New Book: Center Square
by Ken Mandelbaum

I enjoyed reading Center Square: The Paul Lynde Story, and the book, recently published by Advocate Books, contains a good deal of theatre-related information and anecdote. Authors Steve Wilson and Joe Florenski begin their story of the celebrated television star and comic actor with his days as an obese student at Northwestern University, with fellow freshmen Cloris Leachman and Charlotte Rae. Soon, Lynde is working in summer stock, supporting the likes of Joan Blondell, Judy Holliday, and Eve Arden.

A touring revue called What's New leads to Lynde's Broadway break, in New Faces of 1952, where Lynde meets a lover in lead dancer Jimmy Russell. Cast in New Faces, Charlotte Rae opts instead for the Broadway musical Three Wishes for Jamie, which pays better. Coming in to take her place in New Faces is Alice Ghostley, who "bore an uncanny resemblance" to Lynde. Eartha Kitt becomes the show's breakout star, although some feel that the attention goes to her head. Lynde scores in the show with his African safari monologue and a Mel Brooks sketch spoofing Death of a Salesman. He continues with the show, on tour and on film, for almost two years.

After early TV work (including the series "Stanley" with Buddy Hackett and Carol Burnett), Lynde is asked by producer Leonard Sillman to direct and contribute to the sketches in the less successful New Faces of 1956. Cast member Jane Connell recalls that "directing wasn't his strongest point," and that Lynde was agreeable during rehearsals "except when he drank. And he drank a lot." During the run, Lynde is rumored to be dating '56 cast member Maggie Smith.

After more work as a featured player in stock (Madame Lucy in Irene, a "best of" New Faces show), Lynde gets his second Broadway break, as Harry MacAfee in Bye Bye Birdie. Originally a minute role, director Gower Champion promises to build up for the part for Lynde, who eventually gets two songs. (Lynde ad-libbed the "Ed, I love you" line in "Hymn for a Sunday Evening.") The authors note that Lynde "didn't play MacAfee gay, but he didn't play him straight either." Lynde is annoyed when Dick Gautier's Conrad Birdie gets a Tony nomination and Lynde does not.

After penning two sketches for the quick flop New Faces of 1962, Lynde gains exposure on TV's "Perry Como Show," where he works with friend Kaye Ballard. Then he's hired for the film version of Bye Bye Birdie: "Paul made no secret of his disdain for the new script," and Lynde dubbed the project "Hello, Ann-Margret." Soon he's playing Uncle Arthur on "Bewitched," a ten-episode role that "wasn't specifically gay, but, as with so many Paul Lynde roles, may as well have been." Lynde works on the show with replacement Darrin and fellow gay actor Dick Sargent, who disdains Lynde's promiscuous sex life.

The '60s are devoted to TV pilots and films, including the Doris Day vehicle The Glass Bottom Boat. ("Paul told a friend that the director shot Day's close-ups through a Navajo rug.") And then comes the program for which Lynde will always be remembered, a gig that would eventually prove a mixed blessing, a fifteen-year stint on TV's "Hollywood Squares." The "ad-libs" which Lynde delivered so brilliantly were provided by the writing staff. The authors believe that "by exposing his viewers to gay humor every day, he at least got them laughing with a homosexual instead of at one....Paul's great, if accidental, achievement: getting away with being gay on TV on an almost daily basis for more than a decade."

One of the most intriguing sections of the book covers Lynde's years of working in high-paying summer stock on the John Kenley circuit in Ohio, beginning in 1969. Lynde would make fabulous salaries for appearing in Warren, Dayton, and Columbus, the vehicles ranging from The Impossible Years, Don't Drink the Water, and Plaza Suite to My Daughter's Rated X, and Stop, Thief, Stop!!

His co-star in Plaza Suite is Elizabeth Allen, and Lynde suggests her for the role of his TV wife on the unsuccessful "Paul Lynde Show," on ABC during the 1972-'73 season. That's quickly followed by another failed attempt at a sit-com, "New Temperatures Rising," with old friend Alice Ghostley playing his sister.

Lynde tours the stock circuit in his own variety show and in a combo evening featuring one act apiece from Neil Simon's Plaza Suite, California Suite, and Last of the Red Hot Lovers. Lynde also appears on a series of specials and on the Donny and Marie Osmond program. With the end of "Squares" in 1982, Lynde falls into a depression which may have contributed to his death at the age of 55.

Center Square contains a good deal about the drinking that tended to turn Lynde bitter and mean, and his sex life "with an assortment of seedy and sinister men." His personal life becomes fairly chaotic, with numerous embarrassing incidents and altercations. At not one but two parties, Lynde drunkenly eviscerated Harold Prince, and later heckled a career-slumped Robert Morse.

Jane Connell recalls Lynde as "the kind of person you would be afraid might be a suicide victim in terms of self-hatred and how he dealt with it." But Birdie lyricist Lee Adams says, "Paul's great quality was he was able to translate his anger at the world, his hostilities, into humor."

One may wish that Wilson and Florenski had gone into even greater detail in some areas. But the 236-page book covers its subject well.

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NEW YORK BLADE
(August 19, 2005)

Center Squaresville: The Paul Lynde Story by Steve Weinstein

A second-rate celebrity usually gets the biography he deserves, but Paul Lynde got posthumously lucky. Steve Wilson and Joe Florenski, both Lynde fans, do a first-rate job on Lynde’s distinctly unillustrious career.

Before you do the Lyndy Hop on that assessment, consider: The guy first won notice in a minor off-Broadway revue considered old-fashioned when it debuted. He went on to win national attention as the fifth-billed star on Broadway and later in the film version of a middling musical comedy.

He was only in eight episodes of the sitcom that solidified his reputation. His greatest career success was as a featured player on a daytime quiz show.

Wilson and Florenski show the travails of a performer who had to fight the double-headed monster of homophobia and his own inner demons. All-too often, Lynde succumbed. Sarcasm and drugs (especially, but not limited to, alcohol) were his weapons of choice.

If it sounds like an E! or VH1 biography, well, yes, he has been the subject of those. It speaks volumes to the kind of life Lynde was forced to lead that his surviving sister objected to an A&E “Biography” of Lynde because it dealt with the (non-)issue of his sexuality.

As a youngster in an Ohio small town, he showed promise as an actor, further pursued at Northwestern University, where he majored in theater with classmates that included Cloris Leachman, Patricia Neal and Charlotte Rae. Upon graduating, he moved to New York and slowly worked his way up the ladder, from summer stock to Broadway.

In “Bye, Bye Birdie,” his breakthrough, Lynde played the put-upon father of a teenage daughter smitten with a rock star directly modeled on Elvis. Lynde’s part — like everyone else’s — was trimmed down for the movie to highlight sex kitten Ann-Margret. (At the wrap party, Lynde’s screen wife, Maureen Stapleton, brought down the house with her line, “I’m the only one on this picture who didn’t try to fuck Ann-Margret”).

Even so, Lynde’s performance was a standout and ironically solidified his persona as the modern dad of an exploding nuclear family. In private, Lynde was becoming a hard-drinking, bombastic bully who at least treated everyone equally — like a street hustler.

If “Birdie” made Lynde a star, “Bewitched” made him a character. In the rosy afterglow of nostalgia (and compared to the stinker film version released earlier this summer), “Bewitched” has become a touchstone of gay sensibility on network TV.

The very premise — a suburban housewife has a secret life, tries to suppress it — is certainly “queer” enough. The fact that the cast showcased gay performers like Lynde, Agnes Morehead and both men playing Darren Stevens only made it more so. What held it all together was Elizabeth Montgomery, who looked bemusedly on like a fag hag presiding in a gay bar.

Now a star, Lynde parlayed his fame into the title’s Center Square on “Hollywood Square.” It’s surprising to read that those zingers were scripted — they seem so particular to Lynde’s nasal delivery.

The success of “Squares” had nothing to do with the lame gameshow premise and everything to do with the stars’ snappy repartee. When asked by host Peter Marshall if it were true that Rose Marie (of “The Dick Van Dyke Show” and recipient of Lynde’s barbs) had spent her holiday entertaining on a cruise ship, Lynde added, “Entertainment? Not according to the reviews.”

Adding salt to the wound, he said, “She thought it was a troop ship.” Pause. “I should have said ‘tramp steamer.’” Thus did camp sensibility infiltrate the housewife’s daily routine.

But Lynde wasn’t happy. He watched his career languish in the daytime TV ghetto while fellow classmates Leachman and Neal (and even Ann-Margret) picked up their Oscars. So he drank. And picked fights. And paid for hustlers. He got fat, thin, fat again.

At the end of his life at age 55, he was apparently contemplating a move back to New York (he detested L.A.) and may even have bought a townhouse here.

Lynde leaves a mixed legacy: Nearly every gay performer cites him as an influence, and comics revere his timing. But like Liberace, he was forced to live a lie, however transparent.

© 2005 The New York Blade | A Window Media Publication

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GAY CITY NEWS
(July 21-27, 2005)

TV’s Confirmed, Lifelong Bachelor
by Scott Brassart

For years, Paul Lynde occupied the center square on “Hollywood Squares,” arguably one of the most popular game shows of all time. Lynde’s prickly, teetering-on-the-edge-of-the-closet humor made the show a hit and brought him lasting fame. But was it enough to make him happy?

According to Steve Wilson and Joe Fiorenski [sic], authors of the recently released biography “Center Square: The Paul Lynde Story,” it wasn’t. Despite his wealth, fame and the adoration of his fans, Lynde was a bitter, self-destructive man, who struggled with alcoholism and was unhappy to the very end of his life.

Wilson and Fiorenski’s [sic] book chronicles Lynde’s life from childhood in tiny Mt. Vernon, Ohio, to his 1982 death at a relatively young age. The writing is straightforward and the telling is thorough, though interviews with family members are conspicuously absent. Also missing are an index and a listing of the performer’s stage, television and film appearances—staple features of any proper biography.

These shortcomings aside, the authors do an admirable job of chronicling Lynde’s life and career. Interviews with close friends and co-workers are more than sufficient to flesh out an interesting, though somewhat depressing tale. Television host Robert Osborne knew Lynde well, and his quotes, interspersed liberally throughout, are particularly insightful...

Full Text Here

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Publisher's Weekly
(June 20, 2005)

Center Square: The Paul Lynde Story

The sarcastic, wise-cracking Lynde, primarily remembered for his quick (and scripted) double-entendres on the TV game show Hollywood Squares and his 10 appearances as Uncle Arthur on Bewitched, is sympathetically profiled in this well-researched biography of a demon-plagued performer who, after a few drinks, used the same razor-sharp barbs that amused TV viewers to alienate and devastate friends and foes. It's a sad tale of an entertainer who achieved great financial success (in the 1970s, he made $50,000 a week performing in summer stock), but always thought his supporting roles were beneath him. Lynde's self-destructive drinking magnified his insecurities and frustrations, and fueled rages. Although trim, handsome and out about his homosexuality to everyone but the oblivious home viewers, he never forgot his fat childhood ("I looked like Kate Smith's niece") and preferred to buy sexual escorts rather than risk relationships. One reason Wilson and Florenski (who co-wrote a piece on Lynde for Out) have difficulty making Lynde come alive is that he let so few people get close to him. Still, fans of the gay icon will appreciate this appraisal (which debunks the sensational rumors surrounding his death in 1982 from a heart attack). Photos. (Aug.)

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