irish family, though he did play football for Yale — where he gained the name “Lefty” because he kicked with his left foot.

His large stature of 6 foot 2 inches and 200 pounds made him formidable on and off the field.

The first mention of him in the Craig area is in February 1916.

Flynn and his father had recently purchased the Harrison ranch east of Craig (about where Ike’s Auto is), and were building a “modern bungalow” for his intended bride.

The Feb. 24, 1916, Moffat County Courier described the home: “The new residence will be one of the finest in the country and will contain five rooms, two large sleeping porches, besides several small pantries, china closets, etc. It will be modern in every respect. A well will be drilled near the house.”

He renamed the place Elkhead Ranch and began stocking it with cattle.

No doubt Lefty knew that the girl he intended to bring to Craig wouldn’t put up with a cramped log cabin with a sod roof. He planned to convert the homestead into “an up-to-date spud and diversified farming ranch.” Unfortunately, his bride wasn’t impressed enough to stay, and within a few years he was divorced.

When WWI began, Flynn put his ranching plans aside and enlisted as a crew member on one of the 3,500 new submarine chasers that were being built to show the United States’ sea power. He was joined in his enlistment by Roy and Ward Job of Craig as well as several other young men from the Yampa Valley.

He didn’t come back to the Yampa Valley right after his tour of duty, although he kept ownership of his ranch. Instead, he headed farther west to try his hand as a movie star. After several years of being cast as an extra, he finally established himself as a silent screen actor and continued to make movies — many of them serials — until the late 1920s. He came back to Craig briefly in May of 1923 to introduce the area to his latest move, “Smiles are Trumps.”

As still is common with the media today, the Craig Courier liked to keep a local connection to anyone who was off in the world doing interesting things. Maurice Flynn fit into this category perfectly. In June 1925, Flynn’s marriage to diminutive film star Viola Dana was front page news in Craig. Dana was widowed when her husband died of the flu during his tour of duty during the war. She started dancing onstage at age 2, and her siblings joined her in the motion picture industry.

Flynn’s wanderlust soon led him from starring in movies to producing them, but that endeavor didn’t last long, and by October 1927 he was back in Craig, claiming that he was back to stay. “Never in my life have I been as happy as I have here in Craig,” Flynn told the Craig Empire.

A month later, he hosted his latest film, “High and Handsome,” for an appreciative Craig audience. Soon after, he built a large toboggan slide for the community and encouraged everyone to come to his place and enjoy the ride.

The fall of 1928 found the Flynns in the Catskills of New York. They claimed plans to return to Craig that winter but never made it. While they were in New York, Flynn’s mother committed suicide and his restlessness took him farther afield than the meadows he owned in Moffat County.

By early 1929, he was divorced from Viola and had moved to Honolulu to take a job as the athletic director of a large hotel. He and his doctor announced they would make Hawaii their permanent home.

Hawaii apparently couldn’t calm Flynn’s wanderlust either. Within two years, he was in London, where he married into minor royalty when he took Nora Phipps as his fourth bride. Nora was the inspiration for the original Gibson Girl artwork. Time magazine reported the marriage in the society column of the July 27, 1931, issue. “A zealous photographer who sought to photograph the bride and groom was knocked out by husky Mr. Flynn.”

When Nora attempted to return to the United States a few months later, she found that her 18 year absence and former marriage to a British military officer had voided her U.S. citizenship. She would have to wait at least four years before being granted citizenship again.

Nora and Lefty settled down — as much as he could — in Tryon, N.C., and served as host to many celebrated artists. One of them was F. Scott Fitzgerald, who visited them in 1935. Fitzgeralds’ daughter Scotty stayed with the Flynns while her father stayed in a nearby hotel. He wrote many works of short fiction during that stay, including one based on the Flynns and their marital histories. The story appeared in the June 1935 issue of McCall’s magazine. He stayed in Tryon until 1937 when he returned to Hollywood to try to regain his failing muse.

Of note is a first-edition copy of “All The Young Men” that is signed by Fitzgerald with the inscription: “For Lefty and Nora, the horse and the cart, the eye and eyeball, the spleen and the heart, the tooth and the dentist, wind and the weather — well that’s quite enough to say you two together. F Scott Fitzgerald.” The rare book is offered on the Internet for $45,000

Even though he never lived permanently in Craig again, Maurice Flynn kept in contact with many of his friends throughout the years. In 1958, he sent his regrets that he would not be able to attend the Golden Jubilee celebration but assured readers that the years had mellowed him and that he held fond memories of his days in Moffat County.

He died just months later in Camden, S.C. at age 66, and the cottage he built so long ago for his bride burned down in September 1964. The memories of Maurice “Lefty” Flynn are as fragile as the cans of film in the Hollywood vaults, but perhaps throughout his restless travels he was able to remember the quieter days on his ranch in Craig.

Shannan Koucherik may be reached at honeyrockdogs@msn.com