Watching Turner Classic Movies this afternoon:
and Flynn's final flick:
I remembered the mysterious circumstances surrounding Joe Flynn's death...
Joe Flynn
Joe Flynn was born in 1924, Born November 8, 1924, in Youngstown, Ohio. He went to Northwestern university and began building his career in radio and was a ventriloquist. He served in the Army stateside entertaining the enlisted folks. He decided to make the move to Hollywood and his first onscreen role was a priest in the Bob Hope comedy The Seven Little Foys (55). He continued on doing uncredited character roles until becoming a regular on The George Gobel Show in 1958. He was on the Joey Bishop show in 1961 but there seemed to be a bit of upstaging by Joe and Bishop got rid of him.
He went on to his him most famous role as Captain Binghamton on the TV sitcom McHale's Navy which ended its run in 66. He appeared on Batman in 67 then went on to be one of the most prolific Disney actors appearing in more than 9 movies such as Herbie The Love Bug (69), The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes (70), The 1,000,000 Duck (71), How You See Him, Now You Don't (73) to name just a few. You Baby Boomers also may remember him as King Vitamin, selling that popular kids cereal.
In the early 1970's Joe was a driving force in the Screen Actors Guild to change how actors were paid for residual showings of TV shows, remember Adam and Burt received almost nothing after a few years for the 30 + years of Batman reruns.
Now for a strange twist, Joe was a regular on the Merv Griffith show and he had a habit of making comments like, " I have info that would rock Hollywood should it get out. Shortly after these appearances, Joe was dead. Now should you read IMDB they list his death as a heart attack or other sources state he had a heart attack while swimming in his pool. OK- at the time he had a broken leg and was in a large cast. They found him in on the bottom of the pool held down by the weight of the cast, I doubt he was going for a dip. The truth was never known however Merv Griffith made comments later that he didn't buy the story of Joe's death being "accidental".
Joe's body was found on July 19, 1974, in his Beverly Hills home. He was 50 years old.
http://www.geocities.com/~1966/gueststar40.htm