Outside Of The Center Square, Paul Lynde’s Life Was No Laughing Matter

While it may seem preposterous that anyone would be unaware of Hollywood Squares, we’ll give a brief synopsis for the uninitiated. A game show institution, it enjoyed three different incarnations, which aired between 1966 and 2004. Inside a three-by-three table of cubes, nine celebrities helped a pair of contestants play a game of tic-tac-toe.

The real selling point of the show often wasn’t the game, though. Rather, it was a showcase for the celebrities to deliver hilarious zingers in response to the contestants’ questions. And no famous face was better at this than Lynde, who was a regular on the show — in the center square, no less — from 1968 to 1981. 

For five days of the week, Lynde made America laugh with his unique wit. His answers were whip-smart and often full of innuendo that was seldom heard elsewhere on TV at the time. With his trademark snigger and distinctive voice, he was like a mischievous uncle who delivered rapid-fire risqué jokes at the family dinner table.

Don’t just take our word for it, though — get a load of some of his best responses. When asked, “What unusual thing do you do if you have something called, ‘The gift of tongues?’” he shot back, “I wouldn’t tell the grand jury. Why should I tell you?” That one was a showstopper.

On another occasion Lynde was asked, “When a man falls out of your boat and into the water, you should yell ‘Man overboard!’ Now what should you yell if a woman falls overboard?” He immediately quipped, “Full speed ahead!” Another time he answered, “Humble!” to “You’re the world’s most popular fruit. What are you?” That one will become important later.

But who was Lynde when he wasn’t encased in that all-too-familiar center square? Well, he was a television actor who most audiences knew as Uncle Arthur in Bewitched. It was a role that gave him space to really show off his comedic talent. As the rakish warlock who loved practical jokes and tearing people down to size with his cutting remarks, he was incredible.

Lynde made such a huge impression, in fact, that many fans believe he was on the show all the time. Cathy Rudolph, a close friend and writer of Paul Lynde: A Biography, told magazine Closer Weekly, “He used to say to me, ‘I was only on that show 11 times; they must have run a lot of reruns because everybody calls me Uncle Arthur when I go on the street.’”

Richard Michaels, a director on Bewitched, once told magazine Entertainment Weekly, “His personality was the same off camera as it was on camera. There was nobody really like him; he saw everything as a joke, and it made him a natural.” Unfortunately, though, this outsized personality and scene-stealing screen persona may have unwittingly hurt his acting career.

According to Herbie J. Pilato, author of Bewitched Forever, “Lynde was not movie-star lead material. As a supporting role, yes, but not for a lead performance. A performer like Paul is simply too much to take as a lead. His presence is too strong. Too overwhelming for the star of a TV show or film.”

Pilato continued, “That’s why everyone thought he made more appearances on Bewitched than he did. If he played Uncle Arthur every week, it would have been an overload for the audience to accept. Too much of a good thing. And he was a good thing — but only in small doses.” 

Over the years, Lynde’s unfulfilled ambitions as a leading man would weigh him down. Even when he finally starred in his own sitcom — The Paul Lynde Show — in 1972, something was off. Lynde was badly miscast as the traditional comically disgruntled father, and the show seemed to totally miss what worked about his sneakily subversive style. 

As Karen Valentine, who starred with Lynde in Hollywood Squares, put it, “They didn’t take advantage of having him play the funny uncle or someone eccentric, like he did on Bewitched.” She added, “On a series, I don’t think they ever tapped into the magic of what he could do or the funniness he brought to the table. It was trying to fit him in a box where he didn’t fit.” 

Interestingly, Lynde’s talents were perfect for animation. For a four-year stretch from ’69 to ’73, he leant his vocal talents to a host of Hanna Barbera-produced cartoons. For instance, he played Claude Pertwee on Where’s Huddles? and Sylvester Sneekly, the Hooded Claw, in Wacky Races spinoff The Perils of Penelope Pitstop.

Arguably his most well-known vocal role, though, was as Templeton, the greedy rat in Charlotte’s Web. Michael Airington, who played Lynde in a Las Vegas one-man show, told Closer Weekly, “Just hearing his voice brings humor with it.” He’s right, too — there is something universally funny about Lynde’s voice, whether he’s playing an impish warlock or a cartoon rat.

Lynde also plied his trade treading the boards. In fact, his performance as Harry MacAfee in the 1960 Broadway production of Bye Bye Birdie was what launched his career. MacAfee was a little bit effete, though 100 percent straight. Playing characters whose sexuality was a bit ambiguous would become a Lynde trademark. He would later reprise the role in a 1963 big-screen version. 

In the ’70s he returned to the stage in Ohio, taking on three parts in Neil Simon’s Plaza Suite. When interviewed on local radio, he lamented how audiences only wanted to see him recreate his “Paul Lynde” persona, no matter the role. He said, “It makes it difficult because I did train to be an actor, and I try to always act and give the playwright the justice he deserves.”

All of this is to say, most accounts paint a picture of Lynde as an extremely unhappy man beneath the surface. For one thing, he never achieved the leading-man success in Hollywood that he desired. As Rudolph told Closer Weekly, “He was a frustrated actor. He really wanted to be a movie star: that was his dream.”

These days, huge stars regularly work in film and TV. But back when Lynde was on our screens, the line separating movie and television actors was very prominent. It was extremely rare for anyone to truly cross over. Lynde, it seems, found this very difficult to come to terms with.

So, according to Rudolph, Lynde did what he could to make himself feel like a star of the silver screen. She claimed, “That’s why he bought a house that Errol Flynn once owned — he wanted a home like a movie star would have, but he wasn’t one. That was his heartbreak.”

Fascinatingly, Rudolph felt there was a contradiction in how Lynde viewed his TV stardom. She claimed, “He would say to me, ‘I’m on these small little TVs. People think they know you because they watch you every day; you’re in their homes. I’m on seven times a week with Hollywood Squares and shows like I Dream of Jeannie and Bewitched.” 

Rudolph claimed Lynde continued, “Everybody thinks they know you, and they’ll approach you. If it’s a big movie star, they would never approach you.” She didn’t believe he really wanted to be seen as unapproachable by his fans, though, because at his core, he craved their attention. She even said he loved signing autographs for hours on end.

“That’s why he said he would stay after every show for two hours just to sign autographs and talk to people,” revealed Rudolph. “He said, ‘What’s more wonderful than hearing 100 people telling you over and over again how great you are?’” She then added, “The fact that people loved him was the part of his life that filled the loneliness.”

In truth, a deeply rooted feeling of loneliness plagued Lynde for his whole life. He was a closet homosexual who was never able to find a lasting life partner. He grew up in Mount Vernon, Ohio, at a time when it wasn’t socially acceptable to be gay. And it’s this environment that may have contributed to a lifelong self-loathing regarding his sexuality. 

Rudolph claimed that Lynde was aware that most of his fans were heterosexual, so he didn’t want to risk alienating them by revealing his own sexuality. Heartbreakingly, he believed this truth had the potential to finish off his career.

Comedian Billy Eichner, who is openly homosexual, told Entertainment Weekly, “He was probably the first gay person — whether he was using the word or not — in a lot of people’s homes across America. He was ahead of his time in terms of being as overtly gay as one could be, unlike so many stars of that time.”

Airington believes that for Lynde, growing up in an era that rejected his lifestyle and his ambitions in the entertainment industry shaped him completely as a person. He felt the aspiring star “had the tragic upbringing of so many performers. His parents didn’t accept him as a comedian or wanting to be on television or in movies.” 

“When I started the show, I didn’t realize that he struggled so hard with loneliness and his gayness,” continued Airington. “He was in love with one guy but broke his heart because Paul would go off on tantrums. But that was his only serious relationship.” And the “tantrums” that put an end to that relationship would be a consistent theme in Lynde’s life and career.

Unfortunately, Lynde had a serious drinking problem, and his outbursts were frequently spurred on by alcohol. As Rudolph told Closer Weekly, “When Paul drank too much, he could be vicious and cruel, and as a result, he lost a lot of his friends.” Actress Kaye Ballard once pinpointed the moment Lynde showed her his nasty side one-too-many times.

“He’d come for dinner, get drunk and say things like, ‘You’re never going to get anywhere. You’re too overweight,’” Ballard told A&E TV show Biography. “Eventually, I thought, ‘You know, I don’t need this.’ He burned the carpet one day, and I thought, ‘Hey, I’m not making your kind of money, don’t burn my carpet.’ I didn’t want to take any more abuse from him.”

Lynde’s drinking also affected his professional life, costing him jobs on more than one occasion. He was arrested numerous times for being drunk in public, and there was also an alcohol-fueled incident at a Burger King restaurant in Chicago that badly hurt his reputation. Disappointingly, Lynde reportedly slurred racist comments to an African-American Northwestern University professor, with his only excuses being tired and intoxicated.

The worst moment in Lynde’s tumultuous personal life came in 1965, though. At the time he was set to star in his own sitcom entitled Sedgewick Hawk-Styles: Prince of Danger. Predictably, he went out on the town to celebrate. He wound up bringing young actor J.B. Davidson back to his hotel suite, where they proceeded to get exceedingly drunk. 

While the two were “horsing around” near the hotel room’s balcony, Davidson plummeted eight stories to his death. Two police officers witnessed the tragic accident, and it was ruled that Lynde wasn’t culpable in any way. Tragically, they stated he had tried to save Davidson by holding on to his arm, but he had been unable to stop him from falling. 

Despite the police witness statements, word persisted for years that Lynde was somehow responsible. At the time of the accident, ABC ceased production on his sitcom, which was devastating for Lynde. And in later years, any time he failed to book a role, he would always wonder if the tragedy was still hanging over his head and shaping Hollywood’s decisions.

Over time, Hollywood began to adjust to the ever-evolving world at large. Despite his troubles, back-room bosses did continue to offer Lynde roles — even ones where he would have played gay characters. But he turned the latter down. He even told People magazine in 1976, “Gay people killed Judy Garland, but they’re not going to kill me.”

Given his sometimes-venomous personality and conflicted view of his own sexuality, then, one might wonder why Lynde is still held in such high regard by his friends, peers, and the LGBTQ community. Perhaps it’s because people knew of his internal struggles and were therefore willing to overlook how they manifested themselves. It’s been said, for instance, that alcohol totally altered his personality — he was never antagonistic when sober.

The Lucy Book author Geoffrey Mark said Lynde “was one of those Jekyll/Hyde alcoholics, who is a lovely human being when he wasn’t drinking and a complete bitch when he was.” Overall, Mark believed the actor’s various insecurities and mental health problems often overcame him. But he was adamant that Lynde should be commended for finding a way to perform in spite of them.   

For the gay community, Lynde will always remain important because of what he represented. The Daily Show writer Frank DeCaro told Entertainment Weekly, “He was someone whose dog-whistle of gay humor little gay kids could hear.” And Rudolph added that, unlike other camp characters/actors at the time, “He became a pioneer because people were laughing with him, not at him.” 

Lynde passed away on January 11, 1982, less than a year after his last episode of Hollywood Squares. He was 55 years old and had suffered a heart attack. In his last few years, he had attempted to turn his life around by living healthier — he even smoked less and quit drinking. It seems irreparable damage may have already been done to his body, though.

In the end, Lynde was something of an enigma — a magnetic screen personality and a fiercely talented comedian but also a man who battled a lot of demons. Perhaps this was best expressed during a 1976 appearance on The Tonight Show. He was asked why he didn’t let his fans know more about his personal life, and he said, “I really don’t know — other than I’m absolutely scared. Scared of coming out and being myself.”

The handsome Montgomery Clift was a popular actor who seemingly preferred to live as a loner. The star didn’t appear to be interested in the world of Hollywood, and he couldn’t be bothered to attend fancy parties. Clift also didn’t have a girlfriend, despite the fact that plenty of women would have probably been willing.

Clift was — by all accounts — more interested in men. Biographers of the modern era have labeled him gay, though his brother Brooks claimed that he was bisexual. Either way, he reportedly spent much of his life frightened that somebody would find out his secret. According to Vanity Fair, the actor would even ask for scenes to be reshot if he thought he was coming off as feminine.

For years, Katharine Hepburn had an affair with Spencer Tracy, who was married to a woman that his religion prevented him from divorcing. But some think this was a cover-up to hide same-sex relationships that both of them had. In the 2018 documentary Scotty and the Secret History of Hollywood, it’s claimed that they never actually had a physical relationship.

The documentary also claims that Hepburn was a lesbian, and that “fixer” Scotty Bowers managed to acquire hundreds of woman lovers for the actress during her time in Hollywood. But as for what Hepburn herself ever said about it, in 1981 she told Barbara Walters, “I have not lived as a woman. I have lived as a man.”

Gay actor Tab Hunter was outed by the gossip magazine Confidential in 1955 just after he’d appeared in the hit movie Battle Cry. The publication wrote that he had once been arrested at a same-sex “pajama party,” and it used language that would have been considered shockingly homophobic today. Hunter was, of course, horrified.

Six decades later Hunter wrote about that incident for The Hollywood Reporter. He said, “I was — am — gay. That wasn’t the sort of topic that one spoke freely about back then, since it could spell the end of one’s career, but it was the sort of topic that people gossiped about, and there were no shortage of gossips back then, either.”

It’s long been rumored that James Dean was gay or bisexual. One famous quote attributed to him is, “No, I am not a homosexual. But, I’m also not going to go through life with one hand tied behind my back.” And people who worked with Dean before his untimely death have shared their own theories over the years.

While accepting a GLAAD award in 2000, Dean’s Giant co-star Elizabeth Taylor told the audience, “All my life I’ve spent a lot of time with gay men — Montgomery Clift, Jimmy Dean, Rock Hudson. I never thought about who they slept with. They were just the people I loved.” So that’s how she saw it, at least.

Cary Grant’s sexuality was the subject of rumors for a long time. He had five different wives throughout his life, but some have claimed that he also had relationships with men. Costume designer Orry-Kelly has said that he had a complicated, allegedly violent on-off relationship with the actor for years. And Grant was in fact one of the pallbearers at Kelly’s funeral.

Grant’s own daughter Jennifer seems not entirely sure about her father’s sexuality. In her 2011 memoir Good Stuff, the latter wrote, “Did dad ever experiment sexually? I don’t know. Have I ever experimented sexually? Have you? If experimentation makes one gay, then my guess is that most of the world is gay.”

Marlene Dietrich was the ultimate femme fatale, and she presented an ambiguous sexuality to Hollywood. To modern audiences it may seem much less ambiguous, however. Dietrich even kissed another woman on camera in the 1930 movie Morocco. And she was wearing a tuxedo suit while she did it.

Allegedly, one of Dietrich’s lovers was Greta Garbo. According to Diana McLellan’s 2000 book The Girls: Sappho goes to Hollywood, the pair of them had an affair in 1925 while filming a movie. And it apparently ended so badly that from then on, they’d pretend to have never met.

Anthony Perkins — the man who played Norman Bates in the famous horror film Psycho — maintained a very private life. He was gay during a time when it wasn’t acceptable, and he even may have undergone conversion therapy of a sort. In its 1992 obituary for him, the Los Angeles Times described it as “intensive psychotherapy.”

Perkins did eventually marry a woman — Berry Berenson — and had two children with her. In Charles Winecoff’s 1996 book Split Image: The Life of Anthony Perkins, a former lover of the actor, stated, “This was the ‘50s, a public person could not go public, even if he wanted to. And [Perkins] didn’t want to.”

Cesar Romero was known as the “Latin From Manhattan” and of course as the famous comic-book villain The Joker in the 1960s Batman series. He was gay — something apparently known by lots of his co-stars and producers. It was only audiences and the media who were told otherwise.

In 1966 Romero was interviewed by Boze Hadleigh for his book Hollywood Gays, and he had plenty of stories to tell. According to the former, he had once slept with Desi Arnaz — the husband of Lucille Ball. And Arnaz was allegedly far from the only one. Romero kept things quiet, he said, by making sure that he was spotted with many beautiful actresses.

Sal Mineo — James Dean’s co-star in Rebel Without a Cause — was bisexual. The atmosphere at the time prevented him from outright saying it, but during a 1972 interview with Boze Hadleigh, he was asked if he “resented the rumors” about him. The actor answered, “Well, no. Because what’s wrong with being bi? Maybe most people are, deep down.”

Eventually, Mineo was able to talk openly about his experiences, and he became an icon for the LGBTQ community. But sadly, the star was murdered at the age of just 37. In 1976 he was killed in a robbery gone wrong, and his killer later said that he didn’t even know him.

Actor Tyrone Power had three marriages in all; first he wed a French actress named Annabella, then Linda Christian, followed by Deborah Minardos. He reportedly also had an affair with Lana Turner. But there are some pretty strong rumors that he wasn’t straight, and many of them come from people allegedly involved with him.

British actor Bob Monkhouse claimed in his 1994 book Crying with Laughter that Power had once come onto him — only to be turned down. And Errol Flynn’s biographer Charles Highham has claimed that Flynn and Power were lovers. The women in Power’s life always denied the reports, but the latter isn’t around anymore to give a yes or no answer. He sadly died of a heart attack aged 44.

For many years, Greta Garbo sent letters to an actress named Mimi Pollak. In fact, reportedly it was the latter who came up with the screen name “Garbo” in the first place. And when Garbo’s messages were released in 2005, their relationship definitely seemed to be more on the romantic side.

One 1924 letter sees Garbo write to Pollak, “The letter from you has aroused a storm of longing within me.” And after the latter became a wife and mother a few years later, Garbo wrote, “We cannot help our nature, as God has created it. But I have always thought you and I belonged together.” To many, these letters confirmed the star’s sexuality.

In 1961 Dirk Bogarde played a gay man in the movie Victim. It presented a sad story: a married man discovers that a male lover of his has killed himself, and he gets blackmailed as a result. Bogarde actually rewrote some of the dialogue. It was a controversial film, and it would have been even more so if anyone had known Bogarde himself was reportedly gay.

Bogarde always maintained — even in his memoirs — that he was straight. However, in 2004 his brother Gareth Van den Bogaerde told The Telegraph, “At the time that Dirk was sexually active, the law was such that it could not come out. If it did, he could have gone to prison. It couldn’t be admitted.”

Rudolph Valentino was so popular with the ladies that some reportedly committed suicide upon learning of his death. And he was married two times, though reportedly he never got to consummate the marriage with his first wife Jean Acker. Yet there were always rumors that he was gay.

Some of the claims that Valentino was gay might have started out of spite, and the actor himself always firmly denied it anyway. But some biographers believe there’s a chance that he had affairs with men, and that he was a patron of the gay Torch Club in Los Angeles. Maybe no one will ever be certain.

Many people think that legendary actress Joan Crawford was part of the LGBTQ community. She had affairs — so the rumors say — with stars including Greta Garbo and Marilyn Monroe. She might even have appeared in a lesbian pornographic film which ended up being destroyed. But Crawford’s daughter has revealed some of the truth.

In 2010 the actress’ adopted daughter Christina told Joy Behar, “In those days, people didn’t come out of the closet. Everybody knew it, but it wasn’t public information. And then the studios completely controlled all the publicity… I think she was bisexual. That’s what I think.” Whatever Crawford’s exact sexuality was, Christina claimed that her mother had been in relationships with women.

The man who famously played Obi-Wan Kenobi was almost certainly bisexual. However, according to people who knew him, the star was unhappy about his sexuality. According to the BBC, the actor was even once charged for what was then called “a homosexual act,” but he was able to keep it quiet.

In 2014 the gay actor Ian McKellan spoke at a Pride gala about Guinness. He said that the latter had told him, “You really should not, as a leading actor, have anything to do with anything political, especially anything as dirty as homosexuality.” But now times have changed so much that Guinness is beloved partly because of — rather than despite — his bisexuality.

There were always rumors about Vincent Price’s sexuality; so many, in fact, that his daughter Victoria had to fend off fans asking her about it. He had gay friends, that much was true. However, there was a sense in which she didn’t actually know for certain, because he never confirmed anything even to her.

But in 2015 Victoria Price told Boom Magazine, “I would like to say something here because I might as well. I am as close to certain as I can be that my dad had physically intimate relationships with men.” And she added, “I know for 100 percent fact that my dad was completely loving and supportive of [LGBTQ] people.”

In the 2018 documentary Scotty and the Secret History of Hollywood — which is based on the memoirs of Scotty Bowers — Spencer Tracy’s name comes up a lot. In the film, as in the book, Tracy is listed as one of the eponymous actor’s lovers. According to Bowers himself, the star would sleep with him and then in the morning act like it never happened.

As for the famous relationship between Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn, many people seem to believe it was all a front. In 2015 screenwriter Larry Kramer told The Hollywood Reporter that he thought Tracy and Hepburn were paired together by movie producers anxious to avoid scandal. According to him, “Everyone in Hollywood knows this is true.”

A number of people have claimed that Marlon Brando had male lovers. In one book — 2009’s The Contender: The Story of Marlon Brando — author William J. Mann wrote that the famous movie star “was a man utterly at ease with his fluid sexuality, someone who blithely disregarded the binaries of love and gender.”

And one of those lovers was probably comedian Richard Pryor. In 2018 Quincy Jones claimed in an interview with New York Magazine that Brando would “f*** anything… James Baldwin. Richard Pryor. Marvin Gaye.” Whether the actor slept with the other two men is unknown, but Pryor’s widow Jennifer Lee confirmed that yes, Brando and Pryor had been in a relationship.

Marilyn Monroe actually spoke about her own sexuality openly in the past. She wrote in her 1954 biography, “A man who had kissed me once had said it was very possible that I was a lesbian because apparently I had no response to males — meaning him. I didn’t contradict him because I didn't know what I was... Now, having fallen in love, I knew what I was. It wasn’t a lesbian.”

Monroe may have been bisexual, however. A rumor persisted for years that she was in a romantic relationship with her drama coach Natasha Lytess. In 1950 Monroe even moved in with her. Allegedly, around that point Monroe told a friend that she and Lytess were indeed sleeping with each other, but no one knows the truth so far.

Rock Hudson is among the most famous of Hollywood’s closeted gay stars. Right from the beginning — so the story goes — he was warned to never show the slightest sign of his true sexuality. Apparently, he was told to straighten his hips, never cross his legs, and use a deep voice. But producers still worried, so they married him off.

Hudson entered a lavender marriage with the aspiring actress Phyllis Gates. But the relationship didn’t last. Hudson continued his career, but sadly he never got the chance to publicly come out. He died of complications from AIDs in 1985. Yet such was his fame and popularity, he changed people’s perceptions of the condition.