'My Wicked Wicked Ways' is actually most remarkable among autobiographies for its clear detachment of the writer to himself - it's like a confession, where he reveals all his wicked ways in an apologetic way, which only makes him the more human and likeable. He was then at the age of 33, a crucial age in many career shifits, and he would probably himself have said about the rest of his life, 'the less said about it, the better', but he wrote his biography just before he died, and it is a masterpiece of film literature, very enjoyable and interesting, just like David Niven's autobiographies later on. It then reveals his life in Hollywood, exploiting fully his first marriage with all its turns and complications, to end with the death of his two best friends, the stunt man Billy Welch and John Barrymore, and his trial for rape, which definitely checked his career, whereupon he ceased to be a living legend to just become a legend.

Jeffrey Meyers' introduction in the Aurum edition of My Wicked, Wicked Ways claims that Flynn dictated the book to Conrad from August to October 1958, and that he was a 'literary stand in'.Like most biopics, this one concentrates only on a part of the subject's life, while all the essentials are left out, that is first of all his stormy and adventurous youth, before he was cast in the first film version of the Bounty epic (the Australian 'In the Wake of the Bounty', 1933, where he played Fletcher Christian), while 'Captain Blood', which this films begins with, was his eigth film. Aadland also claims that she and Flynn had difficulty removing him: 'He was basically a doorstop with paid vacation'. According to Beverly Aadland, Flynn's teenage girlfriend, Conrad was usually drunk and spent most of his time chasing Jamaican women. Ghostwriter Earl Conrad was sent to Flynn's home in Jamaica to collaborate with the actor throughout the writing period. The original publisher, Putnam paid an advance of $9,000 to Flynn for the rights of his autobiography. My Wicked, Wicked Ways has sold over one million copies. It was released posthumously in 1959 following the death of the actor and became immensely popular for its cynical tone and candid depiction of the world of filmmaking in Hollywood.

My Wicked, Wicked Ways is an autobiography written by Australian-born American actor Errol Flynn with the aid of ghostwriter Earl Conrad.

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