Errol Flynn was one of those larger-than-life personalities who could only find a real home on the screen, and not entirely even then. Almost from the outset of a film career that he never initially sought, he played bold, charismatic, devil-may-care figures, with a cavalier attitude toward life's cares and worries (and toward women) that made him an ideal escapist hero for the Depression and strife-torn 1930s. Aiding and abetting his career most of the way was some of the finest action film scoring in the history of cinema, usually provided by Erich Wolfgang Korngold or, on occasion, Max Steiner, the reigning musical deities at Warner Bros., where Flynn made most of his career. Their best work on his behalf, along with that of Hugo Friedhofer on the late-career vehicle #The Sun Also Rises, is represented on this 55-minute CD conducted by film music specialist Charles Gerhardt. Steiner's music for #The Adventures of Don Juan is a pleasant surprise, offering some of the boldness and invention that one associated with Korngold, and a richness in the scoring that allows it to hold up as freestanding music across 60 years. Korngold's music for #The Sea Hawk is, of course, in a class by itself, offering an almost operatic score, with lots of fiery emotions as well as dazzling settings at the Elizabethan court on display -- indeed, the music is almost the sonic equivalent of Technicolor, and makes up for the fact that the studio, fearing the economic loss of Europe being cut off by the war, declined to film this swashbuckler in color.

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