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The Scandalous Freddie McEvoy: The true story of the swashbuckling Australian rogue
Swashbuckler, daredevil racing-car champion, Winter Olympian, gambler, smuggler, scoundrel, stud and suspected Nazi agent who died a mysterious death - this is the fascinating story of the scandalous Freddie McEvoy.Born in Melbourne in 1907, Freddie's life took him from socialising with a young Errol Flynn in Sydney and on to the French Riviera in the heady years leading up to World War II. With his dashing good looks and charm, Freddie lived a swashbuckling life, quickly figuring out his path to easy fortune was through lonely rich women. World War II didn't stop Freddie's hedonistic pursuits - he skipped enlistment for Australia and Britain to party on in Hollywood, where he renewed his friendship with the now infamous Errol Flynn. Always short of cash, Freddie smuggled guns and diamonds on his yacht between California and Mexico and was rumoured to have worked as a spy. It was a life lived large and Freddie's death in 1951 was under the most mysterious circumstances off the coast of his body was found naked and scalped . . .Frank Walker, bestselling author of The Tiger Man of Vietnam and Maralinga, has for the first time uncovered the complete, outrageous and incredible true story of Freddie McEvoy, Australia's daredevil lothario.'Freddie was one of the great livers of life. He lived it the way he saw it - he didn't give a hoot.'Errol Flynn'Pleasure is my business.' Freddie McEvoy'an extraordinary yarn . . . finely researched' Sun-Herald on Frank Walker's Ghost Platoon
273 pages, Kindle Edition
Published September 25, 2018
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About the author
Frank Walker
79 books6 followersFrank Walker is a veteran journalist. His newspaper roles have included being chief reporter for the SUN-HERALD covering defence, veterans' affairs, national security and terrorism. He's also worked on the Sydney Morning Herald, the National Times, for News Limited in New York, and for Deutsche Welle international radio in Germany.
In 2009, Hachette published his first book, The Tiger Man of Vietnam - the remarkable true story of the secret war of Captain Barry Petersen in the Central Highlands of Vietnam. It was a bestseller.
Frank followed this with his bestselling Ghost Platoon in 2012, Maralinga in 2014 and Commandos in 2015. He lives in Sydney with his family.
In 2009, Hachette published his first book, The Tiger Man of Vietnam - the remarkable true story of the secret war of Captain Barry Petersen in the Central Highlands of Vietnam. It was a bestseller.
Frank followed this with his bestselling Ghost Platoon in 2012, Maralinga in 2014 and Commandos in 2015. He lives in Sydney with his family.
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December 1, 2018
Frank Walker is an Australian journalist and author. He writes about another Australian, The Scandalous Freddie McEvoy, and does it in such a way as to make the reader feel almost present. Well, through much of the book, at least. There are times it’s as well Walker isn’t too descriptive during the not infrequent sexual exploits and philanderings of an arrant gigolo.
Freddie was born in Melbourne in 1907, son of a wealthy pastoralist and horse owner, Frederick Aloysius McEvoy, and his wife Violet Coral (nee Healy) who’d been a member of the Florodora Girls dancing group. Frederick died in 1913 when his son was just six years old, Violet soon selling up their 20,000 acres and stock before moving to Switzerland.
Settling into the famous Badrutt’s at St Moritz, a place for the wealthy to carry on as disgracefully as they wished, would rub off on the young Freddie and establish his life direction. Violet enrolled him at the English Jesuit school Stonyhurst but scholastic achievement was of no great interest to him. Instead, the already cavalier Freddie competed in and excelled at many sports, including ping pong, tennis, soccer, rugby and cricket.
An interesting factor highlighted in the story is that Freddie, as leader of the English bobsled team at the 1936 Winter Olympics, was the first Australian to win a gold medal, albeit he won it not as an Australian but as an Englishman.
Finishing school at 18, Freddie embarked on a hedonistic life of parties, fast sleds and fast cars. Within a couple of years, tall, fit and dashingly handsome, but with no income and no profession, he needed to acquire an income that would allow him to maintain the lfestyle to which he’d become accustomed. His path to comfort would lie in relationships with wealthy women including, for a while, the beautiful and incredibly wealthy Barbara Hutton.
I’m not going to tell you a great deal about his life; suffice to say, it reads almost like fiction and his personal endeavours will both intrigue you and disgust you, especially the degenerate relationship between Freddie and his very close friend and fellow Australian, Errol Flynn. During the Second World War, with neither making any serious attempt at joining the war effort, the two lotharios were let loose within the Californian society of the time. Freddie even perjured himself to say Flynn did not have sex with an underage girl.
Through this corrupt period, the pair commanded close scrutiny by the FBI and its head, J Edgar Hoover. Hoover deemed them moral degenarates, a strange epithet coming from someone who hid his own secret relationship behind the closet door.
Although the biography of a notorious “…rake, rogue, rapscallion, cad and bounder...” (to quote), Freddie’s story reads like a thriller, with pimping, police investigations, possible involvement in German spy rings, court cases, gun running and drug smuggling. Even in death, mystery surrounded his passing. Interestingly, he died perhaps attempting to save the one woman he seems to have truly loved, dashed against rocks as their yacht sank on a lonely northern African shore.
Although you will never actually get to like its subject, The Scandalous Freddie McEvoy makes for an engaging, compelling read. Walker’s writing ensures there is never a dull moment through the whole incredible saga.
Highly recommended.
Freddie was born in Melbourne in 1907, son of a wealthy pastoralist and horse owner, Frederick Aloysius McEvoy, and his wife Violet Coral (nee Healy) who’d been a member of the Florodora Girls dancing group. Frederick died in 1913 when his son was just six years old, Violet soon selling up their 20,000 acres and stock before moving to Switzerland.
Settling into the famous Badrutt’s at St Moritz, a place for the wealthy to carry on as disgracefully as they wished, would rub off on the young Freddie and establish his life direction. Violet enrolled him at the English Jesuit school Stonyhurst but scholastic achievement was of no great interest to him. Instead, the already cavalier Freddie competed in and excelled at many sports, including ping pong, tennis, soccer, rugby and cricket.
An interesting factor highlighted in the story is that Freddie, as leader of the English bobsled team at the 1936 Winter Olympics, was the first Australian to win a gold medal, albeit he won it not as an Australian but as an Englishman.
Finishing school at 18, Freddie embarked on a hedonistic life of parties, fast sleds and fast cars. Within a couple of years, tall, fit and dashingly handsome, but with no income and no profession, he needed to acquire an income that would allow him to maintain the lfestyle to which he’d become accustomed. His path to comfort would lie in relationships with wealthy women including, for a while, the beautiful and incredibly wealthy Barbara Hutton.
I’m not going to tell you a great deal about his life; suffice to say, it reads almost like fiction and his personal endeavours will both intrigue you and disgust you, especially the degenerate relationship between Freddie and his very close friend and fellow Australian, Errol Flynn. During the Second World War, with neither making any serious attempt at joining the war effort, the two lotharios were let loose within the Californian society of the time. Freddie even perjured himself to say Flynn did not have sex with an underage girl.
Through this corrupt period, the pair commanded close scrutiny by the FBI and its head, J Edgar Hoover. Hoover deemed them moral degenarates, a strange epithet coming from someone who hid his own secret relationship behind the closet door.
Although the biography of a notorious “…rake, rogue, rapscallion, cad and bounder...” (to quote), Freddie’s story reads like a thriller, with pimping, police investigations, possible involvement in German spy rings, court cases, gun running and drug smuggling. Even in death, mystery surrounded his passing. Interestingly, he died perhaps attempting to save the one woman he seems to have truly loved, dashed against rocks as their yacht sank on a lonely northern African shore.
Although you will never actually get to like its subject, The Scandalous Freddie McEvoy makes for an engaging, compelling read. Walker’s writing ensures there is never a dull moment through the whole incredible saga.
Highly recommended.
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