Broadway Actor & Author, Denny Martin Flinn, Dies at 59

Denny Martin Flinn died on August 24 in Woodland Hills, California of complications from cancer. Flinn was 59 years old. He grew up in San Francisco and Los Angeles and majored in theatre at San Francisco State University. During his college years, he danced in San Francisco's North Beach opposite such talents as stripper Carol Doda.

After moving to New York he appeared on television and nightclubs and performed on Broadway in Sugar and the revivals of Pal Joey and the Pearl Bailey company of Hello, Dolly! Off-Broadway appearances included Look Where I'm At and Show Me Where the Good Times Are. He also choreographed Charles Strouse's off-Broadway musical Six and he restaged Sugar for its West Coast premiere.

As a performer, he also appeared in the national companies of Fiddler on the Roof, starring Jan Peerce and Theodore Bikel as well as two-and-a-half years in one of the national tours of A Chorus Line, appearing as both Greg and Zach. He worked for famed choreographers Jerome Robbins, Gower Champion, Michael Kidd, Michael Bennett and many others.

Flinn wrote and directed the musical Groucho, starring Lewis J. Stadlen, which played off-Broadway and toured the country for two years.   He choreographed rock video sequences for the soap operas Another World and Search for Tomorrow, a ballroom sequence for the feature film The Deceivers, and an animated sequence for the feature film Ghost.

As a writer, his first book was "What They Did for Love," the story of the making of the Broadway musical A Chorus Line.  He followed that with two mystery novels, "San Francisco Kills" and "Killer Finish," both featuring the grandson of Sherlock Holmes.  After moving to Hollywood, he co-authored with Nicholas Meyer the screenplay for Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, and wrote two radio plays for the BBC: Don Quixote, which won a British Writer's Guild nomination, and an adaptation of Meyer's The Seven-Per-Cent Solution.  He authored the Star Trek novel "The Fearful Summons" and "Musical! A Grand Tour - the Rise, Glory and Fall of an American Institution," which won the ASCAP/Deems Taylor award.  Other books include "How Not To Write a Screenplay" and "How Not To Audition."

He is survived by his wife Barbara and two children, Brook and Dylan.