CINEMA: Cinemess

Like many another star-struck adolescent, blonde Betty Hansen knew what she wanted when she left Lincoln, Neb. recently for Hollywood. She “wanted to get into the movies.” Last week Miss Hansen told a Los Angeles grand jury her version of her career.

In Hollywood Betty kept a sharp eye out for film contacts. Three turned up in the persons of a trio of youthful Warner Bros, employes. Betty frankly admitted that she had been intimate with all three.

One day last September came a once-in-a-lifetime chance of the kind that Hollywood pictures have long made commonplace. One of her young men invited Betty to a swimming-dancing party at the Bel-Air mansion of British Sportsman Fred McEvoy.

There Betty met Errol Flynn. “After dinner,” she said, “he asked me to goupstairs with him.”

“Flynn disrobed,” the girl went on, “and then assisted me in taking off my clothes. . . .”

Result: last week Flynn and Betty’s three young men were charged with statutory rape by Los Angeles District Attorney John F. Dockweiler. A grand jury had already refused to indict.

Said Betty, when asked whether the alleged rape had happened with her consent: “With my consent? Why, of course with my consent.” Said District Attorney Dockweiler: “It doesn’t matter whether she consented to these acts or not. She’s under age. That’s statutory rape under California law.” Hatless, stricken Errol Flynn denied the story said: “I’m bewildered. I can’t understand it. I hardly touched the girl.” Said Sportsman McEvoy: “He was hardly out of my sight the whole evening.”