Paul Lynde - A Biography (14 page)

Both Alfred and Lynn had won Tony awards and Emmys, both had been nominated for an Oscar, and Alfred won for best actor in 1931 for
The Guardsman.
His wife was also up for an Oscar in that same film. No actor at that time had ever played their character like Alfred: in at least one scene he would turn his back to the audience. He used only his voice and his body to express the character’s emotions. Both husband and wife were highly recognized actors, and in 1958, the Lunt-Fontaine Theater was named after the famous couple.

When Paul got over his shock, he rounded up his cast the next afternoon and headed to Ten Chimneys, right outside Milwaukee, in the town of Genesee Depot. The acting couple’s estate was breathtaking, and Paul said the Lunts were the best hosts. He felt so honored and said the retired actors gave him one of the most memorable times of his life. “I was so corny I even had my picture taken with them,” he admitted.

The visit with the legends sparked such a good feeling in Paul. A few years later, Paul would pay tribute to Alfred. While on tour in Wisconsin, Paul was feeling good and ready for a new companion in his life. There he was, tall, dark, and handsome, and Paul knew he had to have him. The tall French poodle wagged his tail as he was led out of the store into a limousine. Paul crowned him Alfred Lunt — after his legendary new friend — and the two boarded a plane and headed back to L.A.

Alfred explored his new environment while his master brought his suitcase into his bedroom, stopping in front of the huge portrait of Harry. “I know you understand ole pal, I just can’t take being alone anymore,” he said.

Alfred liked his new home and his master. The two were becoming good friends. The dog was intelligent, obedient, and loyal. He competed in dog shows and he won many blue ribbons. Paul took Alfred everywhere he went. When Jan visited, she enjoyed watching her friend spoil his giant poodle. “Alfred loves sweets and limos,” Paul told her. The comedic actor found he had the best relationships with dogs because “they don’t judge you, they just love you.” One time, he told Jan that he and Alfred had just come back from going over his finances with his accountant, and he was told he never had to work again, if he didn’t want to. “Alfred and I pranced all the way home,” he gleamed.

Paul continued to work and continued to complain about the long hours and the stress. “Why do you do it if you don’t have to?” Vincent Price, the famous horror actor, once asked him. “You have this great big beautiful home, so why don’t you just quit and enjoy it?”

“Because, I have no one to share it with,” Paul answered.

One March day, Paul was cooking corned beef and cabbage à la Lynde-style for his friends. His housekeeper at the time, Tim Noyle, recalled the events of that Irish holiday. Martha Raye and some of Paul’s other lady friends were coming over for a St. Patrick’s Day celebration. They all came in wearing green, after an afternoon of celebrating. They ate and drank until they all passed out at Paul’s place. In the morning, Martha was frantic because she couldn’t remember where she had put her dentures the night before. A short while later, the dog came into the room carrying something in his mouth: Alfred had found her teeth!

When Paul came into the guest house where the girls had slept, he greeted them with a sassy, “Good afternoon ladies.” They were still lounging about, nursing their hangovers, and they had not dressed for the day yet. Their host pointed to the sign he had displayed there, which read:

To Our Weekend Guests:

Remember when we insist on Sunday, that you stay until Monday, we don’t really mean it…

And he meant it.

Paul attended many celebrity’s cocktail parties. There, he mingled with writers, actors, producers, and agents. He was truly the life of the party, but if he learned that he was invited just to make everyone laugh, he would not go. He did keep everyone in stiches, but when someone would ask him how his career was going, that’s when he became real serious. He was worried about over exposure on television, and at the same time he was irritated that many people were referring to him as “what’s his name.”

Now, most of the nation knew his name. Paul also knew having his home in such a prestigious magazine would show how successful he was. He hoped it would get the attention of a Hollywood producer to call him for that one serious role he had been waiting for. “Something with depth, like
The Graduate.
” That movie moved him. Dustin Hoffman had played a recent graduate from college, named Benjamin, who is seduced by Mrs. Robinson, an attractive married older woman. After some time, Benjamin wants to end the loveless affair. He then meets and falls in love with her daughter, Elaine. His confession to Elaine about his taboo relationship, forces Elaine to leave him. When Benjamin learns she is about to get married, he races to stop her. In this dramatic scene, Benjamin finds his way into the church through a second floor, stands above the congregation, and, from a glass wall, he looks down and sees the bride and groom kiss. He bangs on the glass and shrieks, “Elaine!” If Paul had been given that role, he might have wanted to scream, “Marilyn,” in that scene.

Paul felt the movie industry looked down on television stars. He also knew he was stereotyped. Offers continued for him to appear on just about every variety show and sitcom on television. He received generous pay for those appearances as a character actor, but it was many hours of hard work. He still dwelled on getting the right part in a movie that could prove his acting ability. Then he would get paid a lot more money without working so many hours, as well as having the prestige that went with actors like Dustin Hoffman and Jimmy Stewart. He had no idea that his fame was climbing rapidly. He was starting to get the star status he had always wanted, but it wasn’t because of his acting.

Chapter 9

“You can put words in my mouth anytime.”

Paul Lynde

“I’ve been saying for forty years that Paul could deliver a punch line better than any other comedian, ever,” Les Roberts said — former head writer and producer of
The Hollywood Squares.
“From the very beginning, I knew Paul’s personality and timing, so we (my other writers Jay Redack and the late Bill Armstrong) wrote joke lines specifically for Paul and worked harder on it than on any other personality. It paid off.”

Les had been a comedy writer for
The Jackie Gleason Show, The Andy Griffith Show,
and
The Lucy Show,
among others
.
In 1965, at the age of twenty-nine, Les was working for Heatter-Quigley Productions for a game show called
The Big Showdown.
It only aired for a few months and was to be replaced by a brand new show,
The Hollywood Squares.
Les remembers exactly the way he was asked about this new show, “Do you wanna hang around on a new show and be a producer, kid?” He wasn’t sure at the time what the producer did, but he knew he wanted to do it, and he became the very first producer of
The Hollywood Squares.
He was also head writer and would write the jokes for the celebrity panelists including Paul, Charlie Weaver, Wally Cox, Vincent Price, Rose Marie, and many others.

Les knew what made Paul tick. He used that knowledge when he wrote his answers for Paul on the show:

His bitterness, with which he had to live and deal with 24/7, is also what made him the best one-line comic ever. In his film roles, especially in
Bye Bye Birdie,
the characters became bitterly funny as well. In fact, ALL comedians were bitter, snarling out their jokes, and if they got mad at you they would inflict the extra-painful death of a thousand cuts. Few were funny offstage; the only two that come to mind are Don Rickles and Jan Murray.

According to Les, Paul never objected to any of the jokes the writers gave him.

Not during the three years I produced the show. Paul only cared whether the joke got a laugh, but he truly didn’t care how raunchy it was. In fact, if you looked carefully, his eyes always danced when he got away with one not usually heard at a church picnic. His humor offstage was generally — well — dirty.

Les explained how they got away with it on the show.

Then, as now, the common goal of every comedy writer was to get away with as much as possible when writing jokes for a G-rated TV show. Since we knew that Paul’s humor was biting, sarcastic, and sometimes even vicious, we tried to get away with as much as possible. Therefore, when we asked Paul, “Is the electrical current in your house AC or DC?” and he answered, “In my house it’s both,” the censors had no idea of the double meaning. We managed to do this at least once or twice every single week. Another example:

Q: “How many men on a hockey team?”

Paul: “About half.”

I must confess we got away with this writing for Cliff Arquette (Charley Weaver) and Rose Marie as well. I’ll stand behind any one of those jokes. I think it made the world recognize Paul Lynde’s genius. I think his delivery made viewers more acceptable of gay people, and it managed to turn the tide and make TV more adult. Back then Lucy and Desi were not allowed to use the word “Pregnant.” Things are different now. Bill Armstrong, Jay Redack, Merrill Heatter and I wrote every joke Paul ever said on Hollywood Squares — but even after we’d written it, pampered it, kneaded it, teased it, and made it perfect, we would laugh out loud when Paul Lynde did it on the show. There was some unique peculiar thing about him, about his delivery, about his sheer talent, that made us laugh at our own jokes.

It was different though off screen, Les explained:

If you worked “in the business” in Hollywood, there were no secrets. What do you wear to bed, what was your sexual ‘type,’ what you drink, smoke, eat, or do when you think no one is looking — and we all knew all the answers. We, of course, knew Paul was gay, and Rock Hudson and Jim Nabors and well, it’s a long list, but everyone in the business knew it. I was always amazed that 99% of the civilians, the people who just watched and were never personally involved, never thought Paul was gay. I spoke to the people in his Ohio hometown a few years ago, and no one there ever mentioned it, either.

In the 1960s and 1970s, it was not wise to let the entire world know your sexual proclivities, and the more famous Paul became, the more difficult it was for him to swallow that secret. His alcoholism and bitterness made him so completely funny, but quite often he was not funny when he was drinking, but nasty, even close to evil. Even his good friends would turn their back on him for a time and refuse to speak with him or see him because they couldn’t face another withering put-down. However, they all came back, as one would have to, because everyone who knew him and appreciated his talent would continue to love and support him. Because of that, though, he spent lonely nights. He came as close to owning up to it when we asked him, “What would happen if you stepped in quicksand?” and he replied, “You’d give my square to Charles Nelson Reilly.”

Charles Nelson Reilly was often a panelist on
Squares.
He was a popular guest on many game shows in the 1960s and 1970s. In some ways, Charles and Paul were similar with their bigger-than-life personalities. Both men were actors and comedians. Both were in
Bye Bye Birdie
together. They were both known for their humorous double entendres. Both men were talented, campy, flamboyant, and gay. They had worked with Peter Marshall, the emcee of
Squares,
prior to the game show. Charles and Peter had done a Broadway play together in 1965, called
Skyscraper.
Paul and Peter went all the way back to
New Faces 1952.
Charles admitted he stole a little of Paul’s ways, who he said Paul stole from Alice Ghostley. But as much as they may have seemed alike, they were very different people. According to Peter, he and Charles were like brothers. He and Paul respected each other but didn’t pal around together. Charles didn’t really have any hang-ups and had a long-time relationship. Paul did not have that stability and he was bitter about a lot of things.

While working with Paul, Les and he became good friends.

Paul was easy for me to work with. He was not the most sociable person in the world, but he always joined some of the cast and crew across the street for dinner during the break between shows #2 and #3, and he had a marvelous, if sometimes vitriolic, sense of humor. Like most comics, Paul rarely laughed out loud at anyone else, but those dinners showed him off as relaxed and peaceful.” Paul invited Les to his home on occasion. Les remembered, “It was once owned by Errol Flynn, quite beautiful, up in the Hollywood Hills. Paul was a wonderful host, especially earlier in the evening.”

In the three years that Les worked closely with Paul, he only witnessed Paul show his love and affection for one special friend. Les described that relationship like this, “If Paul was the safety officer on The Titanic, the first lifeboat seat would go to Harry, his dog. Harry was the only thing in his life I ever saw him grow sentimental about.”

As much as Paul displayed his bitterness, it was his intelligence, wicked wit, and kind side that won over most of his peers, and they had mutual respect for one another. “We held each other in high regard,” Les said. “When I asked him to sign a picture for me that I could hang in my office, he inscribed it: ‘To Les — you can put words in my mouth ANY time.’ ”

The favorite joke that Les says he ever wrote for Paul — and the one that is probably the most famous, is:

Q: Why do motorcyclists wear leather jackets?

Paul: Because chiffon wrinkles in the wind.

“I’ve written for the most famous comics of that era, and I’m STILL a sucker for a stand-up guy who can make me giggle. Les said, “But there has never, ever been anyone remotely like Paul Lynde.” Les left Hollywood and today is a bestselling and award winning novelist. “I’ve always been very proud to have been associated with Paul Lynde,” Les said. “And here we are, nearly half a century later, and I find myself still associated with him — and still very proud.”

Though Paul was a huge hit on
The Hollywood Squares,
he didn’t find being on a game show very gratifying. However, it was that game show that was about to get him nominated for an Emmy. That is if he didn’t find himself locked up. Paul was about to face a judge and be humiliated in a packed courthouse, filled with the people he needed the most — his fans.