Queer as folk

It's been said that Paul blamed his gayness for his lack of career advancement, but isn't this the sole reason we know him today? The material that he was saddled with was lousy, by and large. And yet his "gay oriented" jokes on "Squares" were really quite edgy for the time.

J.F.: Well, he also blamed network stupidity, bad scripts, his drinking problem and, most embarrassingly, Jews for his career never taking off. But yeah, it's interesting that his queerness gave him a certain edge and fueled his comedy even as it held him back.

Going back to "Hollywood Squares" -- much as Paul hated being on that game show, it seems that this really was the best outlet for him.

J.F.: The host of the show, Peter Marshall, makes a good point in our book about a little bit of Lynde going a long way; too much of him was overkill. That helps explain why Paul's sitcoms never went anywhere, but why his zingers on "Squares" got him so much notice -- pretty much solid raves from the get-go, from both the audience and the producers. He was an immediate smash. He was 40, by the way, and the veteran of many failures, when he first appeared on "Hollywood Squares."

It might surprise a lot of people to know that most, if not all, of Paul's zingers were scripted by writers. You make it clear in the book that Paul wasn't very adept at improvising.

S.W.: The writers on "Squares" took great pains to pen jokes in Paul's voice. But there's a lot to be said for what Paul's great delivery did for those lines. They would have sounded mighty lame coming from anyone else. And he did have his moments of ad lib brilliance too, like the time he was presenting with a female chimp in a skirt at the 1972 Emmys and he chastised her with, "You forgot to use your Feminique [douche]."

Also, keep in mind that he might have been a better improviser if the standards of the day had allowed him to joke around as he did so effortlessly in real life. I think living in the closet for so long may have clamped him up. There was one time when he showed up to dedicate a new high school in his hometown of Mount Vernon, Ohio, and panicked when the organizers expected him to speak for 30 minutes without any prepared material. He was probably more afraid of what offensiveness might have come out of his mouth than anything else.

I've seen a few bootlegs of the failed sitcoms in which Paul starred as the leading man. Peter Marshall was right about a little going a long way. Watching the shows was like staring directly at the sun or eating a large bag of candy. It was all too much. I felt a bit dizzy and nauseated.

J.F.: We have a higher Paul tolerance than most, but it's true, his manic approach really did only work in small doses. In the [short-lived 1972 sitcom] "The Paul Lynde Show," for instance, who's going to believe him as a family man for a whole half-hour every week? (Though he did get off some funny lines on that show, and many of them he wrote himself, or so he claimed.) That's why he was great as Uncle Arthur on "Bewitched" and the father in "Bye Bye Birdie" and Templeton the rat in "Charlotte's Web." He was just in and out at the right moments.

Here's something shocking: Paul was on "Bewitched" only a total of 11 times. I thought he appeared much more frequently. Again, a small dose of Lynde went a very long way.

J.F.: Right, it is surprising that he was only on the show 11 times. His presence was very strong. He guest-starred on one "Bewitched" as Sam's driving instructor and hit it off so well with Elizabeth Montgomery that her producer husband, William Asher, created the Arthur role for him. The three of them hung out together and became friends off the set. Asher, by the way, told us he bailed Paul out of jail on the night of one of his most notorious episodes.

What happened?

J.F.: Paul got pulled over for a DUI and told the cop who came up to his car window: "I'll have a cheeseburger and fries!"

Is that story true? Paul's misdeeds have become legendary, and many are still recounted in Hollywood. I wonder how many of them are tethered in any way to reality.

S.W.: We had lots of sources for that story. Paul even used to brag about it. Police records backed up other stories, like the Jim Davidson episode. He and the young actor went to San Francisco to party for the weekend and Jim got drunk and fell out their hotel window. It never became a big scandal, but it probably ruined Paul's chances of getting a few projects off the ground.

J.F.: Another notorious Paul story that turned out to be true was the time he was on an airplane and a little girl was running up and down the aisle, making a lot of noise. He grabbed her and then shouted at her mother: "You keep this little girl quiet or I'm gonna fuck her!"

Not exactly the stuff comedy legends are made of.

S.W.: It worked for Paul. As we dug around for the truth behind other stories, we came to realize that Paul really lends himself well to tall tales. He's sort of a gay folk hero that way. As an example, we talked to a writer who wrote a short story in which Paul slaps a character while they're making love and says: "When you get fucked by Lynde, baby, you keep your eyes open!" It was pure fiction, but it just sounds so much like Paul that other people we talked to thought it was real.

Next Page: Was Paul Lynde a gay hero?

• View blog reactions